Women on Boards Progress Report 2022
Video
February 13, 2023
MSCI has tracked board gender diversity every year since 2009. Our Women on Boards report highlights trends across markets and sectors for publicly listed companies. The annual review provides companies, researchers, and policymakers with an objective overview of the changing share of female representation at the board level as well as among CEO and CFO roles.
Gender diversity continued its slow climb in 2022
- After a noticeable slowdown in 2020, the rate of growth of women on boards continued its gradual recovery in 2022 in both developed and emerging markets, except for the U.S.
- The percentage of director seats held by women reached 24.5%, up from 17.9% in 2018, among the 2,811 constituents of the MSCI ACWI Index.
- Women representation on boards varied significantly by company domicile. France led the list with 46.1% of directorships held by women in 2022.
- Europe accounted for 15 out of the top 20 company domiciles by female representation on boards. Most of them had mandatory gender diversity quotas, signaling the value of initiatives to improve board gender diversity. See the visualization below for more.
Women on Boards — Who Is Picking up the Pace?
Women on Boards — Who Is Picking up the Pace?
The percentage of women on boards¹ at constituents of the MSCI ACWI Index has grown from 20.0% to 24.5% over the last three years.² The gender diversity of boards and its rate of change differed dramatically among constituents of various MSCI indexes and their domiciles, however. Using the interactive chart below, we note that women held 31.3% of total director seats at constituents of the MSCI World Index, as of October 2022. The index represents developed markets. In contrast, only 15.9% of board seats among constituents of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index were held by women. We found that the percentage of women on boards at Danish constituents of the MSCI World Index³ increased from 35.0% in 2021 to 42.4% in 2022. This was the highest increase during that period among all domiciles represented in the MSCI World Index. Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia⁴ have consistently had the lowest percentages of women on boards over the last three years among all domiciles in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. How to interact with this plot: Use the drop-down selectors at the bottom of the chart to pick which data groups, consisting of domiciles and MSCI indexes, to plot. Hover over any data point to learn more about the group's gender diversity data.Loading chart...
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The interactive chart shows changes in total director seats held by women per domicile for constituents of the MSCI ACWI Index, MSCI World Index and MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index over a three-year period from 2019 to 2022. Assessments of the board and index composition are as of October of each year. Boards of directors (one-tier board structure) and supervisory boards (two-tier board structure) were considered in this assessment.
Source: MSCI ESG Research LLC, November 2022. See report for more information. ¹Directorships at boards of directors (in a one-tier board structure) and supervisory boards (in a two-tier board structure) were considered in this assessment. ²Data covers constituents of the MSCI ACWI Index between 2019 and 2022. Assessments of the board and index composition are as of October of each year. ³Constituents of the MSCI World Index domiciled in Denmark. ⁴This refers to constituents of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index domiciled in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, respectively.
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