Still afloat: The anti-DEI wave hasn’t swept women CEOs aside
Take a look at the list of Fortune 500 company CEOs. Women business leaders have grown despite political resistance in the US. Meanwhile, diverse boards are likelier to appoint a woman CEO.
Progress for female executives has always been so slow and plodding that every milestone, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, gets celebrated. But recently, sounding the alarm for women in corporate America has supplanted cheering the wins. And no wonder —a growing list of data points signal that the right’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is chipping away at women’s progress toward the boardroom and corner office:
The proportion of women being appointed to boards has declined for the last two years. It will now take even longer for women to reach parity in the C-suite than was previously estimated.
Boards increasingly want a female executive who has taken the extra step of serving as president on their way to becoming chief executive officer—something they’re less likely to be required of male leaders. Or they’re no longer interested in considering a diverse slate of candidates when filling the top job. As one headline warned, “The job market is brutal for women executives."
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I’ve been one of those doom-and-gloom trackers myself. Last year, I wrote about how corporate women’s gains were falling victim to an anti-woke backlash.
There is a direct line between the progress women have seen over the past half-decade and the ways in which DEI has moved into the business mainstream. I was worried about what was happening to women in the workplace as those efforts were dismantled.
I am still worried. But there are also some green shoots that have made me more hopeful that some of the gains are enduring.
For one, the percentage of women running Fortune 500 companies hit a new high earlier this year and now sits at 11%. It is a paltry record, but it comes after two back-to-back years of 10.4%. The numbers are generally pointing in the right direction, so I’ll take it.
Driving the uptick were the eight women who were appointed CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the last year. They were all internal promotions. About a decade ago, the reverse was true, as most female CEOs at large companies were external hires. The about-face has some fretting that one pathway to the top job for women is closing.
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But there is a flip-side. The outside-hire route to the corner office has not always been a boon for women’s careers, even if it helped juice the overall numbers. A 2016 study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that outsider CEOs are more likely to be forced out—and because most big company female CEOs at that time were outsiders, they tended to be ousted at a higher rate than men.
It’s not a terrible thing that women are now more often climbing the ranks from inside rather than being tapped to come fix a troubled company. Maybe it will leave fewer stranded on the glass cliff and set up for failure.
The most promising shift, however, is the composition of corporate boards. Last month, data complied by ISS-Corporate for Bloomberg News found that as of 2024, Caucasian men no longer held the majority of board seats at S&P 500 companies. Women and non-Caucasian men now comprise 50.2% of those seats.
This is a profound change. Just half a decade ago, Caucasian men held about 60%. The data also showed that Caucasian men are in the minority among chairs of crucial board committees that choose new directors and CEOs.
How could such a thing happen in the midst of the DEI backlash?
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Changes inside the boardroom have made the shift toward more diverse directors stickier than the anti-woke crowd would like.
Boards often want to add members to the mix who have prior experience—requirements that once narrowed candidates to primarily Caucasian men. But the pool of women who now have that box checked is growing. And as companies grapple with developing technologies, their boards are increasingly willing to overlook a lack of board or C-suite experience for a director who has a deep background in areas such as AI. That’s opening new avenues for executives who are less likely to look like the status quo.
The implications are real for the C-suite, too; research has shown that more diverse boards are more likely to appoint a woman as CEO.
There is no denying that momentum for women who aspire to reach the top has slowed in recent times.
But let’s also look out for those signs that it’s not so easily reversed. That’s why we celebrated the wins to begin with—to show women that there’s good reason to keep climbing. ©Bloomberg
The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America.
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