Claim Your Seat: Women of Color on California's Public Company Boards

California continues to lead the way in focusing on inclusion and diversity in our places of employment and leadership ranks. In the two years before SB 826 was enacted, just 208 corporate board seats were newly filled by women. In the two years since, that number grew to 739. And in the first quarter of 2021, women filled 45% of public company board appointments in California, an indicator that women’s representation on boards is on the rise.

Although women now hold 26.5% of California’s public company board seats, only 6.6% of board seats are held by women of color, even though females
of color comprise 32% of our state’s population.1 When it comes to Latinas,
the disparity is truly shocking. Latinas make up more than 19% of California’s population and Latinos comprise over 37% of California’s workforce,2 yet Latinas hold only 1% of the seats on California’s public company boards.