Women may not see boardroom parity for 40 years
Women, who make up half of the American workforce, may be 40 years or more from parity with men on U.S. corporate boards, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.
About 23 percent of open seats in the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index went to women in 2014, according to the GAO, Bloomberg reported. If that figure rose to about 50 percent — or half of all openings — boards would be evenly split between women and men by roughly 2055, the report said. Women held about 16 percent of board seats in the S&P 1500 in 2014, up from 8 percent in 1997.
The U.S. has resisted regulation to speed up gender equality on boards, the article said. More than 350 of 1,846 public companies have no women on their governing boards, and another 628 have only one.
The GAO said several factors inhibit more rapid change, including a lack of women in executive positions and low turnover of board seats. About 600 board seats change hands each year among the S&P 1500, or about 4 percent of the total.
See more in-depth findings from the report at Bloomberg.com.
Trending News
