A bill highlighting corporate boards’ lack of women has the potential to appeal to both sides of the aisle as a House committee prepares to vote on it this week.
Legislation from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) would require publicly traded companies to disclose the gender of their directors, with the goal of nudging companies to bring more women into their mostly male boardrooms. The bill ( H.R. 1611) is slated to be marked up July 11 by the House Financial Services Committee.
It’s one of only about a dozen bills put forward by Democrats, among hundreds that are filed, that the Republican-led committee has voted on this Congress. So far, they’ve all passed the committee. Maloney’s bill, co-sponsored by five Democrats and one Republican, is expected to do the same.
The next step would be a vote on the House floor, followed by the Senate. But so far no matching Senate legislation has been introduced.
When it comes to women’s representation on boards, “I think we can all recognize that we should be doing better,” Maloney said in an email to Bloomberg Law. Women held less than 17 percent of board seats at companies in the Russell 3000 index as of the end of March, according to the latest data from Equilar Inc. About one-fifth of these companies had no female directors.
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