We all know how important it is to have women represented in the boardrooms of corporate America. Study after study has underscored the benefits of diverse perspectives on a corporate board, including improved decision-making.
Shellye Archambeau, a 2026 Women of Power Legacy Award honoree, who sits on the boards of Verizon, Roper Technologies, Okta, and Lineage, summed it up perfectly: “The broader set of perspectives you have in making any decision and hashing through any idea, will give you a broader way of thinking about it, will give you both opportunities as well as risks.”
“If everybody’s thinking the same, then every idea is going to sound perfect,” she told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “So you want people that bring different views.”
But new research from Harvard Business Review looks beyond representation and the impact diverse directors have on an organization to the effect that board service has on the directors themselves.
In a review of almost 2,000 board directors from the FTSE-100 (the 100 largest companies on the London Stock Exchange), where women now hold approximately 45% of corporate board seats, HBR found that women who serve on these boards are generally more likely than men to be appointed to additional boards. However, as the prominence of the board they serve on increases, women directors’ likelihood of getting additional board placements begins to decrease.
What’s causing this? HBR’s exploration of why this gender divide exists suggests two reasons that many women executives are already familiar with—increased workload and increased scrutiny:
“Our research suggests that this scrutiny is often more intense for women, raising expectations around preparation and performance and requiring greater effort to demonstrate competence. Women may also be more likely to take on additional responsibilities, such as mentoring, representing the organization externally, or contributing to diversity initiatives. These demands are rarely formalized, but they add up. They can shape how women are evaluated and how willing they are to pursue further opportunities, which helps explain why prestige can sometimes become a constraint rather than a springboard.”
Unrelated research shows that those extra responsibilities come at a steep cost for women, as female board members on the FTSE-100 are paid 69% less than their male counterparts, according to employment lawyers Fox & Partners. Even an apples-to-apples comparison of pay for executive (full-time) board members and non-executive (part-time) board members reveals that women earned 26% and 33% less, respectively.
HBR experts Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, Adecco Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School; Hans Frankort, professor of strategy at Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London; and Raina Brands, professor of organizational behaviour at University College London’s School of Management, shared their recommendations for what organizations can do to ensure elite corporate board placements lead to advancement for women directors. Those suggestions include clarifying expectations around roles, assessing how responsibilities are distributed, and pairing visibility with sufficient support and sponsorship.