Events

Women on Corporate Boards: The Swiss Case in a Historical and Comparative Perspective
The subject of women’s inclusion on corporate boards has attracted extensive attention in recent decades in academic literature as well as in the public sphere. However, most of the studies focus on the very recent times. Based on an empirical analysis of the largest Swiss firms’ board members across the past hundred years, this presentation will discuss the historical and political factors that have contributed to the enduring exclusion of women, and to their recent integration. It will show that until the beginning of the 1970s, the very few women sitting in the corporate boards belonged to the families owning the firms. Two main factors contributed then to the progressive opening of the corporate elites to women. First, the extending in 1971 of “universal suffrage” to women led to a feminisation of the political elites, and women with a political profile entered the boardrooms of firms in the distribution and retailing sector. Second, the increasing globalisation of the economy at the end of the 20th century contributed to weaken the cohesion of the very male and Swiss corporate elite, and to a concomitant decline in interlocking directorates among Swiss firms – a development that has also been observed in other non-liberal economies. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, the presence of women in Swiss firms remained low in international comparison, and they were still hitting the “glass ceiling” regarding the access to top positions. This research is part of a largest project entitled “Women in Corporate Networks,” which includes different emerging and developed economies (Argentina, Chile, Italy, Switzerland, India, and Australia). The project aims to identify the influence of external as well as internal factors on the way women’s participation in corporate networks has evolved over the longer term, and will allow to put the Swiss case in a comparative perspective.

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. Her main research interests focus on business elite and the transformation of capitalism during the twentieth 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.

Sandra Eckert is Associate Professor the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies and Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, and previously held positions at the Universities of Berlin, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Osnabrück and at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a PhD in political science from Free University Berlin. In her research, Sandra studies issues related to European integration, comparative public policy and international political economy.