Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women. Call it the Pence Effect, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he avoids dining alone with any woman other than his wife. In finance, the overarching impact can be, in essence, gender segregation.

“I never promoted a woman because she was a woman. I never demoted a woman because she was a woman. My issue is what do you do, what do you produce, how do you interrelate to the rest of the business,” Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments Inc., said at the REITweek investor conference in Manhattan. “I don’t think there’s ever been a, ‘We gotta get more p---y on the block, OK?’” Zell, 76, added, eliciting gasps and laughter from the hundreds at the gathering.

A global effort to bolster the number of women on corporate boards is taking longer than it should. But the recent performance of companies that lead their peers on this measure may accelerate change.An MSCI study published this month shows just seven companies in its key global index, comprised of more than 2,500 members, have boards that are dominated by women. But of these seven, more than half have outperformed their industry peers.