For the first time, there’s a woman on every S&P 500 board. But they’re still in the minority

But strain from lawmakers wasn’t the solely cause for the uptick in gender variety.

“What we think really made an impact on increasing the number of women in the boardroom was pressure from institutional investors, and the promise of accountability and measurement from that audience,” mentioned Julie Daum, who leads Spencer Stuart’s North American Board Practice.

That push will proceed, however additional positive aspects could not come as shortly as advocates hope as a result of board openings do not come up that often.

There are, nonetheless, methods to spice up turnover, equivalent to setting time period limits and necessary retirement ages for administrators and even growing the dimension of a board by a couple of seats.

“It will be difficult for boards to make meaningful progress in improving diversity unless they embrace more frequent turnover,” Daum mentioned. “It should be noted that year-over-year, we find that companies with new, independent directors and more significant diversity in the boardroom benefit from a business performance standpoint.”

When it involves working boards, girls are few and much between. Spencer Stuart, as an example, studies that amongst impartial board chairs, solely seven girls — simply 4% of the whole — maintain that title.

The gender variety numbers are barely higher on the subject of the administrators who run particular person board committees (e.g., audit, compensation and governance). Spencer Stuart discovered roughly a quarter of S&P 500 board committee chairs are girls.