Catherine Tinsley’s research featured by SHRM: “Looking for Female CEOs? Consider Board Service as a Qualifier”

Posted in News  |  Tagged News - Gender Gap

Board membership can be a pathway for women to attain CEO roles, according to new research from Georgetown University. More women than men tend to serve on boards of public companies—59 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. Nearly one-fourth, or 23 percent, of women serve on a board for a private company versus 12 percent of men who do so, the research found.

That experience—coupled with serving as chief operating officer, president or executive vice president—can serve as a way around the requirement that a candidate have served as a CEO. But for board service to be a viable route to the corner office, organizations will need to relax their requirement of prior CEO experience. 

Women’s board involvement “is a way of breaking this logjam” in the CEO pipeline, said Catherine H. Tinsley, professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and faculty director of the university’s Womens Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C.

The Society for Human Resource Management featured research by Senior Policy Scholar Catherine Tinsley in “Looking for Female CEOs? Consider Board Service as a Qualifier” by Kathy Gurchiek.