However, various studies have shown that:

• Companies with more diverse executive teams and boards of directors perform better financially.
• Women directors contribute to important corporate-level outcomes because they play roles as leaders and mentors, as well as indirect roles as symbols of opportunity for other women, and inspire those women to achieve and stay with their corporations.
• Corporations need a critical mass of at least three women serving on boards of directors with average membership of 11 individuals to access the benefits of diversity for overall organizational performance and prevent the negative impacts of tokenism on leadership teams.
• Increased gender diversity results in more productive companies in terms of market value and revenue.
• Women serving on corporate boards improved corporation performance with respect to key metrics, including stock performance.
• Companies with a higher proportion of women senior managers demonstrated returns on investment that were both higher and more stable overall.
• Corporations with women serving as directors tend to be somewhat risk-averse and carry less debt, on average, compared to corporations with no women directors, and net income growth for such corporations was also higher.
• Investors react positively to substantive increases in gender diversity with a significant increase in stock prices following corporate announcements regarding increased diversity, demonstrating the economic benefits of increased diversity.

Introduced to encourage gender parity in positions of corporate leadership, H. Res. 790 expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that corporations should commit to utilizing the benefits of gender diversity in boards of directors and other senior management positions.”

The resolution acknowledges that:

• U.S. citizens have a significant stake in promoting robust, sustainable economic growth.
• Such growth will be strengthened and accelerated by the ever-fuller inclusion of women in the national workforce, at all levels of corporate management.
• Corporations in the U.S. should undertake a commitment to ever-fuller utilization of the talents, skills and work ethic of women on boards of directors and in other senior management positions.

“Promoting women to management helps eliminate unconscious bias, provides role models and mentors to others in the company ranks, and gives a powerful boost to internal advocates for pay equity and paid family leave,” said Rep. Beyer. “It is my hope that this gender parity legislation will inspire American businesses to do the right thing and promote more women up the ladder of leadership; we will all be better off for it.”

Please use our pre-drafted letter to urge your representatives to co-sponsor and support H. Res. 790. If they have already sponsored or co-sponsored the bill, you can send a message of thanks.