Although women and minorities have made small gains in recent years in business leadership -- and there are scores of success stories to point to -- that only tells a part of the story. Despite recent gains and more women being recruited with skills in areas like technology, white men still hold a majority of board seats and other top leadership positions in Fortune 500 companies. Click through to read the whole story. nytimes.com - Women and minorities occupy nearly 31 percent of the board seats of Fortune 500 companies, a small increase over the last four years, a new study has found.
While that is the highest level in the six years of the study, white men continue to hold more than two-thirds of the positions.
The data for 2016 — from the Alliance for Board Diversity, an association of groups promoting inclusion of women and minorities in boardrooms, and Deloitte, a professional services firm — underscores that companies have made only incremental progress in promoting diversity in boardrooms.
Corporate boardrooms with directors of varied backgrounds are still relatively unusual. Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee behemoth, drew public notice last month when it announced that it would add three minority directors. If approved by shareholders, the expanded 14-person board will be 29 percent women and 36 percent minorities.
Those percentages are seldom matched by other large companies, according to the new study, “Missing Pieces Report: The 2016 Board Diversity Census of Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards.”
by Elizabeth Olson, The New York Times
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