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Benchmarking: Board Diversity Disclosure

By Randi Morrison posted 10-22-2024 07:37 PM

  

KPMG revealed these board diversity disclosure statistics for the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 (R3000) as of June 2024:

Board gender diversity

  • 99% of the S&P 500 and 88% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s gender composition.
  • 53% of the S&P 500 and 25% of the R3000 disclose gender by individual directors’ names.
  • 92% of the S&P 500 and 82% of the R3000 disclose the number or percentage of directors identifying as gender-diverse.

Board racial/ethnic diversity

  • 98% of the S&P 500 and 85% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s racial/ethnic diversity. Note that half of the R3000 are subject to Nasdaq’s board diversity disclosure standard.
  • 43% of the S&P 500 and 20% of the R3000 disclose race/ethnicity by individual directors’ names.
  • 45% of the S&P 500 and 57% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of directors identifying with particular racial/ethnic categories.
  • 74% of the S&P 500 and 39% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of racially/ethnically diverse directors on the board.

Board LGBTQ

  • 29% of the S&P 500 and 40% of the R3000 disclose in some fashion their board’s LGBTQ composition.
  • 9% of the S&P 500 and 5% of the R3000 disclose LGBTQ status by individual directors’ names.
  • 24% of the S&P 500 and 37% of the R3000 disclose the number/percentage of directors identifying as LGBTQ.

Director search

  • 100% of the S&P 500 and 99% of the R3000 disclose that they incorporate diversity generally in their director search criteria.
  • 93% of the S&P 500 and 79% of the R3000 disclose gender diversity among their search criteria.
  • 93% of the S&P 500 and 78% of the R3000 disclose racial/ethnic diversity among their search criteria.
  • 17% of the S&P 500 and 17% of the R3000 disclose sexual orientation diversity among their search criteria.

Director self-identified race

  • 72% of the S&P 500 and 70% of the R3000 disclose their directors’ self-identified racial categories by director name or by number or percentage of the board identifying with a particular racial/ethnic category.

The post provides examples of disclosures that correspond with the foregoing practices.

See our recent report: “Nasdaq Companies: Disclosing the Absence of Board Diversity” and additional resources on our Board Diversity page.

                      This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!

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