Case Study on Board Quotas
Prepared By-
Md. Rokib Chowdhury (Id: 3-15-30-036)
Md. Ifteakhar Alam (Id: 3-15-29-087)
Biplab Vattacharjee (Id: 3-15-30-063)
Md. Mosfiqur Rahman (Id: 3-15-30-062)

Submitted to-
Prof.Dr. Md. Abbas Ali Khan
University of Dhaka

Contents page no
Summary …………………………. 3
Ques no1 …………………………. 4
Ques No2 …………………………. 7
Fig 1 ………………………….. 7
Fig 2 …………………………… 9
Ques no3 …………………………….. 9
Fig 3 ………………………………… 13
Ques no 4 ………………………………… 14

Summary
Board Quotas for women is important for the participation of women in the workforce.
In United States quotas for women is only 15%. Among 100 large companies in Britain quotas for woman is only 12%. In EU the Quotas contains only 9.7%, In India and China 5%. In this underrepresentation of quotas for women many countries make compulsory quotas for women on Boards.

Question no: 1 Given that women participate in the labor force in roughly the same proportion as men, why do you think women occupy so few seats on boards of directors?
Women are well established in professions like medicine, law and banking. They’ve advanced to the top of prominent companies, including General Motors, PepsiCo, Easy Jet and Yahoo. Yet a gap remains: corporate boards. Men hold over 80 percent of all S&P 500 board seats and growth in female representation has slowed. European countries and companies have instituted formal mandates, sometimes backed by fines, to narrow the corporate-board gender gap; in the European Union it’s about the same size as the U.S. shortfall. Then there’s the Asia-Pacific region, where women are virtually absent from boards, holding fewer than 10 percent of seats in a 2015 study of 100 companies. Women participate in the labor force in roughly the same proportion as men but women occupy few seats on the boards. We try to find out below causes on it.
01. Gender Discrimination: Gender inequality and discrimination are root causes of violence against women, influenced by the historical and structural power imbalances between women and men which exist in varying degrees across all communities in the world. Gender discrimination is the unfair treatment of a person because of gender. Gender discrimination affects both men and women. It is apparent in work situations where one gender is given preferential treatment or one gender receives less pay or job responsibilities because of gender bias and unfair stereotypes. Gender discrimination also exists in sports, educational institutions and political organizations. Genders also experience sex discrimination when applying for housing or applying for credit. According to TNS Research Surveys, 68 percent of women surveyed believe gender discrimination exists in the workplace. Federal law protects women and other minorities from discrimination in the work place. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 ended the practice of paying men more than women when performing the same jobs and duties. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act extended this protection to other minorities. Despite these protections, many women still feel gender-based discrimination is a problem in some businesses.
Violence against women and girls is related to their lack of power and control, as well as to the social norms that prescribe men and women’s roles in society and condone abuse. Inequalities between men and women cut across public and private spheres of life, and across social, economic, cultural, and political rights; and are manifested in restrictions and limitations on women’s freedoms, choices and opportunities. These inequalities can increase women’s and girls’ risks of abuse, violent relationships and exploitation, for example, due to economic dependency and limited survival and income-earning options, or discrimination under the law as it relates to marriage, divorce, and child custody rights.
02. Sexual Harassment: Sexual harassment creates a hostile workplace and is a form of sex discrimination. If employees make inappropriate sexual comments, demand sexual favors or only promote employees who have sex with them, this is sexual harassment. A franchise can be liable for such harassment if it does not have adequate policies to prevent it, if it knows about the harassment but does nothing or if it fires employees for reporting the harassment.
03. Termination and Retaliation: Gender cannot be a consideration in terminating an employee. Most of the companies that have a history of terminating employees of one gender but not the other can be held liable, even if they do not deliberately discriminate. It's illegal to terminate an employee for being pregnant or for being visibly pregnant. It's also illegal to fire an employee for making a complaint of gender discrimination or filing a lawsuit; this is considered retaliation and can greatly increase the damages a company has to pay if it loses a lawsuit.
04. Family Responsibilities: Women who have young children at home may experience push-back when interviewing due to family responsibilities. Women have to face more household work than men. Although law prohibits a prospective employer from asking about family responsibility outright, it often comes out during the interview process anyway. This may provoke the hiring manager to pass over a qualified female candidate if he feels she will be torn between her home and job responsibilities. If the woman makes it into the position, her supervisor can view her employee file to see that she has young children signed up on insurance or other benefits. He then may choose to give her less responsibility or assign menial tasks to her that do not fit her job description. Although illegal, this practice still exists in offices today.
05. Productivity: Victims of gender discrimination lose motivation and morale necessary to perform their jobs effectively. According to a report written by Jodi L. Jacobson of the World Watch Institute, gender bias also leads to a loss in productivity. Things that may lead to this loss of morale and motivation could include jokes about an employee’s gender that imply inferiority, offensive jokes of a suggestive or sexual nature and jokes implying that an employee’s work is sub-par due to his or her gender. Federal law prohibits this type of workplace harassment, whether by superiors or coworkers. It‘s a conventional belief that women are less productive or efficient than men worker.
06. Government Aloofness: Government not sincere to ensure strict rules and regulation to ensure more women in the work place. Providing governmental incentives to promote women in the workplace, such as paternity leave and tax cuts for childcare may creates a fri9endly working environment. Enforcing a strictly mandated quota, establishing policy in which companies without women on their boards would have to explain why not (á la Finland) is also essential.
07. Conventional Social Thinking: Many of us belief that “who have been promoting women's leadership as a matter of equity, but also as a matter of quality in our social organizations.”
Sometimes says that: "Diversity is about counting numbers; Inclusiveness is about making the numbers count."
Everyone who believes in the importance of women's (in all their diversity) full participation in public life has a personal responsibility to see that we change the meager representation of women on boards.
I challenge everyone to ask questions about this, to support companies, governmental organizations, educational organizations and all other public entities that have and seek women for leadership positions.
The value of inclusion to everyone is clear, and now is the time to make certain that women take their rightful leadership positions. The last choice--do nothing like in the US--is unacceptable.
08. Low levels of education: for boys associated with perpetrating violence in the future and for girls, experiencing violence
09. Man control over decision-making and assets: Most of the assets are dominated by male not female. Their control on the properties is a burden to women power in board quotas.

Q.2 Do you agree with the quotas established in many EU countries? Why or why not?

Yes I agree with the quotas for the following reason’s stated bellow- * When a company is on the way of growing quotas help it from stiff competition. As a result create more job opportunities. * Women are majority of graduates almost in everywhere in the developed world but make up a smaller share of the workforce. * Male directors are more likely to sit on more than one board. * Female Norwegian board members are more likely to have degree than male ones. * Unequal opportunities between men and woman continue to hamper women ability to lift them-selves and gain more option to improve their lives.

Fig: 1 Board Quotas statistics from case

* Research shows that inequalities persist in the way paid and unpaid work is divided between women and men. Women paid less than men. * Woman participation in the labor force grew fastest the economy experienced the largest reduction in poverty rates. * Evidence from a range of countries shows that increasing the share of household income controlled by women either through their own earnings or cash transfer changes spending in ways. * Research by Catalyst; a not-for-profit that seeks to expand opportunities for woman shows a strong link between the presence of woman on boards and corporate reputations. Female director serve as role models and therefore improve female employees performance and boost companies images several rating agencies and investment funds such as Calipers and Pax world use the extent of gender diversity as one of their investment criteria. * Research by Cranfield School of management shows that the percentage of woman in 100 companies has raised slowly from 6.9% to 12.5% over the last decade. * When Fortune 500 companies were ranked by the number of women board of directors ,those were in the highest quartile in 2009 reported a 42% greater return on sales of a 53% higher return on equity than the rest according to study conducted Lois Joy, Nancy carter, Harvey A Wagner and Sriram Narayanan. Fig2 women board quotas of fortune companies in 2004-2012

Question no: 3 Beyond legal remedies, what do we think can be done to increase Women’s representations on boards of directors?
The issues debated here are as much about improving business performance as about promoting equal opportunities for women. There is a strong business case for balanced boards. Inclusive and diverse boards are more likely to be effective boards, better able to understand their customers and stakeholders and to benefit from fresh perspectives, new ideas, vigorous challenge and broad experience. This in turn leads to better decision making. The ways to increase women’s representations on boards of directors are given below-
1. Improving performance
There is a body of research which demonstrates how the appointment of female directors can improve a company’s performance. Female directors enhance board independence. Better decision-making is assumed to occur as a result of directors having a range of experiences and backgrounds. Women take their non-executive director roles more seriously, preparing more conscientiously for meetings.8 Women ask the awkward questions more often, decisions are less likely to be nodded through and so are likely to be better.
2. Accessing the widest talent pool – using the skills of all:
Around the world, women have become the new majority in the highly qualified talent pool. In Europe and the USA, women account for approximately six out of every ten university graduates and in the UK women represent almost half of the labor force. These are trends that British business cannot ignore. The failure of any business or economy to maximize the talents of its people will result in below-par performance. Tapping into the under-utilized pool of female talent at board level is British companies are to remain competitive and respond to rapidly changing expectations and market demands. British corporate competitiveness is at stake.
3. Being more responsive to the market:
Women now form 51% of the UK population and 46% of the economically active workforce. They are estimated to be responsible for about 70% of household purchasing decisions and to hold almost half of the UK’s wealth.19 Having women on boards, who in many cases would represent the users and customers of the companies’ products, could improve understanding of customer needs, leading to more informed decision making.
4. Achieving better corporate governance:
A Canadian study entitled ‘Not just the right thing, but the bright thing’, looking at public, not-for-profit and private boards, found that boards with three or more women on them showed very different governance behaviors to those with all-male boards.22 The more gender-balanced boards were more likely to identify criteria for measuring strategy, monitor its implementation, follow conflict of interest guidelines and adhere to a code of conduct. They were more likely to ensure better communication and focus on additional non-financial performance measures, such as employee and customer satisfaction, diversity and corporate social responsibility.
5. Widen the search for talent:
Headhunters must take the lead on revolutionizing approaches to filling executive roles. Searches should be based on skill sets and knowledge, and must look beyond the existing pool of experienced executives to bring new potential to light The UK could consider following the New Zealand model of maintaining a transparent and accessible range of available databases maintained by public, private and voluntary sector organizations to hold the details of aspiring directors.
6.Harness the power of procurement:
Learning from the impact of the Gender Equality Duty on the public sector, Government should use procurement channels to incentivize businesses to increase representation of women leaders.
7.Frame diversity as integral to corporate performance:
The business case for diversity must be recognized and supported from the very top. McKinsey recommends the implementing of key performance indicators – such as proportion of women in company’s various business lines, at each level of management, and among new recruits; pay levels and attrition rates between men and women in similar functions; ratio of women promoted to women eligible for promotion.
8.Take action to counter even subtle forms of discrimination:
Managers and all those involved in recruitment processes must be trained to recognize the value of diversity and to identify prejudices that affect decisions .Businesses can encourage women’s progression into leadership roles by ensuring there is at least one woman on every shortlist for promotion.
9.Improves descriptive representation:
Quotas aim to directly increase female representation in leadership positions. They can bypass discrimination by directly mandating that certain positions be reserved for women. Similarly, when the structure of the labor market inhibits a woman’s advancement (for instance, by penalizing career interruptions) a quota can enable more equitable representation of women in leadership positions.
10.Improves substantive representation:
A growing body of evidence has demonstrated that men and women differ in policy preferences. For instance, Miller (2008), shows that an increase in female suffrage in the U.S. led directly to an increase in healthcare spending. Besley and Coate (1997) uses a theoretical model to demonstrate how implemented policies often reflect policy-maker preferences, while Pande (2003) presents causal evidence of mandated political representation of various caste groups resulting in increased transfers to those groups in India. Along these lines, a lack of female leadership translates directly into an underrepresentation of women’s interests in policy decisions. Increasing the proportion of female leaders through quotas can improve representation of women’s policy interests.
11.Crowd-out: Gender quotas may crowd out other marginalized ethnic or socioeconomic groups. By reserving certain positions for women, there will be fewer positions open for candidates from other groups that are also underrepresented. Crowd-out may occur, further limiting their voice in both descriptive representation and in areas of substantial representation. Men may also be negatively affected.
12.Reduces taste discrimination: Quotas may increase efficiency through overcoming taste-discrimination in the short term and changing attitudes and social norms in the long term (on this, see Section 5.4).
13.Increases information: Quotas may increase efficiency by correcting beliefs about female labor benefits and reducing inaccurate statistical discrimination. This, in turn, will increase the average quality of representation.
14.Positive Externalities: Quotas may correct market failures in the existing system or have a positive effective on potential women leaders themselves resulting in a more efficient selection of leaders.
15.Role Model Effect: Mandated female leaders may serve as role models for other aspiring women. Role models can show the returns to a particular type of person achieving a certain position, and so provide information about the value of current decisions for those making career choices, resulting in efficiency gains for the market (Chung 2000). For example, only a female board director can effectively demonstrate the payoff of being a female director to other aspiring businesswomen and acquire expertise on how to effectively maneuver as a female director in a traditionally male-dominated environment.
16.Improves aspirations: Quota-induced female leadership may increase entry into politics by women, and success in that realm, by improving aspirations and overcoming self-imposed stereotypes. Evidence in support of this channel comes from studies that show how self-imposed stereotypes may adversely influence the performance of women who believe they are expected to do worse than males. Spencer et al. (1999) uses a combination of psychology experiments to show that women perform worse than men on math tests when they are told that the test is particularly difficult for women, but perform as well as men on tests that are presented as being equally difficult across genders. The study suggests that performance and motivation of women may be affected by a woman’s own implicit biases on her expected performance compared to men.
20.Improves investments by women: Women may under invest in their own human capital if they believe leadership opportunities are unavailable. Through providing incentives or the opportunity for political or corporate advancement, quotas can encourage women to invest more in their education, career, and leadership potential Worsens allocation: If leadership ability differs by gender then the current paucity of female leaders may be the efficient outcome, and using quotas could worsen allocation by assigning leadership positions to worse-performing leaders. One such scenario is if quotas encourage promotion of inexperienced women, and experience, in turn, predicts performance – a situation we discuss in Section
21. Improve the Educational Facilities
23. Give proper Guides
24. Co-operate them as the aspect:
25. Give them security:
26 Give them Proper environment for work.
Thus, they can provide proper role in the broads of directors.

Fig3 gender inequality on board quota

Q4. One recent study found no link between female representations on boards of directors and these company’s corporate sustainability or environmental policies. The study’s author expressed surprise at the findings. Do the finding’s surprise you? Why or why not?

Finding, no link between female representation on boards of directors and these companies’ corporate sustainability or environmental policies, is surprising to me. I think, “More women on corporate boards will increase profitability and sustainability” |
Something highly significant for the future of corporate governance occurred at the end of November 2014. Germany decided to make it obligatory for 30% of non-executive board seats at How much of a leap is this? To put some perspective on it, in 2012 a review of the Standard and Poor's Composite 1500 Index by Ernst & Young revealed that in 2012, women held only 14% of board seats at companies listed on the index. These recent moves will end the long era of male-dominated supervision of German corporations.

Germany is not the first to take bold moves to tackle the lack of women on boards, but it is the most powerful country yet to join the posse. In Norway, 40% of board directors have been women since 2003. Prompted by European Parliament policy decisions, Germany now joins France, Spain and the Netherlands, which have boosted their proportion of female board directors.

Also at the end of November 2014, a draft law was submitted in Switzerland recommending a quota of 30% of women in both management and board positions at the top listed Swiss companies. If this goes through, governance at companies such as Novartis, UBS and ABB – currently without female board representation – will undergo ground-breaking change in their governance cultures.

What will the impact be on corporate performance, including on sustainability performance? It may well spell good news for bottom lines. According to a 2007 – thus pre-financial crisis – report "The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women's Representation on Boards", Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors.

However, it may also be good news for sustainability. More recent original research on female board members and corporate sustainability in 2012 indicates that companies with more women on the board are more likely to push for adoption of responsible leadership and sustainable practices. By this we mean strategically integrated practices that include assessing sustainability in financial decisions and capitalizing on sustainable innovation opportunities to improve operational efficiency and even linking sustainability to branding to win new customers by promoting brands as being "cool with purpose".

However, causality is hard to prove. Skeptics’ will maintain that "chicken and egg" questions can be raised. Do companies that are more financially successful tend to engage more women on their boards? Or does the simple fact of putting more women on boards generate better performance? The latter could be for a variety of reasons such as the longer-term risk adverse way women approach decision-making.

A "chicken and egg" dilemma has always existed around the relationship between sustainable practices and performance: Do companies that are more successful financially tend to also have the best sustainability practices, or do the sustainability practices themselves actually contribute to the better financial performance?

With European decisions tipping the balance towards engaging more women on more boards than ever, we shall surely see some interesting unraveling of these "chicken and egg" questions in the future..

References: 1. The conversation “Academic rigor” journalistic flair. 2. “Target and quotas a two –pronged approach to increase board diversity” Terjesen. S. et al. in journal of management and governance (2015) 3. “Diversity in Organization” EA Mendoza. –academia.edu chapter-2. 4. Harvard business review By Yilmaz Arguden “Do quotas crack the glass ceiling for women in business?” June 07,2012 5. Weerawardena, J., McDonald, R.E., Sullivan Mort, G. 2010. “Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations: An Empirical Investigation.” Journal of World Business Vol. 45: 346—356.