The NY Times reports:
David Bonderman, an Uber board member and partner at private equity firm TPG, resigned from the board of the ride-hailing company after he made a disparaging remark about women at an Uber meeting on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day at an Uber staff meeting to discuss the company’s culture, Arianna Huffington, another board member, talked about how one woman on a board often leads to more women joining a board.
“Actually, what it shows is that it’s much more likely to be more talking,” Mr. Bonderman responded.
In context, the remark probably was a sarcastic dig and, if so, it was way out of line considering the problems Uber is having with sexism and sexual harassment issues.
In fact, however, there is some evidence that Bonderman was correct:
According to one study, female directors expanded the content of board discussions and were more likely than their male counterparts to raise issues concerning multiple stakeholders.
Deborah L. Rhode & Amanda K. Packel, Diversity on Corporate Boards: How Much Difference Does Difference Make?, 39 Del. J. Corp. L. 377, 396 (2014).
Rhode and Packal further note that:
In a study of Israeli companies in which the government holds a substantial equity interest and has required relative gender balance for 20 years, Schwartz-Ziv found that boards with at least three directors of each gender in attendance were twice as likely to both request further information and to take an initiative, compared to boards without such “critical masses,” boards with at least three female directors were more likely to experience CEO turnover when performance was weak, and individual male and female directors were more active when at least three women directors were present at board meetings.
Id. at 396 n.120.
In addition, Renée B. Adams & Daniel Ferreira, Gender Diversity in the Boardroom 11-12 (Aug. 2004), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=594506, found that in "boards with relatively more women, more directors participate in decision-making," which may suggest that there was more talking taking place.
So the gibe may have been motivated by ill will and certainly was ill-timed, but the substance likely was true.
In principle, I agree with you. My hesitation is that my time in the endless purgatory of faculty meetings makes me fear more talking! pic.twitter.com/tXHavxCXWQ
— Professor Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) June 14, 2017
