So many public companies, so few women directors: despite a professed demand from corporate boards, women directors remain in short supply.

• Author: Gwin, Bonnie W.

OVER THE past several months, we have held a series of conversations with diverse groups of current and aspiring women directors across North America. Convened in major cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, our intimate breakfasts brought together women representing virtually every industry--health care, technology, financial services, retail, consumer products, hospitality, and the industrial and public sectors--to talk candidly about their experiences. We wanted to understand the paths these women took to their boards, what they found when they got there, and why their numbers are still so few. More important, we wanted to explore what companies that are serious about gender diversity--and the business advantages it brings--can do to secure more women as directors.

These meetings offered a revealing look at the unique position women occupy on boards today: Women directors are at once a much sought-after commodity and severely underrepresented. The National Association of Corporate Directors, for example, reports that two out of three board nominating committees now favor diversity initiatives to attract more women and people of color as directors. And we as a firm are increasingly being asked by our clients to assist in the identification of female directors. Yet, five years into the 21st century, corporate boards still look, as many have put it, "male, pale, and stale."

Why does the advancement of women in the executive suite and in the boardroom seem to have stalled?

The urgency factor

According to our own research, women occupy only 16.2 percent of Fortune 100 board seats. And while many boards express a desire for gender diversity, when left to their own devices and their own networks they often will say that they simply cannot find a suitable female candidate with the experience required to be on a board. Sarbanes-Oxley and other corporate governance regulations have changed the landscape of the board, by making it more difficult--at least theoretically--for boards to rely on their traditional networks when hiring independent directors. But, as one woman told us, "It takes a bold CEO to say, 'I want a woman.'"

And it takes a truly progressive CEO to add more than one. Many of the women we met feel that after a company has appointed one woman director, it loses its urgency to bring on others. "Once you have one on the board, companies think it's enough," said one woman, a CEO who holds two board seats. "When you're the only woman on...