A long, steady focus on diversity.

I WAS GLAD TO SEE our Heidrick & Struggles authors address the topic of board diversity in this edition ("So Many Public Companies, so Few Women Directors," page 61). DIRECTORS & BOARDS from its very inception has been a champion of board diversity, and as longtime readers of this journal know it's been a topic close to the top of our editorial agenda.

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I just wish there were more to show for all the ink that's been devoted to addressing board diversity. The percentage of women directors has been stubbornly stuck in a mid-teen range for years. In the Heidrick & Struggles article, the authors report that women occupy 16.2 percent of Fortune 100 board seats. The 2006 Board Diversity Report just released by Spencer Stuart similarly finds that 16 percent of the 2,357 directors of the top 200 S & P 500 companies are women.

Parsing the representation into sublevels can be even more revealing of the progress yet to be made. The InterOrganization Network, seven regional organizations throughout the United States that advocate the advancement of women in business, shows in its recently released report that in 2005:

--women held fewer than 8 percent of board seats in Florida and Georgia, two states that include all public companies in their surveys.

--women held only 14 percent of board seats in Chicago, where the sample includes the highest number and proportion of large companies.

--the percentage of companies with no women directors increased, even among the Fortune 500 (as well as the Fortune 501-1000) companies where women generally hold more board seats than in smaller companies: in Chicago, for example, this percentage doubled from 6% to 12%; in Philadelphia it went from 36% to 42%.

No wonder that the ION members expressed concern about some "backsliding" seen in its latest report.

One move that holds promise for inching the representation upward is for women directors to be sure to serve on nominating committees--and to take a leadership position on those committees. That way they can ensure that the nominee list is appropriately rounded out. In its survey, Spencer Stuart reports that while women directors comprise 23 percent of nomination/governance committee members, only 17 percent of the committees are chaired by women.

A closing personal note: There is nothing like having a teenage daughter to focus the mind even sharper on the world of opportunity that should rightly exist for all women ... and to be editor of a journal like this that can keep a long, steady focus on this deserving area of opportunity.