Most Trustworthy Public Companies 2017
Percentage of Women on Boards
According to a 2016 Global Board of Director Survey conducted by Harvard Business School, Women Corporate Directors Foundation and Spencer Stuart, the growth of women on U.S. boards, approaching a national average of approximately 20% remains stagnant.
Through our FACTS® Framework, Trust Across America has been tracking the percentage of women on boards in our annual research on America’s Most Trustworthy Public Companies. Our 2017 findings are reflected on the chart below. Only two of the eleven “Top 10” companies fail to meet the 20% threshold.
| Company Name | # of Board Members | # of Women | Percentage of Women |
| Dr Pepper Snapple | 9 | 3 | 33 |
| CSX Corp. | 13 | 3 | 23 |
| Best Buy | 10 | 4 | 40 |
| Hasbro | 12 | 5 | 42 |
| Johnson & Johnson | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Xerox | 11 | 3 | 27 |
| Morgan Stanley | 13 | 2 | 15 |
| Nvidia | 12 | 2 | 17 |
| Visteon | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Abbott Labs | 12 | 4 | 33 |
| Home Depot (tied) | 13 | 3 | 23 |
For more information on Trust Across America’s Corporate Integrity Monitor findings, please visit our blog or connect with Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder on LinkedIn or via email at Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com
Copyright (c) 2017, Next Decade, Inc.
One might conclude, there seems to be a correlation between women on boards and trustworthiness. One can never prove causation from these correlations and more such data is necessary.
But to me it confirms what my common sense tells me: women, generally speaking, are more relationship oriented than men and so might foster practices that enhance trust.
Most interesting and possibly another reason to encourage more women on boards: not just to enhance general diversity, but to, hopefully, help enhance stakeholder trust.
I echo Bob Vanourek’s commonsensical instincts, and would raise him some more commonsense.
Not only do more women contribute to a more relationship-oriented culture, but it works the other way too – a more relationship-oriented culture is going to appreciate the “feminine” qualities, whether found in women or men (and since they’re disproportionately found in women, hence the greater percentages).
It’s a classic virtuous circle.
Furthermore, my own research on trustworthiness – the TQ Trust Quotient assessment, based on the Trust Equation – shows that the “soft” component of trustworthiness called Intimacy is statistically more powerful than either of the two “hard” components of Credibility and Reliability. Further, and again commonsensically, high Intimacy scores are found significantly more often in women.
It all makes sense.