At the start of the twentieth century, women made up a small proportion of shareholders in American publicly traded companies. By 1956, women were the majority of individual shareholders. Although this change in shareholder gender demographics happened gradually, it was evident early in the century: Before the 1929 stock market crash, women shareholders had come to outnumber men at some of America’s largest and most influential corporations, including AT&T, General Electric, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.

“Shareholder Proposal Settlements and the Private Ordering of Public Elections” Yale Law Journal, Volume 126, Number 2

Reform of campaign finance disclosure has stalled in Congress and at various federal agencies, but it is steadily unfolding in a firm-by-firm program of private ordering. Today, much of what is publicly known about how individual public companies spend money to influence federal, state, and local elections—and particularly what is known about corporate “dark money”—comes from disclosures that conform to privately negotiated contracts.

“Voting Rights in Corporate Governance: History and Political Economy” Southern California Law Review, 96 S. Cal. L. Rev. 881

Political voting rights have become the subject of sharp legal wrangling in American political elections and the focus of headlines and popular debate. Less attention has focused on American corporate elections, where something similar has been happening: the last two decades have witnessed significant unsettling of basic shareholder voting rights, including laws and practices that were mostly stable throughout the twentieth century. Today, shareholder voting rights are in flux and, increasingly, in controversy. This Article connects the current moment of instability to the last significant era of change in shareholder voting rights—the nineteenth century—and brings historical context to a new era of dynamic change.