Women and Corporate Governance: Time Horizons and Stakeholder Analysis

Abstract

The study of gender intrinsically involves consideration of time. The assumption of childcare responsibilities, whether done by men or women, requires a different orientation toward the life course that marshals parental time and resources for investment in the early childhood years with the expectation of a payoff later in time. For primary breadwinners, this may involve a willingness to seize immediate gains in income or status during the critical childrearing years in exchange for greater risk or less security in the future. For primary caretakers, the same considerations may involve a greater preference for secure, flexible, or collaborative employment during the peak childrearing years even if it involves lower immediate income and fewer opportunities for personal advancement. These different temporal dimensions overlap with traditional gender stereotypes: supposedly masculine preferences for competition, particularly zero-sum competition tied to short-term metrics, versus feminine collaboration tied to longer-term institutional interests; masculine-coded risk-taking tied to individual status gains versus the security that comes from group membership and mutual support; and investment in individual advancement versus communal well-being. 

Consideration of the temporal dimension underlying gendered orientations toward the life cycle—and evaluation of the fate of women as a product of these different time horizons—also sheds a different light on the relationship between shareholder interests and those of other stakeholders such as workers and customers. Much of what is done in the name of shareholder primacy advances the interests of short-term shareholders at the expense, not only of other stakeholders, but of medium- to longer-term shareholders. Moreover, many of the divisions among employees—both within management and within line positions—involve distinctions between those with long-term interests in firm stability and those with a more contingent or transactional relationship to a given firm. What unites the short-term interest of activist shareholders and the fate of employees, however, is not simply corporate theory—finance scholars debate whether markets will ultimately correct for potentially counterproductive short-term actions—but rather the executive compensation systems and firm cultures that implement such perspectives. These systems have consequences that extend well beyond individual management decisions, changing the nature of the executives and the executive mindsets that thrive in such environments. Focusing on the ways that distinctions between short-term and long-term perspectives overlap with gendered employment values has a series of consequences for the debate about the relationship between corporate theory and labor and employment law.

Keywords: corporate law, employment law, sex discrimination, diversity, gender theory