Sheakley Updates

Women in the Workplace: Bringing Balance to the Board

Chelsea Bikner
Women in the Workplace
Reading time 3 Mins
Published on Aug 7
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The all-male board is officially a relic of the S&P 500 past. July 2019 saw online auto auction mega-company Copart Inc. add its first female member – bringing an end to the era of the all-male boardroom in America’s largest companies. With the emphasis on gender equality in the workplace coming into sharper focus every day, the number of women joining corporate boards and other positions of power continues to rise. Here are just a couple of ways that women in the workplace are taking a greater role in both business and government across the US.

Gender parity is within sight

In 2012, women held only 17% of all board seats in the US; today, women account for 27% of all board members. This increase has been a hard-fought battle, with the last S&P 500 company finally admitting its first female board member in July 2019.

Meanwhile, the boards of Fortune 500 companies are expected to achieve gender parity among the incoming class of directors by 2023. In 2018, 183 of the 462 newly appointed Fortune 500 board members were women – more than double the rate from a decade ago. For more on how women are changing the face of corporate culture, check out The Changing Role of Women in the Workplace.

Representing a new outlook

A century after Montana elected the first woman to Congress, the 2018 class of legislators featured 127 women. Women now make up 24% of voting lawmakers and hold four of the six non-voting House seats.

While both chambers have traditionally been slow to add female legislators, the growth of female members in the Senate has seriously lagged behind the House. With 102 women in the House and 25 in the Senate (an all-time high), the number of women in Congress still doesn’t quite match the gender makeup of the country, but the trend is pointing towards eventual gender parity.

Self-determination

More women than ever are taking a stand and forging their own path in business. Four out of every 10 US businesses are now owned by women. Generating $3.1 trillion in revenue, the number of female-owned businesses grew 58% from 2007 to 2018.

Social pressures

Changing public sentiment in the #MeToo era, research linking board diversity with better financial performance and pressure from investors have led more companies to recruit women to positions of authority. As women continue to break barriers in business, their positive impact on upper management, employment policies, and the social makeup of the workplace are beginning to be felt by the broader workforce. Check out The Wage Gap to learn more about the work that still needs to be done to achieve pay-based gender equity in the workplace.

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