A century of progress.

• Author: Rock, Robert H.
• Position: LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

I SERVE on a corporate board led by an extremely competent and highly experienced woman who is the executive chair. Under her leadership the board has governed very successfully. As a woman leading a large, public company her position and her success are becoming more common. Yet, not so long ago her leadership would have been nearly impossible.

I recently received an invitation from "Vision 2020," a group that is preparing celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Aug. 26, 1920, when the 19th amendment gave American women the right to vote. The U.S. was not the first to grant women the right to vote: In 1893, New Zealand granted equal voting rights to women. At the turn of 20th century, Australian women got the vote, and over the next two decades women in the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia gained voting rights. In some countries, women got suffrage in steps, initially being granted the right to vote solely in local elections. Full suffrage, allowing all groups of women to both vote and run for all offices, did not become commonplace throughout the Western world until the 1920s and '30s. In some parts of the world, women are still denied suffrage.

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Upon receiving suffrage, women did not gain access to top management and their boards. There were a handful of women who upon the death of a husband or father came onto the board of an American corporation, most notably Marjorie Merriweather Post, who in 1914 joined the board of the frozen foods and cereal company started by her father. Business historians point to Lettie Pate Whitehead as the first independent woman to serve on the board of a major U.S. corporation. She joined...