Women gain more seats on Philadelphia-area boards, but the numbers are still low

Women are commanding an increasing proportion of seats on the boards of Philadelphia's largest publicly traded corporations, but the numbers are still limited and more than one in three companies in the region have no women on their boards.

"The seats are becoming increasingly diverse," said Tara Weiner, managing partner at the Philadelphia office of Deloitte L.L.P.

"But some people are very frustrated at the pace and rate of change," she said. "It seems so minuscule, especially as it crept along year after year."

For the last several years, Deloitte has handled the research behind the annual Women on Boards report produced by the Forum of Executive Women, a Philadelphia-area networking group for local female business leaders.

This year's report is being released Tuesday at the group's annual breakfast in the Crystal Tea Room at the Wanamaker building.

In 2005, the top 100 companies in the region had a total of 863 board seats, with 84 of them, or 9.7 percent, held by women, according to the report.

By 2011, the number of women on boards had risen to 94, or 11.35 percent of the 828 total seats.

The proportion of women on boards has expanded by 16 percent - not a bad showing by percentage. But by gross numbers, 84 to 94, it's not as impressive.

Many Philadelphia-area companies still have no female board members or female executives, according to the report.

Among the largest are AmeriGas Partners L.P. in King of Prussia, Triumph Group Inc. in Chesterbrook, Central European Distribution Corp. in Mount Laurel, J&J Snack Foods Corp. in Pennsauken, and Brandywine Realty Trust in Radnor.

"The glass ceiling still exists," said Steven Pyser, an assistant professor who teaches human resource management at Temple University's Fox School of Business. "And the challenge of filling the pipeline also still exists."

The corporate board pipeline consists of executives and board members from other companies, but if companies do not include women in their executive suites, there will be fewer qualified candidates for board seats.

That's why Weiner finds herself disheartened that 58 of the Philadelphia area's top companies have no female executives and include no women among the top earners they list on their proxies.

"There are a lot of responsibilities to being on a board. You want board members to have the skill sets that make them comfortable" with their responsibilities, she said. "A lot of times, those skill sets come from the executive suites."

Part of the forum's response has been to keep the issue in the forefront through the annual reports. Another response has been a mentoring program to groom future executives and board members, while helping them make the connections that can lead to advancement.

For example, the forum connected Emily Landsburg, 31, chief executive and co-founder of BlackGold Biofuels, with Lynn L. Elsenhans, the former chief executive of Sunoco Inc.

Elsenhans "ran a fuel company in the larger fuel pool," Landsburg said.

Landsburg's 19-employee Center City company picks up the greasy wastewater that restaurants and other commercial kitchens capture in their grease traps and then turns it into biofuel.

Over breakfast, Landsburg and Elsenhans talked about different types of investors, about the fuel industry, about how to build an executive team, Landsburg said. "Being able to not just read about [these issues], but to talk to a person who is actually doing it," Landsburg said, "there's no comparison."

Landsburg said that the forum and Elsenhans also connected her to a wider network of female executives.

That network is important, Pyser said. In theory, he said, merit would lead to promotions and board appointments, but in practice, social networks matter more.

"You need to be in the social meetings where the offline conversations occur," Pyser said.

Pyser said he believes that women's involvement will increase as young workers, now in their 20s, move into power.

"They have a very open mind in respecting gender and diversity," he said of the younger executives. "I think you will see a tipping point then."