Women in America’s boardrooms made strides as corporations shuffled their mostly White and male lineups in the face of the historic pushback in 2020.
Then came the backlash against diversity initiatives
Today, women occupy just shy of 3 in 10 company board seats in the nation’s largest companies, according to new data from 50/50 Women on Boards. At the peak a year ago, women business leaders held 30.4% of board seats in the Russell 3000, a benchmark that tracks the 3,000 largest publicly traded U.S. companies. Now their numbers have slipped below the 30% threshold first reached in 2024, according to 50/50 Women on Boards’ latest Gender Diversity Index report prepared with data firm Equilar.
Women of color have also lost ground. They held 7.3% of all board seats, down from 7.4% a year ago. “Progress toward gender-balanced corporate boards is slowing and, in some areas, reversing,” Heather Spilsbury, CEO of 50/50 Women on Boards, a nonprofit that advocates for greater diversity on corporate boards, told USA TODAY. Turnover on public company boards that average fewer than a dozen seats was already slow – about one seat a year.