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The Morals Of The Women On Boards Story: Global Board Gender Diversity Efforts Still Need Fairness-Based Arguments To Move Regulation To The Next Chapter, Diana C. Nicholls Mutter

The International Lawyer

The number of women on boards of public companies in the United States and Canada is still staggeringly low despite the fact that both of these jurisdictions have implemented disclosure-based regulation relating to board diversity. Typically, arguments in support of regulation aimed at increasing women's participation on public boards fall into two categories: the business case and the fairness-based (or normative) case. The business case is essentially the idea that women bring some instrumental benefit to the board which leads to improvements in firm functioning or performance overall. While politically attractive, the business case for justifying regulation has yet to …