by Heidrick & Struggles
More than 38% of all independent board seats filled by Fortune 500 companies in 2017 went to women. That’s the largest percentage of new female directors since we began tracking the figure in 2009—yet progress remains slow. What is the current status of appointments of women to boards?
In 2017, Fortune 500 companies filled 358 vacant or newly created board seats with independent directors. Few leadership positions are more consequential: Fortune 500 boards oversee companies that together account for two-thirds of the US GDP, with $12.8 trillion in revenues, $1.0 trillion in profits, $21.6 trillion in market value, and 28.2 million employees worldwide.
That is why for the ninth consecutive year we have captured the key attributes of new appointees—their demographics, experience, and functional roles, among other factors; mapped how those attributes flowed onto boards in each industry; and identified trends in their continuing evolution. Following are some of our key findings:
* A little more than 38% of appointments of women to boards—137 board seats—went to women in 2017. This marks the highest proportion of women appointed to boards in the nine-year history of Board Monitor and is the biggest year-on-year increase we have ever recorded—a jump of more than 10 percentage points. While in 2016 women lost some ground and it appeared that they would not reach parity with male director appointments until 2027, now we project that women will first reach parity with men with the new class of directors in 2025.
