Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, in New York.
Quotas may not be necessary, anyway; rather, the market may simply open the door to gender diversity. Romero says that, if women wield their buying power to patronize and invest in businesses with female leadership, "they're not going to need quotas."
[Read about the Silicon Valley gender gap.]
The market might promote businesswomen in another way, says Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forte Foundation, an organization that promotes women in business. She believes that having more women leaders makes a business more profitable, and that U.S. firms may simply be forced to adapt.
"I think it's something that business is going to have to do, thinking about their competitiveness and how it's going to affect the bottom line if the rest of the world is moving that direction," she says.
Danielle Kurtzleben is a business and economics reporter for U.S. News & World Report. Connect with her on Twitter at @titonka or via E-mail at dkurtzleben@usnews.com.
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