There are no longer any companies left on the S&P 500 with an all-male board.
Copart (CPRT) Inc., an online auto auction website, had been the last company on the index to appoint a woman to its board. On Tuesday, it changed that when it named Diane Morefield, the CFO of real estate investment trust CyrusOne, as a director.
The company also appointed Stephen Fisher, the former chief technology officer for eBay (EBAY), to its board.
Until recently, TripAdvisor (TRIP) was the other S&P 500 company that didn’t have any female directors, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. But the travel company appointed two women to its board in March.
The boards of S&P 500 firms are becoming more gender balanced, according to a new report from EY. The report said that 56% of firms on the index have at least three female directors, up 19% from three years ago.
The shift has been smaller among the S&P 1500, where the share of companies with three or more women on their boards is 34% for 2019. Still, that’s up 14% from three years ago.
More attention has been paid to the makeup of corporate boards amid calls for greater gender equity in the workplace and an increased sense of urgency to change things following the #MeToo movement, a recent report from Heidrick & Struggles found.
For example, the Fearless Girl statue that sits outside the New York Stock Exchange garnered international attention after investment management firm, State Street, commissioned it to raise awareness for the firm’s initiative to increase the number of women on corporate boards.
In addition, California passed a law last year requiring companies headquartered in the state to have at least one woman on their board of directors. Violators could face a penalty.
“Against this backdrop, women are joining boards at a faster pace, all-male boards are disappearing among the largest companies, and more investors are demonstrating their board diversity views through proxy voting,” EY concluded.
