Paul Hastings Latest Report on Women in the Boardroom

I wanted to share with you Paul Hastings recently launched report Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women in the Boardroom – A Study of Major Global Exchanges. It looks at how exchanges around the world approach gender diversity for their listed companies.

Three things I found interesting:

1. New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia require listed companies to disclose the gender composition of their boards and evaluate their performance.

2. Actual gender parity numbers in Europe are improving significantly, despite not having diversity-related regulations. The number of women on boards grew from 12.5% to 20% since 2011, and the number of all male boards dropped from 21 to 2. Has the threat of legislation that would force corporate boards to increase women’s presence on listed companies to 40% by 2020 prompted this change?

3. The U.S. has taken little to no action in addressing the lack of diversity on boards of listed companies and it shows – in the last four years the number of women on Fortune 500 boards has only grown 1.2%.