Rip that “Slow progress is still progress” inspirational poster right off the wall.
Its ever-optimistic worldview is not well supported by the latest tracking gender diversity on corporate boards, produced by Crunchbase and Him For Her.
Overall, women hold jobs than men, representing 50%+ of the US workforce. Yet this annual study of 667 private US companies — representing ~$200B in funding and 265k+ employees — shows that men still hold 91% of executive board seats.
Tech leads the way in not leading the way
The only “good” news for the tech sector here is that everyone else is still awful, too.
- Life sciences outpaced tech, but while 75% of life science boards have at least one woman (compared to tech’s 61%), their overall numbers remain atrocious — just 19% of directors are women, and only 5% women of color.
- Of all surveyed companies, 32% of boards have no women whatsoever; 76% of them don’t have a single woman of color.
A reason for this imbalance, per the study’s authors: an overreliance on execs’ personal networks to source board candidates.
- Their proposed solution: increasing the number of independent board seats — women fill a comparatively higher share of those roles.
For one low-bar positive…
…this survey saw a first: There are finally more women of color on boards than men named “Dave” or “David.” Cool.
- And yes, the aforementioned 32% of companies without women in their boardrooms is rotten, but that number does mark a YoY improvement of 7 percentage points.
The most baffling part: It’s just plain good business to have a more diverse board. Per the study, companies with at least one female board member raised 16% more money than their all-male counterparts.