But most minority groups still hold a smaller share of board seats than their share of the total populationRacial and ethnic minorities now hold a fifth of board seats at Russell 3000 companies, up from 12% in 2019, but remain underrepresented, data from ISS Corporate Solutions showed on Tuesday.
“While this is a huge sea change in terms of the percentages, it still falls short of the ethnic breakdown of the US population,” said Marija Kramer, head of ISS Corporate Solutions, an arm of proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services. “It’s a watershed moment but probably not something to pat ourselves on the back too much about,” she said.
Many US companies now publish a breakdown of the backgrounds of their directors, sometimes on a person-by-person basis, helping ISS to estimate boardroom diversity in the Russell 3000, whose boards are often less diverse than bigger peers in the S&P 500.