今年4月，珍妮弗·特哈達和珍妮弗·海曼在加入雅詩蘭黛董事會時，兩人都已習慣收到各種董事會的邀請了。“不少公司跟我聯系過。”衣柜租賃創業公司Rent the Runway首席執行官海曼表示。擔任云計算公司PagerDuty首席執行官的特哈達也回想起，之前一個月都能收到好幾次邀請。“有時一個星期就有好幾次。”她表示。

也難怪合格的女性董事變成香餑餑。現在全男性的董事會受到越來越多指責，因為投資者紛紛要求多元化，而#MeToo運動也促使人們重新看待女性在商業世界里的位置。

但并非所有公司都積極響應增加女性董事的呼聲。現成就有例子：2018年《財富》美國500強公司里有12家一位女性董事都沒有。

首先要說清楚，這些全男性董事會只是少數情況，總體情況在向好的方向發展。五年前《財富》美國500強里還有42家沒有女性董事；10年前有69家。

我們想從這群固守不化的公司里找共同點，但沒發現什么規律。其中四家在能源行業，兩家是金融公司，兩家在食品和飲料領域。三家總部在紐約市，三家在得州，其他分布在美國各地。雇員人數多的有89000人（伊坎集團），也有規模比較小只有1607人的（福四通集團）。

不過這些公司也確實有共同點：管理層里女性都極少。據提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件，12家公司里一共只有三位女性高管。

By the time Jennifer Tejada and ?Jennifer Hyman joined the board of Estée Lauder in April, both were accustomed to being deluged with opportunities to claim a seat at the boardroom table. “Quite a few ?companies have approached me,” says Hyman, CEO of wardrobe-?rental startup Rent the Runway. Tejada, CEO of cloud-computing company PagerDuty, recalls fielding inbound inquiries multiple times a month. “Sometimes multiple times a week,” she says.

It’s no wonder qualified female director candidates are being hounded. The all-male board is entering endangered species territory, as investors ratchet up demands that companies diversify and the #MeToo movement prompts a reexamination of women’s place in the business hierarchy.

But not all corporate ears are attuned to the cries for more female directors. Case in point: Twelve companies on the 2018 Fortune 500 lack a single female board member.

To be clear, these all-male bastions are outliers, with the trend going in the right direction. Five years ago there were 42 Fortune 500 companies without women directors; 10 years ago, 69.

It’s natural to look for commonalities among the holdouts, but few jump out. Four are in the energy sector, two are financial companies, and two operate in the food and beverage world. Three are based in New York City, three in Texas, and the rest are scattered around the country. Their employee headcounts range from 89,000 (Icahn) to a modest 1,607 (INTL FCStone).

The companies do, however, share one thing: a dearth of women in other top jobs. Among the 12 firms, there are just three women among the executives identified in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

相關公司沒有提供解釋。12家公司里有11家沒有回復《財富》雜志的置評請求。只有農業合作企業CHS公司回復了。一位發言人表示，CHS董事會“完全由農場主”提名選出。

從某種意義上說，《財富》在此列出這些公司也是一種呼吁。但我們并不是第一個提醒的。2017年3月，指數基金巨頭道富環球投資管理公司就采取相當特別的方式指出問題，當時，其將著名的“無畏女孩”雕像放在華爾街公牛雕像對面，呼吁公司聘請更多女性加入董事會。普華永道管理洞見中心主管寶拉·盧普稱，此舉“非常重要”，部分原因也是后來發生的一些事。

2017年8月，被動投資者先鋒基金在要求美國公司改善公司治理時就提出，應增加性別多樣性。5個月后，全球最大的基金管理公司貝萊德也提出類似警告，第一次公開宣布被投公司董事會應有至少兩名女性董事。盧普表示，在美國，主要是投資者施加壓力，而在法國、德國和意大利等國，主要是通過限制董事會成員人數，女性一定要達到聯邦規定比例才可以。

投資者表示，董事會多元化是商業成功的關鍵。道富和先鋒引用研究稱，女性董事人數較多的公司業績往往高過人數較少的公司。貝萊德稱多元化公司決策更加明智，該說法也有相關研究支持，研究稱多元團隊更可能重新審視事實從而保持客觀性。

沃頓商學院教授凱瑟琳·克萊恩表示，通過綜合分析可看出董事會多元化與業績之間存在“微小但正面”的聯系，但她也擔心此類研究會對女性造成負擔。她指出，研究的目的不是想讓男性證明只要聘請女性就能提升業績。

說到這里，過去五年里，12家公司中確實有7家的總回報率低于《財富》美國500強平均水平。（CHS公司目前是私有狀態，Plains GP于2013年上市，其他三家的回報率高于平均水平。）

對某些人來說，該問題也有道德層面考慮。紐約州審計官托馬斯·迪納波利于3月宣布，該州共同退休基金將根據公司董事會性別構成投票，他表示有些公司仍然沒有女性董事“不合情理”。

但《財富》美國500強里的其他488家公司也不應占據道德高地。2018年榜單里的公司總市值高達21.6萬億美元，美國人口里51%是女性。然而據薪酬調查公司Equilar統計，截至3月31日，今年榜單里只有三家公司董事會男女比例與人口比例相符。即便加上特哈達和海曼，雅詩蘭黛公司董事會里的女性也只占到47%。（財富中文網）

本文首發于2018年6月1日出版的《財富》雜志。

譯者：Pessy

審校：夏林

The businesses themselves offer few explanations. Eleven of the 12 did not reply to Fortune’s requests for comment. Only CHS responded. A spokesperson said that the board of the agricultural cooperative is nominated and elected “exclusively by our farmer-owners.”

Fortune is, in a sense, calling out these companies by listing them here. But we are far from the first to blow the whistle. In March 2017 index-fund giant State Street Global Advisors re-upped the issue in dramatic fashion, planting its now famous Fearless Girl statue across from Wall Street’s Charging Bull as it demanded that companies add more women to their boards. Paula Loop, head of PwC’s Governance Insights Center, says that move was “a really big deal”—in part because of what happened next.

In August 2017 passive investor Vanguard cited gender diversity in its demand that U.S. companies improve their governance. BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, issued a similar warning five months later, stating publicly for the first time that the companies it invests in should have at least two female directors. In the U.S., says Loop, such investor pressure is now assuming a similar role to the one played by quotas in countries like France, Germany, and Italy, where women must account for a federally mandated share of board seats.

According to the investors, diverse boards are key to business success. State Street and Vanguard cite studies that show companies with more women directors outperform rivals without them. BlackRock argues that diverse groups make better decisions, a stance backed by research that finds that nonhomogenous teams are more likely to reexamine facts and maintain objectivity.

Katherine Klein, a Wharton professor, says meta-analysis shows a “tiny but positive” association between board diversity and financial performance, but she takes issue with the burden such studies foist on women. We don’t ask men to prove that simply adding them to a company’s board will boost its performance, she notes.

In this case, seven of the companies underperformed the Fortune 500 in total returns over the past five years. (CHS is private, Plains GP went public in 2013, and the remaining three had better returns.)

For some, the issue also has an ethical dimension. When New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced in March that the state’s common retirement fund would vote on directors based on their boards’ gender makeup, he called it “unconscionable” that some companies still have no female directors.

But the 488 Fortune 500 companies not mentioned here should not necessarily assume moral high ground. Firms on the 2018 ranking control a combined $21.6 trillion in market value in a nation that’s 51% female. Yet as of March 31, just three boards on this year’s list had reached gender parity or better, according to Equilar. Estée Lauder’s board is nearing that esteemed territory. With Tejada and Hyman, its female representation reached 47%.

This article originally appeared in the June 1, 2018 issue of Fortune.