After a solid decade of stronger gains, the proportion of women on corporate boards ticked up just a tenth of a percentage point between mid-2024 and June 30 of this year.
Using data provided by Equilar, 50/50 Women on Boards announced that women now hold 30.1% of board seats at Russell 3000 Index companies, up from 30% a year ago. The percentage had risen by more than one percentage point annually from 2017 to 2023.
The proportion of women of color on the companies’ boards fared even worse, declining over the past year from 7.7% to 7.4%. That was a departure from regular annual increases; just four years ago, women of color represented 4.4% of the index.
One in seven of the companies, or 14%, now have gender-balanced boards, up one point from 2024. More than half of them, or 58%, are either gender-balanced or have at least three women on the board, also a one-point increase. That still leaves about two in five companies with two or fewer female board members.
The stalled progress comes during a year of heightened pressure on diversity initiatives, following a series of executive orders by President Trump targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the public and private sectors.
“Progress toward gender parity on boards faces intensifying headwinds,” Equilar wrote in its research report. “Political and legal challenges to [DEI] initiatives created uncertainty for companies, prompting some to scale back commitments.”
The trend “risks treating diversity as a check-the-box exercise rather than a strategic advantage,” said Equilar CEO David Chun.
Among the Russell 3000 companies, 46 have fewer women on their boards than they did in mid-2024. A majority of these firms (29) moved from two women to one, eight companies moved from three plus women to two and nine moved from one woman to none.
The data shows that the larger the company, the more women it has on its board, on average. Companies in the Russell 100 have 35% of their board seats filled by women, compared to 26.1% for the Russell 2001-3000 cohort.
Among industry sectors, utilities have the most female board members (35.5%), followed by consumer staples and real estate. The fewest are found at financial services and energy companies (26.4% and 27.8%, respectively).
Among U.S. states, companies based in Minnesota have the largest proportion of women on their boards (33.3%), followed closely by Washington, California and Illinois, all of them over 32%. California, though, dropped from first place last year after a decline of 1.6 percentage points.
On the other end of the spectrum is Nevada at 23.3% (down 3.2 points from last year), followed by Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina.
