Women on Boards Scale: Cordons and Catalysts to Enter Boardroom

Abstract

The underrepresentation of women on corporate boards and its influencers is an under-researched area in Asia, with the absence of standard scales measuring the catalysts and cordons for women’s career progression to boards. The research paper aims to develop and validate a multidimensional scale to measure the influences impacting women’s representation on boards in the Indian context. A pool of items was generated after a thorough review of existing literature and discussion with the experts. The Women on Boards Scale (WOBS) was constructed and validated based on a quantitative study of 509 female and male employees working in companies in Delhi and NCR. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis techniques were applied for the study. The study confirms the structure of major barriers as individual, societal, and organisational barriers, along with the entry barriers that women face during entry or re-entry into the organization and enablers as well for women to reach boards. A comprehensive scale was constructed with significant psychometric properties to measure the barriers and enablers for women to reach boards. The scale provides a robust and useful tool for policymakers and corporations to improve gender diversity on corporate boards.

Keywords

Women directors glass ceiling gender diversity scale construction and validation

Introduction

Corporate boards define a company’s governance practices and their decisions affect the lives of all stakeholders of a company. Governance failures have adverse effects on companies as well as stakeholders therefore board composition is an issue of social importance. The attention to higher representation of women and minorities in corporate boards has increased in recent years as a positive relationship between gender diversity on board and corporate performance has been proved by several studies (Carter et al., 2003; Sarkar & Selarka, 2016).

Despite this importance of women directors, women are underrepresented on corporate boards all over the world, and as compared with other countries, India is lagging far behind with skewed representation of women on corporate boards (Kamath & Lakhangaonkar, 2021). In India, women undergo a leaky talent pipeline as their proportion declines as they move up the career ladder. With 25% women joining the workforce as entry-level professionals, their share declines to only 4% at the level of senior management (Woetzel et al., 2018). It is vital to achieve the gender balance on corporate boards because of the diverse benefits women directors bring to the organisation and economy (Thomas et al., 2020).

Aiming at improving the proportion of women on corporate boards several countries have taken initiatives such as quota, but a mixed and limiting impact of gender quota across different countries has been seen both in terms of quantity and quality of women directors. India also imposed gender quotas with the enactment of the Companies Act 2013 (Vohra, 2020).

Although a gradual improvement in the percentage of women in lower and middle management has been seen across the world, but still women face several barriers in their career journey and very few are able to reach to top management positions and boards. The percentage of women directors is still only around 18% on corporate boards in India as compared to 11% in 2016 (Imberg & Shaban, 2022; Woetzel et al., 2018). Women across the world face almost similar barriers, but certain barriers are more prominent in countries like India, depending on their cultural and societal backgrounds (Bagati & Carter, 2010; Woetzel et al., 2018)

Literature in the area of gender diversity on boards is rich in Western countries, but India lacks in terms of research being done on the topic. Being a patriarchal culture in India the barriers and enablers women have in India during their career progression differ to some extent from the Western world. Moreover, several scales on glass ceilings, particularly in the field of STEM, have been developed over the years, but hardly any scale exists to measure the factors influencing women’s progression to corporate boards.

This research therefore aimed to develop and validate the scale to measure the influences impacting women’s representation on boards in India. This research article is organised into seven sections. The first section introduces the topic; the second section presents the review of literature; the third section describes the study objectives; the fourth section explains the research methodology; and the fifth section elaborates on scale development and validation. The conclusion is presented in the sixth section and followed by the future research scope.

Review of Literature

Women empowerment has been recognised widely as a significant step to achieve a balanced and sustainable development of any economy (Yogendrarajah, 2013), which cannot be accomplished without achieving gender equality at work and in society (Shetty & Hans, 2015). United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women defines gender equality as ‘Equality between women and men and it refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys’. Gender equality is one (fifth goal) of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), to eradicate poverty, protect the planet, and to ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030 (Gender-Equality, 2015). According to the World Bank, gender inequality prevails all over the world even though women are half of the world’s total population (Chen, 2004). As per Mckinsey’s study, one-fourth of all women affected by gender inequality globally are in India. In India, women faced high or extremely high inequality on all the five indicators (Labour Force Participation Rate, Professional and Technical Jobs, Perceived Wage Gap for Similar Work, Leadership Positions and Unpaid Care Work) of gender equality at work (Woetzel et al., 2015). This gender gap becomes wider in top management positions and corporate boards.

Gender diversity at senior management and corporate board levels differ for various countries and sectors. Literature confirms low proportion of women on corporate boards all over the world and in India it is even lower (only 18%) as compared to other countries (Kamath & Lakhangaonkar, 2021).

Boards provide strategic direction and act as monitoring mechanisms and therefore board composition is crucial at the corporate and social levels (Kamath & Lakhangaonkar, 2021). Literature also shows a strong business case for women directors on board (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Carter et al., 2003). Women face various obstacles in corporate environments and consequently are underrepresented on top positions. These barriers originate either from gender-based social roles or from the discriminatory practices within the organisation, which are creating hindrances for women in their pathway to top leadership positions (Schipani et al., 2008).

Barriers for Women to Reach Corporate Boards

‘Glass ceiling’ is the protuberant invisible barrier that is made up of traditions and stereotype attitudes and prevents women from reaching to top leadership positions. The term ‘glass ceiling’ was first coined by a management consultant Marilyn Loden during her speech as a panelist at the 1978 Women’s Exposition in New York (Zimmer, 2015) and popularised in year 1986 in Wall Street Journal Special Report on the Corporate Woman in a study by Hymowitz and Schellhardt (Jackson, 2001). No universal typology was found in the literature for classifying the glass ceiling antecedents and have been classified differently by diverse authors and organisations (Taparia & Lenka, 2022). On the basis of the literature review, barriers women face in their journey to corporate boards, have been classified into three types of barriers namely societal, individual, and organisational barriers, but it was observed that all these hindering factors are mostly interrelated (Chawla & Sharma, 2016, Chen et al., 2022; Tripathy, 2018).

Societal Barriers

No one can deny that men and women are treated differently by society and at workplaces (Rawat, 2014). As per socialisation theories, men and women form their attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and expectations through socialisation process during their childhood, which ultimately affect their career and work-related choices (Reavley, 1993). Also termed as social role theory the approach stresses that career of women to a large extent depends on the gender-specific roles and stereotyping in society (Akande, 1993; Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013; Reavley, 1993). Society expects men to play the role of breadwinner and that of homemaker/caregiver by women (Landry et al., 2020; Rath et al., 2019; Sur & Kleiner, 1995). As compared to men, fewer women join the workforce at the entry level, some of them leave jobs due to change in their life cycle stage like marriage or motherhood, whereas few of them move up the career ladder (Rath et al., 2019; Saxena et al., 2009; Stroh et al., 1996). These unconscious preconceptions and stereotype attitudes of men and women shape their nature and behaviour, which result in several individual barriers. Moreover, these attitudes are carried over to the organisation as well (Akande, 1993; Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013).

Individual Barriers

‘Individual Barriers’ cover the hindrances that arise due to personal factors. Person-Centered theories focus on the differences between men and women based on their socialisation process and behavioural attributes (Cooper & Kleiner, 1993; Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013). Women themselves undervalue their skills and avoid taking challenges, thinking that they are less competitive, less ambitious and less powerful as compared to men. This lack of self-confidence causes them to opt out of leadership positions (Amudha et al., 2016; Hurn, 2013).

Taking a cue from Interaction centered theory, it is explained that unlike men, women do not promote themselves through networking or highlighting their skills and exhibit willingness to take on the higher positions which inhibits their progression to top levels (Amudha et al., 2016; Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013; Hurn, 2013).

A major challenge women face is balancing between work and family responsibilities (Chawla & Sharma, 2016; Rath et al., 2019) As per Human capital approaches, (Reavley, 1993) women tend to prioritise family over career and contrary to men they do only the minimum investments in the pre-employment skills and training consequently, women face discrimination in appointment and compensation. Macarie and Moldovan (2012) suggest that preconception and prejudice that women are ill-prepared or their inputs are lower can result in discrimination. Women also show a lack of willingness to relocate or change their organisation (Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013). Therefore men are the obvious choice to take care of the heavy responsibilities of a directorship.

Organisational Barriers

Due to the interrelated nature of the hindrances women face, societal barriers like stereotyping attitudes not only shape the career and life-related choices of males and females rather carried over to the organisations as well and further strengthened by the organisational barriers (Boone et al., 2013).

As per role congruity theory, agentic profiles are preferred for the leadership positions (Bechtoldt et al., 2019). Females are therefore perceived less suitable for leadership positions (Gupta et al., 2018; Macarie & Moldovan, 2012) as they are less likely to have agentic leadership traits and top leadership roles do not fit the female gender stereotype (Jani & Deshpande, 2019; Panitapu, 2015).

Women face unequal and unfair treatment at every step like promotion, pay, (theory of gender discrimination) and performance appraisal. Discrimination theory proposes that people from the dominant group show discriminatory behaviour towards minorities such as people of colour and women. Discrimination is made in allotment of jobs, (theory of gender division) clerical and low-paying jobs for women and men get career growth opportunities. Unlike males, the success of female is attributed to variable and subjective factors like luck or chance and their failure is attributed to stable and objective factors such as lack of competence and skills (Attribution theory). This biased interpretation of success or failure for women hamper their career development (Macarie & Moldovan, 2012; Radovic-Markovic et al., 2013; Tripathy, 2018).

Women face unequal access to training and development opportunities (Oakley, 2000), challenging and visibility projects and international exposure (Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013; Saxena et al., 2009), to mentors (Chawla & Sharma, 2016; Rath et al., 2019) and role models, which hinders their chances to rise up the career ladder (Amudha et al., 2016; Boone et al., 2013; Hurn, 2013). Consequently, they get stuck on the lower and entry-level jobs, that is, Sticky Floor Syndrome (Carli & Eagly, 2016).

Even the workplace culture is not receptive to women, they experience lack of respect, recognition and support from their male counterparts (Amudha et al., 2016; Saxena et al., 2009) and seniors (Oakley, 2000). Despite adopting the ‘Anytime Anywhere Workplace Culture’ most of the companies fail to normalise the flexible work schedules stigmatising women who choose to take advantage of it, forcing women to drop out of the talent pipeline (Rath et al., 2019; Woetzel et al., 2015). Women with children face more challenges at the workplace, that is, Motherhood Penalty (Carli & Eagly, 2016) and absence of adequate and affordable childcare facilities (Hurn, 2013) that affect their chances to rise up the career ladder.

Exclusion theories like social identity and social networks, further explain the reasons behind the hurdles women face to enter the boardroom. As per Social Identity theory (Ashforth, 1989; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), individuals relate themselves to certain social categories or groups on the basis of family, race, class, profession, gender, or organisation. Within the group people develop understanding, share norms and beliefs, have common goals, they think and act jointly and they also develop some stereotypes about the people who are out of their group such as female directors in this case.

According to Social networks theory (Tavakolian, 1993), in organisations most of the important decisions are taken in informal meetings. Men drive gains through socialising informally after work, but lack of access to informal networks also known as ‘Old Boys’ network, prevailing at the workplace affects women’s opportunities to move up and reach boards (Amudha et al., 2016; Boone et al., 2013; Hurn, 2013).

In addition to barriers, some enablers for women to reach corporate boards have also been identified in the literature.

Enablers for Women to Enter Boardroom

Enid Kiaye and Maniraj Singh (2013) find that putting more efforts as compared to men, higher levels of education and professional experience are some of the facilitators for women to reach top positions. Support systems like family and domestic help, time management, gaining credibility from the boss and team members also benefits women. Senior management support, inclusive firm culture (Chawla & Sharma, 2016), policy intervention, and mentorship are some of the organisational facilitators that helped women in their pathway to top leadership positions. Organisations should also facilitate growth through career tracking, career planning, fair and transparent appraisal, appropriate management training and development programmes, and challenging assignments for women (Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013; Rath et al., 2019).

Underrepresentation of women on boards across the world including India still remains an issue to be resolved. A review of the literature exposed that women face various hurdles in their journey to corporate boards even though the presence of women directors brings value to boards and the company.

Objectives of the Study

As taken up in the introduction and review of literature sections, despite being crucial for the firm governance and performance, women directors are not getting their share in the corporate boards. Even the measures taken cannot improve the situation as expected. The question thus arises is, why do women not reach the corporate boards? What bottlenecks do they face and what are the factors that cause women to drop out of the business talent pipeline in India? Is there any valid scale to measure the barriers and enablers for women’s progression to boards? We need to find the answer to these questions.

Over the years various scales have been developed mostly in Western countries to measure the glass ceiling but hardly any scale has been developed to measure the dimensions of gender diversity on corporate boards. Terborg et al. (1977), Dubno et al. (1979), Jackson (2001) and Elacqua et al. (2009) built scales in the USA to measure the factors behind the glass ceiling or some aspects of it. In 2012, a Career Pathways Survey scale was developed in Australia to explain the attitudes towards glass ceilings (Smith et al., 2012) and another in Durban (Enid Kiaye & Maniraj Singh, 2013). As per the knowledge of the authors, there is no scale that measures the barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards in India.

The study aimed to identify the barriers and enablers for explaining the low gender diversity on Indian boards. The main objective of this research article was to construct a reliable and valid multidimensional scale to measure the barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards in India.

Research Methodology

Being a patriarchal Indian culture, low presence of women on boards in India seems like a black box to be explored. Moreover, several scales on glass ceilings, particularly in the field of STEM, have been developed over the years, but hardly any scale exists to measure the factors influencing women’s progression to corporate boards. A comprehensive measurement scale for barriers and enablers for women directors to reach corporate boards has been developed using the steps identified through review of relevant literature.

As depicted in Figure 1, first the main domain was identified for the construct development. A pool of items was generated with the help of existing literature and the expert opinions. Items were refined and data were collected using the final survey instrument. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis were applied for construction and validation of the scale.

Figure 1.

Research Methodology.

Scale Development

This section presents the development of the scale for barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards.

Domain Identification

The main domain for construct development is barriers and enablers affecting gender diversity on corporate boards which aims to help in increasing the presence of women directors on boards.

Item Generation

A pool of items was generated after a thorough review of the existing literature and discussion with the experts. After the identification of a pool of items a first version of the primary survey questionnaire was designed. All items were categorised into 10 sections, that is, A–J. Section A contained the dependent variables, that is, presence of women at lower, managerial, top management and board levels were measured as ordinal variables. To measure the independent variables total 69 statements have been asked on 5-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Sections B–E contained statements related to individual factors, societal factors, and organisational factors respectively. Section F and G was on leadership styles of females and males, whereas facilitators were included in section H. Details on demographics were also sought.

Item Refinement

Once initial set of items was generated, a pilot study was conducted on 30 employees (male as well as female) working in the companies situated in Delhi/NCR. Reliability of the pilot instrument was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha. Content validity was checked with the help of experts’ opinions. After the pilot survey, the measuring instrument was improved based on respondents’ feedback; 69 statements were reduced to the final 40 statements measuring the independent variables; 5-point Likert-type scale has been upgraded to 7-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7) with a neutral point at the place of point four, to balance the measurement instrument. Language was simplified, and one section on the employee-friendly company policies was added. The final instrument comprised seven sections from A–G. Section A contained the questions related to presence of women at lower, managerial, top management and board as ordered categories of percentages. Sections B–D include 40 statements in total to gauge the perceptions of employees towards the barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards. Section B, was related to Individual and societal barriers, Section C, organisational barriers, and Section D, enablers for women’s progression to corporate boards. Some statements were asked in the opposite direction of the constructs too and coded reversely later for analysis purposes. Sections E and F were on family-friendly policies and career-related decisions, respectively. Instrument includes some questions to collect demographic details.

Data Collection

Data were collected using snowball sampling technique from the male as well as female employees working at different levels in the companies of Delhi/NCR. The primary survey was carried out online with the help of ‘Google Docs Survey Designing Software’ and offline as well. The period of the study was from September 2021 to May 2022. Out of the 800 questionnaires shared, only 523 were received. The effective response rate was 65.38%. Respondents were assured confidentiality of the information. Out of the total responses, only 509 responses were used as final sample, as 14 responses were excluded which belonged to the education sector. Survey aimed to explore the respondents’ perceptions towards barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards.

Table 1 describes the sample, which shows that male (50.3%) and female (49.7%) respondents were almost in equal proportions. Younger group with the age below 30 years held the majority (46.2%) and 36% respondents aged between 30 and 45 years. Approximately 16.1% respondents belonged to the age group of 46–60 years and only 1.8% belonged to the age group of above 60 years. A total of 44.4% respondents were married and around half of them were unmarried (53.2%). Only 37.9% of the respondents were graduates and 36.1% were post-graduates and following this, 22.6% respondents were professionally qualified. The majority of the respondents (54%) belonged to the middle designation level and 22.2%, 16.7% and 7.1% respondents belonged to the lower, top/upper management and Board designation levels respectively. Approximately 24.2% respondents were highly experienced, that is, with experience above 15 years, whereas 13.9%, 19.8% and 42% respondents had experience of 11–15 years, 5–10 years and less than 5 years respectively. In total, 22.8% respondents have 2 or more children and 18.7% have only one child whereas, more than half (58.5%) of the sample do not have any child. Approximately 27.7% of the respondents have all dependent children following this, 4.7% respondents have only some dependent children and 8.6% respondents have all independent children.

Table 1.

Sample Description (n = 509).

Basis	Divisions	Fre^a	%^b	Basis	Divisions	Fre^a	%^b
Gender	Male	256	50.3	Marital status	Unmarried	271	53.2
Gender	Female	253	49.7		Married	226	44.4
Age	Below 30 years	235	46.2		Other	12	2.4
	30–45 years	183	36.0	No. of children	0	298	58.5
	46–60 years	82	16.1		1	95	18.7
	Above 60 years	9	1.8		2 or more	116	22.8
Education	Graduate	193	37.9	Status of children	All are dependent	141	27.7
	Postgraduate	184	36.1		All are independent	44	8.6
	Professional qualification	115	22.6		Some are dependent	24	4.7
	Other	17	3.3		Not applicable	300	58.9
Designation level	Lower	113	22.2	Experience	Below 5 years	214	42.0
	Middle	275	54.0		5–10 years	101	19.8
	Top/upper management	85	16.7		11–15 years	71	13.9
	Board	36	7.1		Above 15 years	123	24.2

Note: ^afrequency; ^bpercentage.

Exploratory Factor Analysis: Scale Dimensions

EFA was applied to explore the factors important for gender diversity on corporate boards. Reliability and content validity of the instrument was tested before conducting the EFA. Table 2 presents the reliability results of the measurement instrument and it shows that all the three groups of statements enjoy high reliability as the value of Cronbach’s alpha is greater than 0.8 (Field, 2009). Two statements from group B (women feel free to express their opinions at the workplace, women aggressively seek promotions), two statements from group C (Female employees prefer female bosses, Women make as good leaders as men) and one statement from group D (Mandatory quota results in appointment of undeserving women) were removed to improve the reliability. Content validity of the measurement instrument has been confirmed with the help of experts’ opinions.

Table 2.

Reliability Results of Instrument.

Group of Statements	Total Statements	Cronbach α	Removed Due to Reliability Issue
B. Individual and societal barriers	13	0.833 (11 items)	2
C. Organisational barriers	17	0.847 (15 items)	2
D. Enablers	10	0.945 (9 items)	1

EFA of the remaining 35 statements was conducted on the randomly selected 40% (n = 201) data out of the total sample (n = 509), using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences software program, version 25.0. Principal component analysis and varimax rotation were used for EFA.

While running EFA, six more statements were removed due to the reasons like absence of loading (There are not enough women with experience to be made board members), cross-loadings on more than one factor (Women are less likely to accept jobs that involve traveling/transfer, Women with dependent children face more challenges at the workplace as compared to other women and Men find it difficult to work with female bosses) and no loading on the relevant factor/construct (Women prefer to maintain low public profile and Women feel less confident to take up challenging jobs). EFA was finalised using the remaining 29 statements.

Most of the statements in the measurement instrument correlate relatively well with the other statements and this correlation is not extremely high. The assumptions of EFA were satisfactorily met. While checking the sampling adequacy we found that the sample was adequate as the value of Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) is 0.892, which is regarded as meritorious (Kaiser, 1974). Suitability of the data was checked using other measure namely Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (value = 4026.960, sig. 0.000), which was also highly significant as P < 0.001 and proves that correlation matrix was not an identity matrix and some sort of correlation was present between the variables. No significant outliers were observed. Therefore, prerequisites for conducting the EFA were fulfilled (Field, 2009).

EFA results show that communalities values for all the variables after extraction are greater than 0.3 which is minimum requirement and these values ranged from 0.486 to 0.864. Following the Kaiser’s rule, 29 statements got clustered into five factors that met the criteria of eigenvalue greater than 1 (Field, 2009). Table 3 summarises the results of the EFA. It presents the total 29 statements (along with their code) which are clustered into five constructs explaining 66.99% of the total variance. After rotation, the first component accounted for 23.559% of the variance and following this, 17.909%, 9.884%, 8.241% and 7.396% variance has been explained by second, third, fourth and fifth factor respectively. Rotation component matrix confirms that each item loaded on a single component and had high factor loadings.

Table 3.

Exploratory Factor Analysis Results (n = 201).

Dimensions	Statements Included	Code	Mean	SD^a	Factor Loadings	Eigen Value	VE^b (%)	CV^c (%)
Enablers	Adequate female role models and their recognition by the organisation improves women’s confidence in their ability to succeed	D10	5.76	1.671	0.890	8.390	23.559	23.559
	Sensitivity Training for both males and females is must for organisation to overcome the core barrier of stereotyping and preconceptions	D9	5.73	1.731	0.869
	Leadership programs for men and women employees help improving the women’s presence in management and board	D5	5.50	1.761	0.859
	Career comeback policies and programmes for women employees help them to reach top positions.	D7	5.52	1.715	0.854
	Commitment of senior management towards gender diversity supports career growth of female employees.	D8	5.48	1.858	0.852
	Flexible working hours will bring more talented women than now.	D4	5.43	1.731	0.838
	Women themselves must raise voice against gender inequality.	D2	5.52	1.820	0.827
	If women feel self-confident, others will also feel confident about women.	D1	5.38	1.912	0.809
	If both are equally competent, preferential recruitment/promotion for female applicants is needed at all levels to achieve gender balance in corporate boards.	D6	4.74	2.070	0.651
Organisational barriers	Women lack access to powerful mentors and sponsors.	C7	2.96	1.862	0.824	6.147	17.909	41.468
	Despite similar qualifications & experience males are preferred over females at the time of promotion.	C8	3.17	2.031	0.798
	Company hesitates in appointing less experienced women directors on the boards as compared to men.	C12	3.67	2.026	0.765
	Females get excluded from informal networks in the organisation.	C6	3.27	1.838	0.759
	In situations of business crisis, female employees are at the higher risk of losing the job.	C15	3.38	1.962	0.738
	Women are not given jobs related to their qualifications, skills and capabilities.	C1	2.87	1.942	0.721
	Women are offered top positions under risky and uncertain situations.	C13	3.43	1.865	0.649
	Men are the first choice when important assignments/ highly challenging/ international assignments are given.	C10	3.78	2.038	0.642
	Women lack access to motivational and training opportunities.	C4	2.71	1.873	0.592
Societal barriers	Women leave/change their job to take care of the needs of family.	B5	4.42	1.853	0.716	2.148	9.884	51.352
	Women are raised up with a notion that women and men do not share equal power in the society.	B4	3.98	2.040	0.675
	Women believe that their contribution at workplace is more likely to be underestimated	B7	3.56	1.870	0.670
	Women are more likely to think about downshifting or leaving the jobs during crisis (like COVID-19 pandemic) due to additional pressures	B13	3.36	1.845	0.606
	Women prioritise their family responsibilities over career.	B3	4.14	1.778	0.589
Individual barriers	Women lack capability required for directorships	B11	2.06	1.633	0.819	1.622	8.241	59.592
	Even if offered, women refuse to take up leadership roles.	B10	2.62	1.726	0.691
	If needed, women should surrender their job and career to raise their children.	B6	2.80	1.955	0.560
Entry barriers	Male and female employees receive same salaries for same work/job positions (reverse coded).	C3	3.19	2.068	0.799	1.119	7.396	66.988
	Women get easy access to adequate and affordable child care facilities (reverse coded).	C5	3.98	1.869	0.744
	Women and men have equal access to entry and lower level jobs (reverse coded).	C2	3.29	2.174	0.737

Note: ^astandard deviation; ^bvariance explained; ^ccumulative variance explained.

Factor loadings were sorted by size and loadings less than 0.55 were omitted to give a clear picture of factors. In addition to percentage of total variance explained by the extracted factors, results based on the reproduced correlations show that the model has only 23% (94) residuals (<50%), which confirms the goodness of the model (Field, 2009). Table 3 also shows the mean, standard deviation and factor loadings of the statements. In addition to Eigenvalue, scree plot method was used, which is a graphical method to extract the factors. Figure 2 depicts the scree plot, which shows that there are two points of inflexion, first at the third factor and other at the sixth factor. As the rule says we should retain only those factors that lie on the left side of the point of Inflexion so, scree plot supports the retention of either 2 or 5 factors.

Figure 2.

Scree Plot.

Since the eigenvalues suggest the extraction of five factors, the same are extracted (Field, 2009). From the EFA, five constructs or dimensions have been identified. The first and most important are the ‘enablers’ that facilitate the rise of women to the boardroom. The remaining constructs identify the blockades faced by women in their career path. Besides ‘entry barriers’, there are ‘organisational barriers’, ‘societal barriers’ and ‘individual barriers’ that prevent women from reaching the top.

Scale Validation

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

To confirm the factor structure, assess the reliability, validity and model fit, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on the remaining 60% data. While conducting CFA, two statements {‘Women are more likely to think about downshifting or leaving the jobs during crisis (like COVID-19 pandemic) due to additional pressures’ and ‘Women believe that their contribution at workplace is more likely to be underestimated’} were removed as despite good reliability, these statements were creating convergent validity issues. Measurement model has been finalised with 27 statements (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Measurement Model of Women on Boards Scale (WOBS).

Model Fit

Several fit indices were used to assess the model fit of the measurement model, crucial ones are namely root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), Tucker–Lewis’ coefficient (TLI), goodness of fit index (GFI), adjusted GFI (AGFI), normed fit index (NFI), comparative fit index (CFI) and χ2 likelihood ratio statistic. According to Bentler (1992), for a perfect model fit, the value of CFI, TLI, GFI, AGFI and NFI should be close to 1.0 and acording to Hair et al. (2009), a value above 0.90 is considered as fit for these indices and the value of RMSEA should be lesser than 0.08 (Kline, 2005). The generally accepted chi-square value (CMIN/df) ranges between 1.0 and 3.0 (Hair et al., 2009). Table 4 presents the model fit Indices for the measurement model developed with the help of analysis.

Table 4.

Fit Indices for the Measurement Model.

Fit Indices	Value Recommended	Measurement Model Value
CMIN/df (ꭓ2/df)	Range of 1 to 3	2.424 (756.271/312)
GFI	≥ 0.90	.834
TLI	≥ 0.90	.902
CFI	≥ 0.90	.913
RMSEA	≤ 0.80	.069

Table 4 shows that the value of CMIN/df, TLI, CFI, and RMSEA is 2.424, 0.902, 0.913, and 0.069, respectively, and met the threshold limits. The value of GFI was 0.834 which was below the threshold limit of 0.90. However GFI value above 0.80 was considered fit (Baumgartner & Homburg, 1996), hence GFI value also met the criteria. By observing these indices, measurement model can be confirmed as satisfactory moderate fit. Figure 3 presents the measurement model developed using AMOS.

Figure 3 presents the five dimensions of the Women on Boards Scale (WOBS), that is, ‘Enablers’, ‘Organisational Barriers’, ‘Societal Barriers’, ‘Individual Barriers’ and ‘Entry Barriers’ and their underlying variables along-with their factor loadings.

Reliability of the WOBS has been assessed to check the internal consistency using Cronbach’s Alpha and composite reliability coefficient (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Table 5 shows that the Cronbach’s alpha values of ‘Enablers’ and ‘Organisational Barriers’ are 0.945 and 0.885, which shows good reliability (Nunnally, 1978). The alpha coefficients for ‘Societal Barriers’ ‘Individual Barriers’ and ‘Entry Barriers’ are 0.757, 0.693 and 0.731 respectively which are acceptable. The Cronbach’s alpha value for the WOBS (all 27 items taken together) was observed as 0.858, which suggests that the WOBS enjoys good reliability (Field, 2009).

Table 5.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis Results.

Dimensions	Items (Code)	Standardised Regression Weights (Factor Loadings)	CRC^a	Cronbach α	AVE^b
Enablers	D10	0.901	0.951	0.945	0.685
	D9	0.886
	D5	0.879
	D7	0.859
	D8	0.859
	D4	0.816
	D2	0.831
	D1	0.789
	D6	0.587
Organisational barriers	C8	0.866	0.900	0.885	0.504
	C7	0.8
	C1	0.758
	C10	0.693
	C15	0.69
	C12	0.687
	C4	0.658
	C6	0.649
	C13	0.536
Societal barriers	B5	0.811	0.768	0.757	0.529
	B3	0.764
	B4	0.589
Individual barriers	B10	0.743	0.750	0.693	0.501
	B11	0.731
	B6	0.645
Entry barriers	C2	0.806	0.764	0.731	0.525
	C3	0.788
	C5	0.552

Note: ^aComposite reliability coefficient; ^bAverage variance explained.

Scale reliability was assessed using composite reliability coefficient as well. Table 5 displays that composite reliability coefficient for all the constructs were between 0.750 and 0.951 which shows that all the subscales of the WOBS are reliable (Hair et al., 2012).

According to Krabbe (2017), convergent validity explains the relationship of the scale with other variables and other measures of the same construct. Composite reliability coefficient (CRC) and AVE are used to assess the convergent validity. Table 5 presents that AVE and CR coefficients for all the constructs are above the minimum threshold limit of 0.5 and 0.7 respectively, therefore convergent validity as well as reliability of the scale has been confirmed (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Table 5 also presents the underlying items (codes) for all the five constructs and other important values.

Discriminant validity confirms that whether the dimensions extracted are distinct among themselves or not. Table 6 presents the discriminant validity of the constructs. In Table 6, diagonal value represents the square root of the AVE, and the off-diagonal values show the inter-construct correlations. Table 6 shows that the square root of AVE for all constructs is greater than their inter-construct correlations which ensures the discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Therefore all the five constructs have adequate discriminant validity

Table 6.

Discriminant Validity.

Construct	Enablers	Organisational Barriers	Societal Barriers	Individual Barriers	Entry Barriers
Enablers	0.828
Organisational barriers	0.114	0.710
Societal barriers	0.426	0.510	0.727
Individual barriers	–0.170	0.516	0.430	0.708
Entry barriers	–0.495	0.184	–0.197	0.047	0.725

Note: Bold values in diagonals (the square root of the AVE), which are greater than off-diagonal values (inter-construct correlations), ensure discriminant validity.

Common Method Bias

Common method variance or common method bias is a study on the variance associated with the measurement model and might distort the findings of the research. Common method bias for the study has been checked using Harman’s Single-Factor Test and Common Latent Factor technique and it has been found that there was no problem of common method variance (Saxena et al., 2022).

Conclusion

Women directors are not in equal proportion in the corporate boards and this scenario prevails all over the world. If we look at India, women directors are underrepresented in the corporate boards. This low proportion of female directors is a consequence of various hurdles faced by women in their career progression. Women directors’ presence in boards is crucial for companies from all stakeholders’ perspective therefore it is needed to understand the barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards so that enablers can be strengthened and barriers can be reduced to improve the proportion of women directors on boards. Over the years, various scales were developed on glass ceiling but hardly any scale has been developed to measure the barriers and enablers affecting presence of women directors on corporate boards. The present study therefore developed and validated a measurement scale for cordons and catalysts for women to enter the boardroom.

Using EFA five constructs namely Enablers, Organisational Barriers, Societal Barriers, Individual Barriers, and Entry Barriers have been identified. Scale comprises 27 statements asked on 7-point Likert type scale. ‘Enablers’ refers to facilitators who help women to reach corporate boards. ‘Organisational Barriers’ aims at explaining the hurdles women face because of the discriminatory practices of organisation in their pathway to corporate boards. ‘Societal Barriers’ refers to barriers arise due to the prime caretaker role assigned to women by the society. ‘Individual Barriers’ covers the hindrances related to personal impediments women have, and ‘Entry Barriers’ subscale covers the hurdles women face at the time of entry as well as their re-entry in the company after career break. The WOBS as well as its subscales show good internal consistency.

Confirmatory factor analysis ensured that measurement model has a good model fit. Convergent as well as discriminant validities were adequate. The WOBS therefore shows significant psychometric properties. Opinions of male as well as female employees working at different levels across different sectors were taken and all possible items relevant to barriers and enablers for women to reach corporate boards were taken, therefore the scale is a holistic one to measure the influences for women directors to reach corporate boards.

As theoretical implication, study reconfirms the structure of major barriers as individual, societal, and organisational barriers, along with the entry barriers for women in their career progression to boards. It also added enablers to structure of factors influencing women to reach boards. The constructed and validated WOBS has some practical implications. As it is a comprehensive scale to measure the barriers and enablers women face to reach corporate boards, it can be used to check the impact of inhibitors and facilitators on the career development of women to boards. WOBS can be used by managers and top management to reduce the impact of barriers and enhance the impact of enablers on the presence of women directors on corporate boards. The outcome of this research therefore will be helpful for the researchers, practitioners and managers in this area.

Future Research Scope

Social studies are not free from limitations likewise this study also has some limitations. Study is based on the data collected from employees of Delhi/NCR, therefore having a limited geographical scope; however, the inhibitors and facilitators faced by women in their progression to corporate boards are almost similar across the country, therefore the scale is applicable to other parts of the country as well. The study is quantitative in nature and to understand the experiences of women in their career journey, qualitative approach is crucial so in future quantitative as well qualitative study can be done to understand the topic well. Education sector was excluded in the present study, a separate study can be considered for development of the scale or applicability of the developed scale. In total, the developed and validated WOBS is a comprehensive scale to measure the cordons and catalysts for gender diversity on boards.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Sunita

Shital Jhunjhunwala

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