#GAReads | Big company boards have more women, but numbers still low
“More women are on big company boards, but the numbers are still shockingly low”:
Today, women hold an average of 25% of board seats at S&P 500 companies, up from 15% a decade ago, according to data from BoardEx. Women now account for at least a third of the board seats at each of 122 companies on the index. Five years ago, that was only true at 40 companies.
Looking more broadly at the 1,056 companies combined between the S&P 500 and the Fortune 1000, which also includes big private businesses, a total of 26 companies have boards that have reached gender parity, meaning at least half their members are women. Among those companies are Amazon, Best Buy, CBS, General Motors, Navient and Tupperware Brands.
That's certainly progress. But 26 is still a very small number. And the fact remains that, in 2019, women still hold fewer than a third of board seats at the majority of large public and private US companies.