Editor’s note: This article, distributed by The Associated Press, was originally published on The Conversation website. The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
Through the decades, corporate boards have been mostly white and mostly male.
That started changing in the early 1970s. Fueled by the historic gains of the Civil Rights Movement that broke down racial and gender barriers, a variety of social groups such as the National Black MBA Association and the National Organization for Women pressured corporations to build diversity programs into their management structures.
Over the years, a dramatic change has occurred. My latest research on the corporate boards of the top 50 companies from 2011 to 2023 shows that the percentage of whites dropped to 73.6%, the percentage of men dropped to 65.3% and, rather remarkably, the percentage of white men dropped below 50%, to 49.5%.
My research included reviewing the published names of the members of the boards of directors of the top 50 companies on the 2011 and 2023 Fortune 500 lists, as well as information on company websites about each of these hundreds of directors. I coded for gender, ethnicity and educational background.
Though the patterns differ for each of these demographic groups, the percentages of white women, Asian, Hispanic and Black Americans increased by different amounts as the percentage of white men decreased.
White female directors
The percentage of white females serving on boards at the top-50 companies increased from 16.8% in 2011 to 24.1% in 2023. All of these white women had undergraduate degrees, and almost two-thirds had advanced degrees, including in business, law and medicine. Many of them were current or former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Notably, and related to the increase in white female directors, between 2000 and 2020 there was a dramatic increase in the number of white female…
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