By Ross Kerber, Bianca Flowers and Simon Jessop
July 28 (Reuters) - As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his campaign against diversity programs, appointments of women and racial minorities to S&P 500 boards have dropped to their lowest level in more than a decade, threatening to unwind years of gains in corporate boardroom diversity.
The shift is evident in new research by recruiting firms that study leadership diversity and Reuters interviews with more than a dozen boardroom recruiters, investors
and human resource analysts.
It follows a series of Trump administration actions targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives known as DEI. Across corporate America, major investors who once pressed companies to diversify their boards have retreated, while legal challenges have upended DEI policies in recent years.
RECORD DIVERSITY MASKS SHIFT IN NEW APPOINTMENTS
New data released on Tuesday by global executive search firm Spencer Stuart shows diversity in board appointments has steadily declined since peaking at 72% in 2021 and 2022. Of the 364 new independent directors named to S&P 500 boards during the year ended April 30, 40% were women or racial minorities, the lowest level since 2014, when 39% of incoming directors were diverse, according to the leadership advisory firm.
On S&P 500 boards today, diverse directors hold 49.3% of the seats, slightly down from a record of 49.6% in 2024 and 2025, according to Spencer Stuart.
Recruiters and analysts interviewed by Reuters say those recent highs reflect years of appointments following the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. But while board diversity remains near a historic high, the lineup of new directors is becoming markedly less diverse, suggesting those gains may prove difficult to sustain if current hiring patterns persist and a larger share of new board seats goes to white men, the recruiters and industry analysts say.
George Anderson, co-leader of Spencer Stuart's North American Board Advisory Practice, said boards are responding to changing legal, regulatory and political pressures. He said one driver of the decline in diverse appointments is a shift toward recruiting current and former CEOs, who accounted for 37% of new directors this year, the highest level in 15 years. Companies see those executives as well suited to navigate complexity, but the CEO talent pool is less diverse, he said.
The shift in boardroom appointments coincides with a sharp decline in the number of companies publicly citing diversity as a factor in board recruitment. Some 12% of S&P 500 companies now disclose using some form of diversity criteria in board decisions, down from 23% in 2025, when President Donald Trump began his second term, and 48% in 2024 under President Joe Biden, according to data for this year provided to Reuters by PeopleReturn, a human resources analytics firm. PeopleReturn shows board diversity peaked at nearly 50% this year.
Supporters say the initiatives help expand opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups and improve governance and decision-making, while Trump and other critics say they discriminate against white people and men and undermine merit-based advancement.
Kristin Hull, chief investment officer of Nia Impact Capital, which often lobbies tech companies on social issues, says the decline in appointments reflects a return to male-dominated corporate leadership.
"We were making such progress," she said. "Now the bro culture is alive and well."
However, conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has pushed companies, including Tractor Supply and John Deere, to roll back DEI in several high-profile social media campaigns, has welcomed the change.
"They were focused on all the wrong things, and it shows in their earnings," he said. Neither company returned requests for comment.
Asked about the rollback of corporate diversity programs, White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said Trump "was resoundingly elected with a mandate to end divisive, racist policies and restore merit and efficiency."
'OUR COUNTRY WILL BE WOKE NO LONGER'
Under Trump, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been tasked with rooting out what the administration calls illegal DEI practices that it says gave preferential treatment to women and racial minorities in hiring and promotions.
Many companies scrapped or reassessed their diversity initiatives before Trump's second term after the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that it was illegal to consider race in college admissions. Though the decision didn't cover corporate practices, it set off a cascade of legal threats against companies over a range of diversity initiatives.
Trump last year issued executive orders restricting certain DEI programs among federal contractors and within the federal government, then declared "our country will be woke no longer."
The Trump administration is threatening hefty fines for companies that do not comply.
IBM in April agreed to pay $17 million to resolve allegations it discriminated against some employees and failed to comply with Trump's orders calling DEI initiatives illegal for federal contractors.
The U.S. Justice Department alleged IBM prioritized diverse candidates in hiring, tying bonuses to hitting certain demographic targets in employment decisions. IBM, which was the first U.S. company to face action under Trump's anti-DEI directive over its employment practices, did not return requests for comment.
It denied any wrongdoing in the settlement agreement.
Shareholders, however, have shown little appetite for proposals seeking to weaken DEI. Three shareholder proposals put forward by conservatives targeting corporate DEI efforts won just 1.5% support on average at annual meetings in recent months, a typical rate.
BOARD RECRUITMENT SHIFTS AWAY FROM DIVERSITY
Even as overall board diversity remains near record levels, Reuters interviews with more than a dozen recruiters, investors and employees signaled companies are placing less emphasis on diversity in board recruitment.
That shift is evident at many companies that championed diversity initiatives after the #MeToo movement and the 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd, including Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs and American Express.
Goldman early last year dropped its requirement that companies it took public have at least two diverse board members, citing "legal developments" weeks after Trump signed his first executive order targeting diversity initiatives. A Goldman spokesperson said the firm still believes diversity enhances its performance and is critical to its financial success. J&J and Amex didn't return requests for comment.
INVESTOR RETREAT EASES PRESSURE FOR BOARD DIVERSITY
PeopleReturn CEO Josh Ramer said a retreat from DEI by top asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street eased pressure on companies to diversify their boards.
"All the big investors that were pushing for this have completely stopped mentioning it. Large-cap executives feel a lot less pressure to be talking about this," he said.
The fund managers' previous policies required some measure of diversity on company boards where they held stock. BlackRock, for instance, in late 2021 called for boards to be 30% diverse, while in 2022 Vanguard called for diversity of gender, race and ethnicity "at a minimum."
Both companies, however, stripped out that language last year. State Street dropped its expectation in February 2025 that women comprise at least 30% of major company boards.
All three asset managers declined to comment for this story.
In the C-suite, recruiters say diversity now carries less weight in executive searches. Women and racial minorities made up roughly 22% of all S&P 500 CEOs last year, down from 23% the year before, according to Spencer Stuart.
Spencer Stuart and PeopleReturn tracked race, ethnicity and gender of the board members based on self-identified information, supplemented by outside sources and other research.
"Today we hear more about 'the best person.' There's less currency for being a person of color than there once was," said Jeff Christian, CEO of executive headhunting firm Christian & Timbers.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston, Bianca Flowers in Chicago and Simon Jessop in London; Editing by Dawn Kopecki and Howard Goller)
