Women in Corporate Networks (20th-21st Centuries)

Friday, 11 February 2022 from 10:00-12:00 in room K.011 at 1 place Saint Thomas d'Aquin*. 

Stéphanie Ginalski, Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne

Discussion by: Pierre François, Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CSO) and Dean of the School of Research, Sciences Po

This presentation will introduce the project "Women in corporate networks", which gathers a group of scholars from different regions of the world to analyse women’s inclusion on corporate boards in a historical and comparative perspective. After a general introduction on the theoretical and methodological issues, I will present the empirical results for the Swiss case. The aim is to discuss the effect of the Swiss corporate network on the entry of women into the boardrooms, and the process of board feminisation across the past hundred years. The results show that during the 20th century, a dense corporate network and a strong class cohesion within the male economic elite made it very difficult for women to get on boards. The few female directors were first in family firms. Then, women active in politics and in the feminist movement entered the boardrooms of cooperatives in the distribution and retailing sector. Three main factors contributed then to the progressive increase in female directors. During the 1990’s, gender equality was seen as profitable for the firms because of the shortage of skilled labour. Increasing globalisation of the economy also contributed to weaken the cohesion of Swiss corporate elite, opening a breach for women and foreigners. Finally, the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the rise of a “transnational business feminism” contributed to make the concept of board diversity more popular. As we will see, however, this assertion of a board diversity must be tempered for several reasons.

Stéphanie Ginalski is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, and a co-founder and member of the Swiss Elites Observatory (https://www.unil.ch/obelis). Her main research interests focus on business elite and the transformation of capitalism during the 20th century. She is currently co-leading a research project on local power structures and transnational connections of Swiss elites in a historical perspective (1890-2020), in which she investigates a new field of research on art societies (https://wp.unil.ch/sinergia-elites).