Women woefully underrepresented in Alabama board rooms
The battle for gender equality rages in America, as companies from coast to coast are trying to equalize representation of women on their boards. And 2018 may just be the year of the woman. The Wall Street Journal reports from January to May, women made up 31 percent of new board directors at 3,000 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies, according to a data analysis by corporate governance firm Institutional Shareholder Services. Translation: 2018 has seen the highest percentage of female board seats in at least a decade. But Alabama is a bit behind the rest of the country. According to a new analysis by Birmingham Business Journal (BBJ), “none of the state’s public companies have women in CEO or equivalent roles, and none of their boards are chaired by women.” Which means, Alabama companies are losing out on not only an important segment of talent, but on critical marketplace perspective. Out of the 12 companies that made BBJ’s final list, more than half of the list didn’t even get past the 15 percent mark when it came to the percentage of women board members. In fact, the highest percentage of women on any board was on just 30 percent. Here’s a look at Alabama’s companies that have the highest percent of board members that are women: 12. Servisfirst Bancshares Inc. Board members: 6 Percent of women: 0% 11. National Commerce Corp Board members: 12 Percent of women: 7% 10. Auburn National Board members: 11 Percent of women: 9% 9. Proassurance Corp Board members: 10 Percent of women: 10% 8. Hibbett Sports Inc. Board members: 9 Percent of women: 11% 7. Energen Corp Board members: 9 Percent of women: 11% 6. Medical properties Trust Inc. Board members: 6 Percent of women: 17% 5. Regions Financial Corp. Board members: 14 Percent of women: 21% 4. Computer Programs and Systems Inc. Board members: 9 Percent of women: 22% 3. Adtran Inc. Board members: 8 Percent of women: 25% 2. Vulcan Materials Co. Board members: 10 Percent of women: 30% 1. Encompass Health Board members: 10 Percent of women: 30%
Steven Kurlander: Feminist ‘Herstory’ and the rigged coronation of Hillary Clinton
The underwhelming Democratic convention in Philadelphia is over and much of the messaging done by a feminist-dominated DNC encompassed that Hillary Clinton was making “herstory” as the first woman to be nominated to run for president in the U.S. In highlighting Clinton’s achievement, an article in USA Today entitled “How it felt when America got a first woman presidential nominee” started off by stating: “Finally. That’s how millions of people felt Thursday night as a woman accepted, for the first time, a major party’s nomination for president. From the floor of the Democratic National Convention to watch parties across the nation, on TVs and laptops and smartphones, Americans beheld history — or, as some feminists would call it, herstory.” As The New York Times reported, Clinton acknowledged breaking the glass ceiling: “If there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch,” she said, “let me just say, I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.” In real terms, the achievement that meant so much to leftist Democratic feminists momentarily may have touched a majority of American women too — maybe. Despite the achievement, Clinton is a weak candidate who was not supported by probably a majority of her party. The women of America care more about their pocketbooks — and the future of the American dream for their children — than about having a woman in the Oval Office. The reality is that Clinton’s breaking the glass ceiling in 2016 will not lead to her automatically capturing a vote that twice ensured the election of President Obama to the White House. President Obama brilliantly exploited the gender gap in the last presidential cycle. According to Gallup, Obama won the female vote, and a second term, by 12 points, 56 percent to 44 percent. Clinton does not share such support, even given the fact that she made “herstory.” A recent poll indicated that while 52 percent of registered women from both parties supported Clinton, that share fell to 36 percent among white women ages 50 to 64 and to only 34 percent among white women between 35 to 49. As the next phase of the campaign begins, the Clinton campaign will still try to build upon “herstory” to employ a very successful, time-tested Democratic tactic of social distraction that played to great success against Mitt Romney in the last presidential cycle. Clinton has employed this strategy brilliantly before. Remember when she destroyed Republican Rick Lazio in 2000 when he displayed “sexist” behavior during a debate with Clinton? You can bet that Clinton will try to exploit Donald Trump’s propensity to stupidly mock his opponents and members of the press in misogynistic and physically derogatory terms. It’s a matter of time before Trump makes a nasty comment about Hillary’s weight, hairdo, or her past tolerance of her husband’s well-chronicled philandering, and Clinton will be able to capture the hearts and minds of women voters as a victim of sexism. Well, maybe. Trump’s supreme achievement so far is that he is a master of overcoming the power of political correctness on political messaging. Trump too has brilliantly captured the frustration of Americans with their diminished quality of life that has resulted after 16 years of terrible — and very similar — Bush/Obama big government, Wall Street-centric economics and immigration policies that stand as the centerpiece of Clinton policies, too. Given the history of this campaign so far, capturing that frustration will override the significance of his alleged sexism. Trump’s crass brand of reality politics in 2016 has set a stage to diminish Clinton’s and the Democratic Party’s past success of exploiting the gender gap into capturing the votes of American women. Thus, Clinton, who had to rig the primary process to get the nomination to beat back Bernie Sanders, should not count gender politics, particularly “herstory,” to win the votes of American women. In terms of HISTORY that will be learned by today’s young girls, the true significance of the 2016 election will be not that a women won or ran for the White House, but how many disenfranchised Americans, both men and women, stayed home from the polls, fed up with a choice of two terrible candidates and the political parties and process that spawned them. ___ Steven Kurlander blogs at Kurly’s Kommentary. He is a communications strategist and an attorney in Monticello, New York, writes for Florida Politics, and is a former columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He can be emailed at kurly@stevenkurlander.com.
