As reported by the WSJ, a new milestone has finally been reached for board gender diversity: there are no longer any companies in the S&P 500 with all-male boards!

Reaching just that one milestone has not exactly been expeditious. According to the WSJ, one in eight S&P 500 boards was all male in 2012. In 2019, women hold 27% of all S&P 500 board seats, up from 17% in 2012—certainly an improvement, but still far from anyone’s idea of gender parity. Progress seems to be even slower among companies in the Russell 3000 where, the WSJ reports, as of the first quarter of 2019, 376 companies still had all-male boards (19.3% women overall), reflecting a decrease from 457 in the fourth quarter of 2018 (18.5% women).

According to an ISS publication on U.S. Board Diversity Trends in 2019, 45% of new board positions among the Russell 3000 were filled by women in 2019, up from 34% in 2018, and a substantial improvement compared to only 12% in 2008. Moreover, in contrast to “previous years, when the percentage of new female directors was higher at large-capitalization companies, the high rate of new female directors—at almost parity—is consistent across all market segments.” This shift may reflect, in part, various initiatives by large asset managers, such as BlackRock and State Street, seeking to impose, through their votes, their own mandates for more board gender diversity. (See this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) ISS also attributes some of the change to California’s new board gender diversity mandate, affecting almost 700 companies. (See this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) The WSJ reports that, of “the 94 public companies in California with all-male boards when the law passed in late 2018, about 60% have added at least one woman to their boards since….”

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