As the world recognizes International Women’s Day on March 8, the state of gender diversity on corporate boards faces a stark reality. Equilar’s Q4 2024 Gender Diversity Index (GDI) remained at 0.60 for the third consecutive quarter, highlighting stagnation in the progress toward gender parity across the Russell 3000. A GDI of 1.0 represents equal representation of men and women on corporate boards.

The slowdown in female representation on boards could be a result of the rise of recent anti-DEI movements that have created significant headwinds for diversity efforts. The projected timeline for reaching gender parity has experienced a notable setback. After years of steady progress, the estimated year for achieving parity regressed to 2039—the most distant projection since 2017, when the estimate was 2048.

Although women’s overall representation on boards has grown from 15.1% to 30.1% since the GDI’s inception, this growth has plateaued since Q2 2024. The deceleration in the rate of growth is also evident: between 2021 and 2022, female board representation increased by 16.9%, but this slowed to 8.1% between 2022 and 2023, and further to just 4.5% between 2023 and 2024.

A key factor contributing to this slowdown is the declining percentage of women who are filling new director seats. In Q4 2024, only 27.1% of newly appointed directors were women—the lowest percentage since Q2 2017. Overall, the annual percentage of newly appointed female directors in 2024 was 31.7% compared to the 38.7% recorded in 2023, a substantial decrease of 18.1%.

Despite the setbacks, there are some encouraging signs. Women continue to hold multiple board seats at a higher rate than their male counterparts—24.8% versus 16.6% in Q4 2024—a trend consistent since 2016. Furthermore, 63 boards had no female board members in Q4 2024, down from 69 boards in the previous quarter.

About Equilar

Equilar is the leading provider of executive intelligence solutions. The Company's expertise in relationship intelligence drives state-of-the-art business development and CRM applications, board and executive recruitment, and compensation and governance strategies. Equilar integrates its extensive database of executive profiles with natural language processing and machine learning AI to enable real-time relationship analytics and targeted outreach for its global clients. Equilar's commitment to excellence has made it the go-to solution for over 1,000 companies, including 75% of the Fortune 500, top PE/VC firms and leading professional services entities. Learn more at www.equilar.com.

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