Decision-making in the recruitment of women on corporate boards: does gender matter?

Abstract

Purpose

The author provides an insider view of women directors' selections on corporate boards from the empirical setting of India and find if the recruitment practices in this space discriminate against women.

Design/methodology/approach

The study collected data from a diverse cohort of 27 directors through semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed by applying an interpretative inductive approach and using the software NVivo's 12-plus version.

Findings

The author’s findings show that board recruiters present different selection criteria and processes to women candidates depending upon heterogeneity among candidates' professional standing. Recruiters view women directors as a diverse cohort and value resourceful and experienced women when making recruitment decisions; these women directors are also found influencing directors' selection processes.

Originality/value

The results question the underlying assumptions of prejudice against women as posited by the feminist and social identity theorists without accounting for the heterogeneity among women and situations. By proposing the female-gender stereotyping deactivation theory in top leadership matters, such as board selections, the author argues that stereotyping becomes irrelevant in the strategic decisions of board selections. This new theorisation about women's access to leadership roles will help the cause of women empowerment both at a cognitive and practical level. Future researchers can test the gender deactivation theory among women leaders in diverse cultural contexts by looking at the intra-cohort differences among women leaders.

Citation

Bhardwaj, S. (2022), "Decision-making in the recruitment of women on corporate boards: does gender matter?", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 41 No. 6, pp. 813-830. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-08-2021-0188

Introduction

A male-dominated homogeneous population on corporate boards arguably results from a bias in board recruitment decisions rooted in a social rationale (i.e. hiring directors from informal networks) (Elms et al., 2015; Kacanski, 2019). Social identity theorists posit individuals occupying similar positions show similar behaviours, orientations and dispositions that result in a homosocial reproduction of in-group members (Tajfel and Turner, 2004). Consequently, board recruiters, mostly men, hire similar-looking directors who are again men, suggesting prejudice against women in board recruitments (Burke, 1997; Sheridan and Milgate, 2005). Cognitive psychologists theorise that female gender stereotyping is automatically activated upon exposure to the (female) category with or without awareness of the perceiver (Ridgeway and Correll, 2000). In a counter view, Deutch (2007) argues reduced access to female gender stereotypes, exposure to counter stereotypical images and thoughts, and intentional attempts to avoid prejudices lead to the deactivation of gendered thoughts in many situations and contexts. This line of thinking suggests recruiters will not view women directors' selection as a gendered process rather as a vital management decision aimed at adding value to the board's guidance and monitoring ability. A third view suggests incumbent women reject other women candidates' board access perceiving them as a threat to their monopolised candidature (Derks et al., 2016). Countering this, Deloitte (2019) has shown chief executive officer (CEO)'s and board chair's female gender to be favourable for women's board appointments. Also, the implementation of quota laws in several nations including the 2015 quota in India led to more women getting access to the corporate boards (Bhardwaj, 2021; Catalyst, 2020). However, controversy has surfaced that quotas resulted in the recycling of incumbent women rather than opening up directorship positions for the talented first-timer women candidates (Ahern and Dittmar, 2012). This mixed evidence suggests research explaining the embedded prejudices in women directors' selection processes is confusing and needs clear direction.

I undertake this examination to explore board recruiters' decisions relating to women directors' selections in the empirical setting of India and ask the following questions: how do board recruiters assess and select women directors, and are these recruitment processes discriminatory? Can women directors influence directors' selection on corporate boards? The recruiters here refer to the nomination committee members comprising both insider and outsider directors on Indian boards.

India provides an apt setting to examine this issue for three reasons. First, India, as a key developing economy with its well-developed regulatory system aims at achieving robust corporate governance through promoting gender balance on corporate boards (The Indian Companies Act, 2013). Second, despite India being home to 17% women globally, the issues of women corporate directors generally and their board selections particularly (for exceptions see Haldar et al., 2020) have received sparse scholarly attention in the global south. Most of the evidence on directors' selection has come from Western nations' context (Withers et al., 2012; Elms et al., 2015), which provides little help to unpack the nuances related to women directors in the global south. Third, the patriarchal socio-cultural setup of India allows more tolerance for power-differences and thus creates more opportunities for perpetrating and tolerating prejudice against women (Shyamsunder et al., 2015). Thus, a low gender inclusion domain in India can activate access to female gender stereotyping much easily than other nations, such as Norway, with a high gender inclusion domain (McGuinness et al., 2020; Ridgeway and Correll, 2000; World Economic Forum's (WEF), 2018).

My study makes three vital contributions to theory and practice. Practice wise, I find board recruiters place a high value on resourceful experienced (i.e. women directors with relevant experience, expertise, qualification and industry-wide linkages) women when making recruitment decisions. My study thus corroborates the argument that women entering or aspiring to enter the boardrooms are highly driven, career-oriented and have accumulated immense human capital (i.e. education, work knowledge and skills) when presenting for board roles (Adams, 2016; Adams and Funk, 2012). A second finding shows Indian board women navigate tough social and workplace barriers to climb the career ladder. These findings reinforce the scholarly observations that suggest board women cannot be said to represent the attributes and human capital of the wider female population (Adams, 2016; Adams and Funk, 2012). Third, I find experienced women influencing the board recruitment processes. My paper thus questions the underlying assumptions of prejudice against women as posited by the feminist and social identity theorists without accounting for the heterogeneity among women and situations (Ridgeway and Correll, 2000; Tajfel and Turner, 2004). Instead, I theorise the deactivation of female gender stereotyping among women in top leadership matters, such as board selections, to an extent that this stereotyping becomes irrelevant. This new theorisation about women's access to leadership roles will help the cause of women empowerment both at cognitive and practical levels.

Literature review and theoretical considerations

Social categorisation and feminist theories

The social categorisation theory posits in-group favouritism leads to the similar looking people in the same professions forming majority group (Tajfel and Turner, 2004), which in the corporate boards' contexts are men directors (Burke, 1997). Thus, CEOs, who are mostly men, favour the selection of familiar directors from their inner circles (Mace, 1971). Women are therefore perceived as outsiders in the informal social networks consisting of men directors. Feminist theorists argue female gender stereotyping is activated sub-consciously in the mind of perceiver upon contact with females arguably leading to prejudiced views against women (Ridgeway and Correll, 2000). Conversely, Chafetz’s (1980) theory of gender equity articulates technological change, and economic expansion promotes new gender definitions that lead to creating a world of greater gender equality. In this world, structural changes, such as affirmative action, equal pay and comparable worth, have undermined the perception that women are less competent than men in the domains that matter. Going by this view, women directors' selection should be an issue of strategic importance rather than a gendered process.

The social categorisation processes are also prevalent among women directors (Farrell and Hersch, 2005). By entering the elite clubs of directors, established women start maintaining distance from other women candidates aspiring to obtain leadership positions. Acting as boards' “gatekeepers”, these women reject other women candidates perceiving them as a threat to their monopolised candidature (Laws, 1975). Farrell and Hersch (2005) suggest this “queen bee” characterisation of women in leadership positions is one of the reasons for fewer women breaking the glass ceiling. However, Deloitte (2019) shows women CEOs in Asia facilitate women's board selections through exercising their discretionary powers acquired from a successful executive track record. Deloitte's report thus contradicts the above scholarly claims, in three ways, of successful women stopping other women from rising in careers. First, a woman CEO may signify to other insider women managers that the glass ceiling in the firm can be broken. Second, a woman CEO may act as a role model and mentor other insider women accessing leadership roles and third, a woman CEO may influence board recruitment in favour of women directors.

Barriers in women's board access

According to feminist theory, society views gender as a source of identification (inclusion) and differentiation (exclusion), thus acknowledging systemically biased treatment of women in society and the abuse of power by men (Ridgeway and Correll, 2000). As a low gender inclusion domain nation, India ranks in the bottom five countries on the global Gender Inequality Index (GII) in terms of women's health, survival and economic participation (McGuinness et al., 2020; WEF, 2018). Further, the gender-biased working setups lead to Indian women's daily unpaid working hours (e.g. doing homely duties) being four times more than those of men (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2018). Given the well-documented relationship between gender gap and workforce participation (Alonso et al., 2019), the argument that fewer Indian women will enter the workforce and even fewer will reach the top echelons seems plausible.

Grosvold and Brammer (2010) posit countries with informal institutional setups, less religiosity in daily life, smaller nuclear family units and more gender parity will have more women on boards (WOBs). Thus, the deeply religious nature of Indian society with larger family units and huge gender gaps results in fewer WOBs (Shyamsunder et al., 2015). Conversely, Rangwala et al. (2020) report 23% of Indian women have overcome gender-related barriers and become career driven. As noted before, career-driven women have been described as uniquely talented to reach boardrooms (Adams and Funk, 2012). Thus, women accessing directorships on Indian boards would arguably be exceptionally talented and determined to navigate the socio-cultural barriers rooted in the Indian ethos. Exemplifying the deactivation of female gender stereotyping, the career-oriented women enter the workforce (through breaking the gender-based role allocation) and then join the top management teams (by breaking the glass ceiling) (Deutch, 2007; Rangwala et al., 2020).

Researchers describe profile visibility and networking as essential for women to gain board access (Burke, 1997; Kacanski, 2019; Sheridan and Milgate, 2005). Women directors are more likely to come from the public sector, academia, the non-profit sector or medicine unlike men directors who have corporate backgrounds (Sheridan et al., 2014). Thus, women's non-corporate background hinders profile visibility that comes from prior work reputation as internal decision-makers in companies (Fama and Jensen, 1983). Compounding this, Haldar et al. (2020) caution against social networking by women aspiring to access board positions in traditional contexts, such as India, where women socialising in the company of men may be seen as immoral and incompetent. Authors argue women in these contexts would need to accumulate human capital before they can network with men informally in social events.

Economic rationale and women's board appointments

The empirical evidence of better corporate governance and resource additions to the board and through that enhanced firm performance from appointing more women directors (i.e. economic rationale) is mixed. Proponents of gender diversity on boards argue homogeneity among directors can lead to boards' decision-making becoming germane to groupthink (a psychological phenomenon when people strive to achieve consensus within the group), tunnel vision thinking (selective perceptions) and limited knowledge spans (Janis, 1982). Women's different demography, educational backgrounds, career trajectory and relational capital, in comparison to men, result in their divergent thinking on corporate boards (Burke, 1997). In line with the resource dependence theory, women's different social and human capital owing to a diverse background leads to their board appointments made to fulfil the monitoring and resource needs of the companies (Kacanski, 2019; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978).

Research examining the role of women on Indian boards suggests the presence of independent women directors on a firm's board increases investors' confidence and enhances a firm's financial performance (Srivastava et al., 2018). Globally, studies report women directors as more creative (Burgess and Tharenou, 2002), engaged (Deloitte, 2019), confident in operational and strategic board deliberations, and likely to question conventional wisdom (Huse and Solberg, 2006) by asking executive management discomforting questions (Burke, 1997). Studies in this space report a positive impact of women directors on firm performance (e.g. Martinez-Jimenez et al., 2020). Conversely, other studies find a negative (Abdullah, 2014) or no relationship between the two constructs (Kang et al., 2007). This thinking argues diverse directors face challenges in understanding each other's perspectives due to differences in communication patterns whereas homogeneous composition generates smooth-flowing communication among directors (Martí n and Herrero, 2018). Thus, in this view, the activation of gender stereotyping on the diversely composed boards will take place leading to discomforting situations for female directors (Abdullah, 2014).

The above inconclusive evidence about women's board value means perceptions about hiring women for directorship roles will not be rooted in a clear-cut economic rationale. These perceptions result in an encompassing assessment of board recruiters' selection decisions particularly related to women as prejudiced and ignoring, first, the differences among women directors' cohort in terms of board capital and, second, the deactivation of female-gender stereotyping in leadership roles in today's times when corporate boards are considered strategic entities. It appears research examining board gender diversity will continue to find conflicting evidence about women's board value without unpacking the underlying reasons. The scholarly disagreement in this space also contributes to the discrimination narrative that holds recruiters responsible for the gender imbalance on corporate boards. This study resolves this tension by providing an evidence-based explanation of, first, whether recruiters discriminate against women because of gender when assessing and selecting women for directorships and, second, whether women directors participate in and influence recruitment decisions.

Research methodology

Research design

As this study is focused on the perceptions and understanding of Indian women directors' selections from their lived experiences, it lends itself to a qualitative interpretative approach (Creswell, 2013; Smith et al., 2009). The inductive nature of the interpretive approach allows for the possibility of novel and unexpected experiences to arise from the data itself rather than relying on literature to drive data analysis (Smith et al., 2009). Further, I argue directors' perceptions of board appointments in terms of aspects and features lacking formal propositions, quantitatively measurable variables and hypothesis testing. This argument supports the logic of adopting an interpretive approach to answering this study's two research questions.

Data collection, recruitment and interview process

The data collection took place from May 2019 to January 2020. The study uses semi-structured interviews (see Appendix for interview questions) with 27 Indian corporate board directors as the primary method of data collection. Apart from the difficulty in recruiting the pilot interviewee, the remaining participants' recruitment turned out to be relatively easy countering the prevailing view of the difficulty in recruiting board directors (Leblanc and Schwartz, 2007). Of the 27 directors, the first 19 were recruited using snowball sampling. The pilot referee and I are former alums of the same university. The pilot interviewee was contacted through a direct email request citing similar alums status who not only agreed to grant the interview but also wrote to three more directors to participate in the research. These three participating directors referred other directors from their network; thus, a total of 19 directors were recruited using snowball referrals. Next, 25 directors were randomly contacted on the Rocket Reach website (the website provides access to top corporate executives' contact information worldwide) using search words such as “director”, “independent”, “corporate”, “board” and “India”, and four of them agreed to participate; thus, the response rate through this recruitment process was 16%. The remaining four were recruited from three-day Directors' Masterclass in Hyderabad, India that I attended in November 2019. Due to the small sample size and to assure anonymity to the interviewees and their employer firms, I do not make specific references to the industry for each participant. Participants are highly qualified and hold professional qualifications in law, business, economics, accountancy, commerce and engineering.

The recruitment of an almost equal number of both genders (14 men and 13 women) is not the result of my efforts rather this equal ratio was created through participants' referrals. Interestingly, women and men referred participants of both genders from their inner circles belying the gender-based social categorisation processes among board directors. To establish pre-interview rapport, emails expressing appreciation for participants' professional achievements were sent (along with a consent form, a Plain Language Information Statement explaining the research project's purpose and interview related ethical guidelines); this approach helped to build trust.

In terms of interview time, each interview took 60–90 min to complete. Variations in the time duration for interviews occurred for several reasons. For instance, the first 19 interviews took 90 min or more as participants were recruited with respondents' direct referral requests. The remaining eight participants agreed to only 60 min of interview time. The lesser time allocated during later interviews, however, did not affect the quality of the responses generated. This was possible as I refined my interviewing process from the experience gained in the initial longer-duration interviews. In total, 18 interviews were conducted on Zoom, five over the telephone and the remaining four were conducted face-to-face. I found video and face-to-face interviews resulted in after-interview engagement with the participants in terms of being able to request them for transcription verification and ask supplementary questions later, which was absent for participants who interviewed telephonically. Notably, however, the telephonic interviews were equally informative and generated rich data. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and transcriptions were sent back to all participants, and as noted above, 18 participants crosschecked transcripts for any discrepancy in their spoken and written versions.

Women directors' categorisation

For analysis purposes, women directors were categorised into three categories: top layer, middle layer and bottom layer (Table 1). The categorisation was deemed necessary to achieve this study's aim. The reason was the discovery that selection criteria and processes are applied differently to women directors with different profiles. While analysing data, I found a pattern emerging regarding the number of boards occupied by women. Some women occupy eight or more directorships whereas others have between three and up to five directorship roles while some have less than three directorships. The literature on busy (i.e. established and well known) directors highlights these differences among directors (e.g. Krause, 2017). I applied this existing explanation about busy directors to this study's sample (women) in order to understand these differences. I found all other criteria highlighted in Table 1, for example, women's professional experience, board chair positions and media visibility all fell in place to reveal the inter-category differences among women directors. The categorisation into three layers is therefore done objectively with clear-cut differences in women participants' profiles. I believe the process applied to the layering of women directors is transparent and detailed. Thus, anyone having all the information presented in Table 1 and participants' curriculum vitaes (CVs) would arrive at the same categorisation.

Further, men directors are represented as 1M, 2M […] while the three women directors belonging to the top layer are represented as 1Wt, 2Wt and 3Wt. The top layer women (average age 68.33 years see Table 1) work on blue-chip top 100 Indian firms by market capitalisation; the boards of these companies have three or more WOBs. Middle women (represented as Wm) (average age 61.25 years) work on both large and medium-sized top 500 and mostly professionally management firms; the boards of these firms have two to three WOBs. Bottom layer directors (average age 57.83 years) (represented as Wb) work on mostly promoter led firms with many of these firms small in size by market capitalisation; these firms have one to two WOBs (Table 1). Notably, the bottom layer (six) women directors are mostly first-timers and found their way to the boardrooms after the implementation of the 2015 quota law (Bhardwaj, 2021). The average gender ratio on corporate boards of the 1788 National Stock Exchange (NSE) listed Indian companies is 17% women versus 83% men directors (Statista, 2021).

To further check the veracity of women directors' categorisation through media presence, their names were checked via Google; Google returned 6,17,000 and 4,83,000 results for 1Wt and 2Wt respectively, 30,900 for 5Wm and only 8,430 for 9 Wb. Furthermore, in total, four women are categorised as belonging to the middle layer. They possess proven board and/or executive experience and subject expertise in human resource (HR), finance and corporate law but do not work as board chairs or possess entrepreneurial backgrounds. The six bottom layer women participants did not have prior executive and board experience when accessing their first directorship position.

Data analysis

The interpretive nature of the data analysis process followed the sequential stages (Table 2) where every inference is situated in specific textual evidence of gathered data in the form of transcripts, reflexive accounts and interview notes (Smith et al., 2009).

Stage 1 involved repeated listening to the audio and video recordings and close reading of the interview transcripts to capture the meanings inherent in the data and identify those excerpts that were relevant to answering the two research questions. In Stage 2, I started identifying conceptual comments within the interview transcripts, therewith moving towards conceptual interpretations of women's board appointments in the Indian context. Stage 3 then focused on understanding the various higher-level codes emerging from the raw data (i.e. first-order themes). In Stage 4, the codes were synthesised as second-order themes, which were further refined through the use of software NVivo's 12-plus version. Within each theme, multiple contradictory/supplementary subtopics and novel perspectives were continuously searched as were associated quotes representing the essence of the theme. During Stage 5, the second-order themes were combined and/or linked to generating three super themes that inform this study's results. In describing these themes, I use quotes and illustrative examples from inside boards to substantiate respondents' felt experiences.

Empirical findings

The first theme, prior board capital reveals top layer women directors have gained wide recognition for their board contributions and recruiters pursue them to join their boards. The middle layer women with a reputed executive career also obtain board positions. Top and middle women directors are widely networked and visible to board recruiters. The bottom layer women directors, being first timers, novice and least networked, struggle to get invited for directorship positions by recruiters. I also find women directors in all three layers successfully overcome societal barriers to reach boardrooms in the second theme of navigation of barriers. The third theme, influence on recruitments reveals top layer women directors' referrals are accepted by recruiters, and their influence on board recruitment is substantial.

Prior board capital

Women's contributions in executive roles build their candidature for directorship positions through the accumulation of human and social capital (i.e. board capital). Ample word of mouth gets generated about top layer women directors' professional accomplishments, thus creating their demand among recruiters:

So, you just see, it is all word of mouth […] good work always has a way of turning around and creating positive referral. […] people noticed [sic] your worth early on […] 90% of my board positions came because of my work, integrity, diligence, and the quality of work. In another case, ABC company saw me negotiating on the other side, opposite side […] they thought I was fit enough to be invited on their board. (3Wt)

There is a top layer of […] women directors who are really top-notch […] they served as CEOs […] well networked […] have experience on boards. So definitely, they are valued, and every board wants them on their board […] they have earned that wealth [emphasis added] […] I would not have been on boards if there was no quota […] so there is a difference. (9 Wb)

Word of mouth thus is an endorsement of the board capital gained by top women directors for role performance in ways perceived to be effective, efficient and worthy of recommendation in comparison to the other (bottom layer) women directors who find their way onto the boards only because of the quota regulation. Well known already in corporate corridors and with proven skills valued by recruiters, top women do not go through any selection process:

I have never applied for board positions. Every Indian board […] I was simply invited to join. I did not go through any interview process […] it was a call from the chairman saying, “We would like you to join the board”. And my saying “Yes, I'm joining board”. Or my saying “No, I'm not joining board”. (2Wt)

Board recruiters wait for years to obtain yes from top women:

They actually reached out to me […] even in past when I did not have time […] So, I basically turned down their invitation to join [the] board. They persisted […] the CEO knew me […] finally, I relented that now, I can devote [the] time. (1Wt)

The quotes show the appointments of top layer women happen through informal interaction with the board chair/CEO. That top women meet the twin selection criteria – economic rationale (as a result of top women's proven leadership, executive skills, experience deemed fit to meet the position requirements) and socialisation rationale (i.e. top women's wide networking) for directorship positions (Withers et al., 2012) is apparent in the quotes above. Resultantly, recruiters do not resort to the formal selection process for top layer women rather pursue them to join their board.

Middle layer WOBs are comparatively lesser known (compared to top layer WOB), yet they do have prior board/executive experience. The experience gained from working in executive positions builds middle layer women's board capital and helps them in obtaining directorships:

I stepped out of ABC in July of 2005 just over the weekend […] next day I was attending a board meeting in my new role […] I joined the board of XYZ […] in my first independent director role […] A search firm was engaged by XYZ to identify prospective independent directors […]. And I think they passed me to join them after I met them […] it was my experience in development, change management, human capital challenges, corporate governance, they thought […] I was a good candidate. (4Wm)

[…] because of my role in firm X as a CFO […] I have a long history […] of performance […] to say […] I think typically sometimes, depending upon that [performance] […] you become well known […] in industry […] I am sure there were multiple candidates […] under consideration […] There was an evaluation process that the nomination committee […] enacted. (6Wm)

Middle layer women's appointment process involves search firms that identify them before recommending their appointment as directors. Thus, middle layer women go through a selection process, unlike the top layer women who receive an invitation to join. Despite that, middle layer women directors are highly valued by board recruiters in terms of expected board utility; this is evident in 4Wm's joining board as an independent director immediately after leaving her executive position and having multiple directorships (e.g. both 4Wm and 6Wm have 4 and 3 directorships, respectively, in addition 6Wm holds concurrent one executive position).

The findings indicate board recruiters require bottom layer women, first, to possess some professional skills either as line functionaries or as consultants (9, 12, 10 and 13 Wb have prior consultancy work experience), and second, to clear an elaborate selection process. For example, 9, 10 and 12 Wb reported obtaining referrals from incumbent directors as well as joining directorship training programs to access their first directorship after the quota mandate. Participants also emphasised ignoring of first-timer novice women as another challenge, for example

Previously it was 5% women [before quota], and now 17%. Then law happens […] they start looking for women beyond the top 20, 25, the creamy layer […] and there are plenty of them. But they do not look for them unless […] it is mandatory. (8 Wb)

[…] a lot of search firms today lookout for men leaders from the search database: whether you [sic] are looking for senior executives or whether you are looking for board directors, there is a tendency to move towards men and ignore women […] particularly inexperienced […] There is an unnatural bias towards men. (1Wt)

The above comments show recruiters do not prefer to hire inexperienced WOBs unless mandated by regulatory forces, such as the quota law. The executive search firms contribute to this situation since the boundaries around search firms' task of finding candidates are demarcated by their clients. However, considering that top women are actively pursued by recruiters, it seems only inexperienced bottom layer women face challenges in accessing directorships. Despite these hurdles, bottom layer women reported adding more directorships to their profile after their struggle in the accessing first board role (9 Wb added three more and 12 Wb two more during the eight months in 2019–2020, the time when they interviewed to when they verified their transcripts).

Navigation of barriers

Many participants vocalised the societal and workplace barriers against Indian women's career ambitions. Participants highlighted issues that confront career-aspiring Indian women within society, including the granting of preferential status to men over women, “I think, Indian society […] the default setting is of a man […]” (13M). Participants described a socially supported gender segregation faced by Indian women. The leaking pipeline phenomena (i.e. women leaving career midway) among working Indian women were recognised by most participants:

Women still face […] barriers […] they leave midway because of family reasons or when they get married […] and then they drop out of system. I think […] that is why you see very few women on boards […] I was lucky to have […] supportive family […] my husband stood by me […] so I was able to stay back (in career). (10 Wb)

Firstly, the Indian corporate world is by and large a male world […] I am not generalising that everybody is like that, but ours is a patriarchal society. So […] a woman's entry on the board […] used to be a novelty. […] But […] I feel it all depends upon the kind of woman who is on your board. If that woman is accomplished in her own way, then over time, you forget […] the fact that a woman is sitting in the room. (10M)

In those days I was the first female general manager in the whole setup […] It was quite unusual to see a woman manager in those days […] I persisted […] so yes, in 33 years of my career, I did face and broke many glass ceilings, definitely […] I faced glass ceilings in many ways […] small ways or big ways […] (5Wm)

The above comments show that in the gender-segregated Indian society, women need a fighter attitude to enter boardrooms in addition to a proven human potential. These views are most likely formed through women participants' struggles to combat societal barricades and to keep ambitions alive as they seek to realise their career potential. Men participants too displayed awareness of these barriers stopping women's access to the boardrooms; their argument of gender deactivation in the case of competent WOB points to the competence narrative getting more emphasis on corporate boards.

A cascading effect of societal barriers reflects in the Indian women engaging in limited professional networking, particularly those who do not have directorship or executive experience. Participants attributed inexperienced women's missing the lens of board recruiters to the limited networking opportunities utilised by these women:

I am not able to join them after 5 p.m. […] at drinks […] for evening entertainment. I have to attend to my family and kids […] already […] my job consumes […] my energy […] I have lot of responsibilities as HR director […] (11 Wb)

I feel we avoid the informal situations and meetings […] we do not turn up. If somebody calls for a breakfast meeting outside of the board meeting or a dinner meeting, we do not turn up, we have other commitments. […] As a professional they need to know us, not as a woman […] (13 Wb)

Another (male) participant emphasised boards will not make active efforts to seek out potential women candidates if women do not make career-enhancing contacts:

[…] I think it has somewhere to do with whether […] you are an extrovert or an introvert. I think introverts tend to be understated and somebody has to discover them. Nothing is wrong with that. But then you cannot complain […] I am sitting here […] nobody is paying attention to me. It's a Darwinian principle […] a white flower attracts fewer bees than a colourful flower. So, the white flower cannot complain. […] pardon me if I am sounding sexist but women […] have to show they exist […] (13M)

In comparison, top women provided evidence of their networking in the elite circles of directors and criticised board women for missing out on networking with board colleagues:

It is extremely important to know your board colleagues outside your board room […] There are women complaining about these matters […] I find this unnecessary […] If you cannot do that, then you cannot be in a leadership role […] I always join them for lunch, dinner, or any party […] (1Wt)

The above comments show the bottom layer women missing out on networking opportunities. This likely results in fewer board positions for bottom layer women directors in comparison to the top and middle layer women. Board directors' level of visibility and network engagement likely provide reassurance of their board capability to the prospective board colleagues.

Influence on recruitments

Top layer women participants' influence on board recruitments is evident from the following comments:

At Bangalore […] she had actually reached out to me saying […] “I want to get on to the boards. […] can you please help me and nominate my name at some of the boards you know?” […] I said “Of course I would because I think you are a wonderful woman […]” The other director is my sister-in-law who happens to be a professor of computer science at the University of [name hidden] in USA […] she contributes a lot to IT and all our […] digital policy requirements [emphasis added]. (1Wt)

[…] it can be old boys and it can be old girls – actually, it is old boys' and girls' network […] old boys refer old boys and old girls […] other girls […] but they also refer each other […] from their inner circles. (13M)

Women on my boards are strong and having strong background […] it means they do not speak my note […] let's face it […] for instance, 3Wt […] she heads the remuneration and nomination committee […] I remember when two directors retired in XYZ […] both were from the finance background […] and we said at least […] one of them had to be from financial sector. And 3Wt insisted that the search firm be told to […] look for a female director. We had a list of 4 candidates, they were about 3 women and 1 man […] (1M)

These comments capture converging opinions about the top layer women directors' influence and role in board appointments of directorship candidates. These narratives suggest top layer women influence directorship selection processes and also refer candidates from their inner circles. In comparison, middle layer women are not found influencing board recruitments, but some of the middle layer women directors know top directors (e.g. 2Wt mentioned she knows 4Wm and then wrote her an email requesting participation in this research). However, it seems knowing directors in the higher layer does not lead to an entry (for lower-layer directors) into top directors' inner circles or referrals for additional directorship roles on boards alongside top layer directors. This became evident as middle-layer women participants are not working as colleagues of top directors.

Discussion

The findings show differences among women's prior board capital would amount to recruiters either pursuing or ignoring them rather than women's gender impacting the selection processes. Also, while all board women (from three layers) navigate societal barriers to reach boardrooms only the established (top layer) WOB with widely known business acumen are able to influence director selection processes. The top layer women participants' profile analysis reveals that coupled with diverse life experiences, these women's work experience, community engagement and number of directorship positions as well as name-branding surpass that of the middle and bottom layer women directors. This explains the high perceived board value with a consequential high demand of top women directors among recruiters. Thus, the higher the layer a woman director belongs to, the chances are she can concurrently demonstrate three or even all the four resources possessed by four categories of directors (i.e. business experts, business support specialists, community influencers and insiders) proposed by Hillman et al. (2000). The middle layer women directors' profiles show considerable human capital and executive experience, but they are significantly less equipped than the top women directors.

The data analysis suggests the demand by the Indian boards for the top layer women is high; they are found working on average eight boards of blue-chip large firms. The names of these firms are listed in participating directors' CVs made available before interviews. This finding suggests top Indian firms strive hard to get the top women directors on their boards, potentially to benefit from their resourcefulness and diverse experience. For the middle layer directors, the findings show recruiters neither go overboard in recruiting these directors as boards do for top women directors nor overlook them as bottom layer women. These findings echo first the resource dependence logic in which employing firms hope to derive legitimacy from the external environment by employing high in demand directors (Krause, 2017; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Second, the deactivation of female gender stereotyping is apparent here in the case of these experienced women as board recruiters are keen to hire women for directorship roles considered to be the male bastions. Even novice first-timer women are found to be facing struggles, not because of their gender but because either they do not follow avenues to getting noticed by recruiters or they do not have board-related work experience. Once on boards though, recruiters recognise the good board performance of first-timer women and offer first-timers more directorships as a reward (e.g. 12 Wb added one and 9 Wb three additional directorships during 2019–20). This action suggests women potentially prove valuable board members by gaining board experience and through leveraging their human capital soon after their appintment as directors. This in part explains why the resource-dependence logic, rooted in the gender equity theory, is needed to explain board recruiters' selection decisions in terms of appointing women directors rather than the feministic logic.

The findings suggest inter-layer boundaries exist among women directors in matters of board access. Displaying inter-layer positional segregation, all the top layer women participants are former or present colleagues of each other. However, no bottom layer woman participant knew or had contacts with directors in the higher layers implying lower-layer directors cannot access the elite club of directors; neither can the middle layer women despite knowing top directors. The explanation for this assessment is derived from the status consciousness in Indian society where high-power distance is an accepted cultural reality (Hofstede, 1983). Thus, women directors likely get stuck in the layer they belong to, and ascending to a higher layer seems a challenging feat to achieve.

The findings reveal the top layer of Indian WOB influences appointments through referrals; they are an integral part of the “elite club” of directors, contrary to the “boys only club” notion proposed by the board scholars (Burke, 1997). The findings thus support the scholarly argument that minorities on corporate boards, such as women, having social capital and prior experience in similar roles exercise similar influence as the majority on boards (Westphal and Milton, 2000) but contradict the view that emphasises women facing discrimination in matters of board access based on female gender (Sheridan and Milgate, 2005).

Conclusion, implications and recommendations

This study aims to provide an insider view of women directors' selections on corporate boards and find if the recruitment practices discriminate against women. The discourse about discrimination at the board level recruitments is rooted in the relationship between the recruitment practices and candidates' (female) gender. This study's findings however provide evidence to the contrary. I find differences in women directors' selection processes are not explained by gender. Instead, differences in the board/executive experience, visibility and resourcefulness among the different categories of women directors better explain how recruiters assess and select them. The findings thus imply creating a narrative of discrimination for women's board access is unconvincing since there is a high demand for experienced women directors. Recruiters' hesitation is seen only when hiring novices and first-timers (bottom layer women) for the directorships. This hesitation vanishes once bottom layer women start performing because then recruiters start offering them more directorships. The social implication derived from this study's findings is that board women do not represent the wider female population in terms of gender stereotyping even in traditional societies, such as India, and thus board women can be positioned as role models for other females to fulfil career ambitions. The results also imply creating policies for women's education, and career sustenance will be instrumental to send more women into the boardrooms.

Another implication of this study's results relates to the quota's impact on women's increased access to directorships. However, the exact effect of quota is not discoverable in terms of additional seats to the women, especially to those in the top two layers. This is because policy diffusion processes through enhanced institutional pressure for more gender-diverse boards can compel companies to appoint more WOBs even if quota laws are not implemented. To illustrate, women's board representation in the non-quota nations, such as Australia and the USA, increased by 21 and 13.8%, respectively, during 2010–2019 (Catalyst, 2020). This leads to the argument that (incumbent) women will continue to get directorship offers even if there is no quota. I call upon future researchers to isolate quota's impact on women's board selections.

The string of corporate failures and ensuing harsh repercussions for corporate board directors by regulators in the form of punishments imply directors' onboarding will be evaluated more minutely in terms of their board performance. Thus, board recruiters will make future directorship offers to the performing directors without seeing their gender. This implies the performing women directors will continue to get invited to join corporate boards wherein they interact with their board colleagues formally inside the boardrooms (i.e. during decision-making processes) as well as informally in networking events. These findings provide a new direction to the corporate governance debate by suggesting viewing WOB as both a resource and a diverse cohort. Through the empirical evidence of this study about the bottom layer WOB finding favour with recruiters in their getting second and more directorships, I call upon board recruiters to hunt for new talented women as potential board directors. Future research can expand and refine the three layers (e.g. by including financial compensation and firm size) proposed in this paper to help explain differences in selection approaches at the directors' level and test these differences in other contexts.

Overall, I argue some traditional ways of board appointments may have become outdated in an environment where directors' roles are conceptualised as strategic decisions and evaluated primarily in terms of strategic inputs. Viewing the board of directors as a source of sustained competitive advantage (Nordberg and Booth, 2019) means recruiters are deactivating female gender stereotyping when making selection decisions. Thus, board women's professional calibre, executive/board experience, social networking and not their gender provide a stronger explanation of the recruitment decisions concerning women directors in all three layers. Through providing a new theoretical framework explaining the erasing of female-gender stereotypes' activation in the traditional setups in the global south concerning matters of women's board access, I call upon future researchers to examine if and how boardrooms can become an even playing field for women in future. Another area for future research in this space is to test the influence of quota laws on women's journey to the boardroom. It would be particularly cogent to test my theorisation of gender deactivation in selecting women for top leadership roles in diverse cultural contexts and by looking at intra-cohort differences among women leaders. This will help in obtaining comparative insights on how board recruiters assess the board acumen of prospective women directors.

Table 1

Criteria for women directors' categorisation

# of women directors category wise	Categorisation criteria	Employing firms	# of women on boards of sampled organisations	Nature of industry	# Board chair	# of non-executive directorships	Avg age (years)	Areas of expertise
Top layer (3 women)	Evidence of entrepreneurial success (1Wt)	Public Ltd, top 100 blue chip firms on the National Stock Exchange of India by market capitalisation	3–5	Information technology (IT), agro-business biotechnology, consumer goods, cement, pharmaceutical, banking and petrochemical	1 to 2	Average 8	68.33	General business, economics, corporate law, marketing, entrepreneurship and finance
	Exemplary/highly recognised executive experience (2Wt and 3Wt)
	Strong media presence, networking and community engagement (All)
Middle layer (4 women)	Prior executive experience (4, 5, 6 and 7Wm)	Both Public and Pvt Ltd firms medium to large sized; up to top 500 firms by market capitalisation	2–3	Pharmaceutical, IT, finance, media and banking	Nil	Average 4	61.25	HR, finance and corporate law
	Proven subject domain experience (All)
	Moderate to high media presence (All)
	Moderate networking (All)
Bottom layer (6 women)	Proven skills in HR consultancy (12 Wb and 10 Wb)	Private Ltd firms; top 500–1,000 by market capitalisation	1–2	Plastic goods, hotel, transport and banking	Nil	Average 2	57.83	Economics, administrative, finance, audit and marketing
	Marketing and audit (11, 9, 8 and 13 Wb)

Source(s): Compiled from paper findings

Table 2

Code deriving process from interviews

Appendix Interview questions

I want to ask you about your experience of being a board director from your selection in your first board role to this day. I am going to start this interview beginning with your journey until your selection to the first board position, bottlenecks on the way, efforts to obtain directorships and your participation in boardroom appointment processes.

Q no 1: Kindly tell me about your career as a director?

Prompts: challenges/pathways.

Q no 2: Kindly tell me about your appointment on your first and subsequent boards?

Prompts: Referral/training/experience/selection process.

Q no 3: How has the selection and joining process changed over years now since the time you joined your first board?

Q no 4: Do you refer candidates for board positions?

Prompts: Can you give an example? What reason? Changed over time?

Q no 5: Do you network with other board directors? If not, why do some board women network more than others?

Q no 6: How can more women be appointed on boards?

Prompts: Better representation? More training? Affirmative action? Transparency?