According to Winston & Strawn’s “Recent Executive Orders Are Reshaping DEI Disclosures in 2025 Proxy Statements,” 68 of the 74 Fortune 100 public companies modified their DEI-related disclosures in their 2025 proxy statements compared to their 2024 proxy statements. Among the year-over-year changes:
- Reduced frequency of “diversity” or “diverse”
- Qualified mentions of “diversity” with phrases such as “of experiences and backgrounds” instead of explicitly mentioning gender or race
- Minimized visibility of diversity matrices by, e.g., rendering them in gray scale, shrinking their size, or including them in less prominent sections of the proxy statement
- Repackaged the same information in a more scaled-back form
- Eliminated any mention of diversity
As to board diversity specifically, 38 companies highlighted women directors / general board gender diversity, 33 companies highlighted racially diverse directors, and two companies highlighted LGBTQ+ directors.
The post includes a side-by-side comparison of 2024 and 2025 text for two companies.
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This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!