karin thorburn a visiting and former professor at the tuck school of business at dartmouth and finance professor at the norwegian school of economics on the presence of women on boards women now receive more than 40 of global mbas and law degrees yet when it comes to corporate boards they are still on the wrong side of the glass ceiling looking up research shows that boards with a higher fraction of female directors take their monitoring role more seriously women have better board attendance records male directors have fewer attendance problems when there are female directors on the board and genderbalanced boards are more likely to replace a poorly performing ceo overall genderbalanced boards appear to be better positioned to actively monitor the firm and its management team thus adding women to corporate boards may improve corporate governance and help prevent some of the board failures seen in the past one argument often heard in the debate is that there is a shortage of competent women pointing to the lower frequency of ceoexperienced women i dont think this is a valid argument the board is a team and a team needs different competencies women lacking ceoexperience can add other competencies if the shortage of women on boards is a result of recruiting through traditional channels and networks a quota can break down barriers for women to enter looking at the development in europe and the us i dont believe in a voluntary quota there wasnt much change in norway until a forcing quota was in place and legally binding the change in europe is now happening in countries that have adopted board quotas regulations can aid in helping to break the metaphorical ceiling a quota leaves owners and management with no choice but to identify and appoint competent women on boards it is possible that a quota can be abandoned after having been in place for a decade or two when the corporate sector has gotten used to a new genderbalanced equilibrium but to force change in the short run a binding quota may be necessary gender balanced boards may also have trickling down effect on top management a us study finds an increase in the fraction of females in the top management following an increase in female participation on the boardas told to tirna raycourtesy educationtimescom