Chapter 6: Why are There So Few Women on Boards?: Voices From the Boardroom in the United States

Data from the most recent Catalyst Women in S&P 500 Companies pyramid indicate that women currently hold 21.2% of board seats, as of February 2, 2018 (Catalyst, 2018). According to the 2014 Survey of Women on Boards conducted by MSCI ESG Research, men held close to 90% of board seats at the largest and best-known companies in the world. While studies indicate some progress for women directors, this progress continues to be extremely slow. Specifically, the percentage of female directors has gone up by 1.4% since 2013 and by a total of only 3.1% since 2009 (MSCI ESG Research, 2014).¹ Research conducted by Spencer Stuart (2015) based on the S&P 500 as of May 15, 2015, showed that, even though boards included in their index elected 376 new independent directors during the 2015 proxy year—an average of 0.78 new directors per board—less than a third of them (31%) were women.