Abstract
Introduction
The issue of board diversity has received an unusual amount of attention in recent years as corporations face an increasing amount of pressure to add more women to their boards. In 2017, State Street Corporation, the world’s third-largest asset manager, made headlines when it announced its board gender diversity campaign by placing a statue of the Fearless Girl staring down the Charging Bull of Wall Street in New York City’s Financial District. At the beginning of 2020, Goldman Sachs announced that it would require companies it helps take public to have at least one diverse board member, with a focus on women. Both Twitter and Facebook experienced social media shaming after going public without any women on their boards. More recently, the office-sharing company WeWork was in the news for announcing its plans to go public with an all-male board. In 2018, California also made headlines when it became the first state in the country to enact a landmark board diversity law, Senate Bill (SB) 826, which requires public corporations headquartered in the state to have a minimum number of female directors on their boards. Other states are already following California’s lead; Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Michigan are either considering or have passed similar legislation.