When Liz Dolan wrote in June that gender bias forced her to quit her director seat at Quicksilver, she crystallized the problem that Judi Spaletto is tackling. Dolan wrote that other board members had excluded her — the company’s only female director — from a decision to fire the company’s CEO.
Spaletto is founder and chair of the Chicago committee for 2020 Women on Boards. The campaign wants to boost the percentage of women on corporate boards to 20 percent or more by 2020.
She shares fresh results from an informal poll she led on Dolan’s resignation and how it reveals a deeper challenge once women get in the boardroom.
Q. Why did you do this poll?
A. We were interested in what effect this has for women in corporate board positions, and it begs the question did Liz Dolan do the right thing? I’ve had women tell me that she’s blackballed herself now.
It’s kind of like the light-bulb moment, getting to the board. But it’s not just once you overcome that huge hurdle. It’s also once you’re in the boardroom. It’s not smooth sailing after that.
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Q. What were the poll results?
A. Everybody agreed 100 percent that there was unconscious bias. The majority (93 percent) said she should not have been excluded from board decisions and that she should have gone public (86 percent).
The process is broken. Getting the process fixed so it becomes much more of a fair process to get a corporate board position is what all these different groups are all driving for.
Q. How does this issue relate with the 2020 campaign?
A. They do research once a year, and the research ranks companies on the Fortune 1000 whether they have 20 percent or greater female participation. Those are winning companies. If they’re near 20 percent they get ranked. T companies those that have one woman and Z companies are those that have no women. Illinois has 16.8 percent female board participation in its Fortune 1000 companies.
Q. You set in motion the Illinois gender equality resolution HR 439 that passed in May. What do you expect to accomplish with it?
A. This just passed May 30 so we’re just starting to get a vision. The resolution is a guideline. It’s not a law. The guideline states that any corporate entity headquartered here that if they have a corporate board of nine or more members, three of them should be women. If the board has between five and eight members, two should be women. If a board has under five members, one should be a woman.
The first part is educating the companies here in Illinois. Having this resolution passed will enable us to have some conversations at the right levels with the right people.
Q. What qualities do you think help women make it to boards?
A. It’s a big part of your network and your capabilities and when those two things are aligned and at the right time and right place, that’s when you end up landing a corporate board seat.
There are also a lot of women that start proving themselves and they get a track record and they get asked on several boards. How do more women get that track record? I’m not sure of the answer to that. This year we have three women that are on corporate boards at the 2020 Women on Boards Nov. 19 national event, and we’ll be talking about getting and keeping a board seat.
Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
Kate MacArthur is a freelance writer.