Target 5.5: Full participation and equal leadership opportunity
Ensure women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Women's leadership in economic life is directly a corporate-governance matter. Board and executive composition is decided by boards and ratified by shareholder votes, so owners are a necessary actor. The Thirty Percent Coalition reports its investor 'Adopt a Company' campaign influenced more than 500 public companies to appoint a woman director, many for the first time. As You Sow's Workplace Equity Scorecard rates Russell 1000 companies on 31 indicators of recruitment, retention and promotion disclosure broken down by gender, race and ethnicity. The regulatory backstop is weak. On December 11, 2024 the Fifth Circuit vacated the SEC's approval of Nasdaq's board diversity rules by a 9-8 vote. That leaves no US mandatory rule and makes shareholder voting the main remaining lever for corporate leadership. Political and public-life leadership still depends on governments and parties, so owners supply a necessary input while others must act on the rest of the target.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Corporate Board Diversity: A Comment from Thirty Percent Coalition, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, 2023-12-31
- Fifth Circuit Vacates SEC's Approval of Nasdaq Board Diversity Rules, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (Simpson Thacher & Bartlett), 2025-01-12
- As You Sow Racial Justice, Workplace Equity Scorecards Expand to Include Russell 1000 Companies, As You Sow, 2021-11-16
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates the investor Adopt a Company campaign, in which institutional investors write to companies and file board diversity shareholder proposals asking for women and people of color in every director candidate pool; 517 engaged companies had appointed a woman director since 2012.
Runs a Workplace Equity initiative, launched in 2018, that engages companies to disclose hiring, promotion and retention rates by gender and race and to release consolidated EEO-1 data, and reports that nearly 90 percent of S&P 100 companies now release or have committed to release EEO-1 forms, up from 20 percent in 2020.
2 campaigns on record
Adopt a Rooney Rule committing to include women and people of color in every board candidate pool, document it in governance materials, and disclose board composition by gender, race and ethnicity.
Result: 28 board diversity proposals filed in 2021, 22 withdrawn after agreements
In the 2020 to 2021 cycle 127 engaged companies appointed women directors, including 65 with previously all-male boards.
Adopt a policy requiring that women and people of color be considered in every search for directors and for the chief executive.
Result: 13 of 17 companies adopted the policy and proposals were withdrawn; proposals at A.J. Gallagher, Berkshire Hathaway and Expeditors International went to a vote in May 2020, results not stated in source
Thirteen companies adopted board and CEO diversity search policies.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.