All S&P 500 Companies Now Have Women on Boards

There is now a woman on the board of every S&P 500 company. 

Copart, a Dallas-based used car seller, was the last company in the index without a female member until it announced earlier this week that it had appointed Diane Morefield to its board of directors.

Morefield, 61, is the chief financial officer of real estate investment firm CyrusOne and served as a real estate banker with Barclays Bank earlier in her career.

Female participation on corporate boards has slowly increased over the years. According to a report by Equilar, a research firm that analyzes company’s boards, one in eight S&P 500 boards was all-male in 2012. Women now make up 27% of all board seats, a nearly 17% jump from 2012.

Increased pressure from big investors like BlackRock, changing public sentiment in the #MeToo era and research linking board diversity to better financial performance have all spurred companies to recruit more women to their boards. 

State legislation has also played a role. In 2018, California became the first state to mandate that all publicly traded companies domiciled there have at least one woman on their board of directors by the end of 2019.

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