In 2017, “The Big Three” institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led American corporations to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016. Firms increased diversity by identifying candidates beyond managers’ existing networks and by placing less emphasis on candidates’ executive experience. Firms also promoted more female directors to key board positions, indicating firms’ responses went beyond tokenism. Our results highlight index investors’ ability to effectuate broad-based governance changes and the impact of investor buy-in in increasing corporate-leadership diversity.

2017 年，“三巨头”机构投资者发起了提高公司董事会性别多元化的运动。我们估计，他们的竞选活动导致美国公司在 2019 年增加的女性董事人数至少是 2016 年的 2.5 倍。公司通过在经理现有网络之外识别候选人并减少对候选人的高管经验的重视来增加多样性。公司还提拔了更多的女性董事担任重要的董事会职位，这表明公司的反应不仅仅是象征性的。我们的结果突出了指数投资者实现基础广泛的治理变革的能力，以及投资者支持对增加公司领导层多样性的影响。