Deloitte Study Highlights Gains on Diversity in S&P 500; Diligent Looks at “Lavender Ceiling”
A study organized by the Alliance for Board Diversity, collaborating with Deloitte for the 2016, 2018, and 2020 censuses, examined and chronicled the representation of women and minorities on public company boards of directors across America’s largest companies. The Missing Pieces Report, 6th edition, highlights the state of equitable representation of women and minorities on corporate boards. According to the report, “advancement is still very incremental, with goals of achieving proportional representation to the presence of women and minorities in the US population sometimes multiple decades away at current rates of change.” A few findings:
- White women made the largest percentage increase in board seats gained in both the Fortune 100 and Fortune 500, larger than any other group or gender, a gain of 34 seats (15%) in the Fortune 100 and 209 seats (21%) in the Fortune 500.
- In 2020, nearly 36% (more than one-third) of diverse board seats are occupied by persons on multiple Fortune 500 boards.
- Minority men show no substantive increase in their rate of representation in either the Fortune 100 or 500, which the study says is concerning, as their rate of representation in the Fortune 500 has been growing at less than 0.5% per year since 2010. African American/Black men lost one seat in the Fortune 100 and five seats in the Fortune 500.
- In the Fortune 500, 974 board seats were filled by directors new to Fortune 500 boards, those not present on boards in the 2018 census.3 Of those 974 board seats, 81% were filled by White directors, with 53.8% filled by White men. Of the directors new to the Fortune 100, 79.9% of board seats were filled by White directors, with 52.1% filled by White men, an increase from 51.1% in the last edition of the census (2018).
Meanwhile, a blog post by Diligent explores an obstacle to diversity and inclusion that it says remains stubbornly resistant: the lavender ceiling. “The lavender ceiling is the barrier faced by LGBTQ+ people, akin to the glass ceiling women have traditionally encountered in the workplace,” according to Diligent. “These ceilings limit career progress and stifle diversity at organizations’ upper levels.” The post discusses the role that boards can play in dismantling the lavender ceiling.