Women hold 29.9% of board seats at the largest publicly traded U.S. companies, slipping slightly below the 30% threshold reached in prior quarters and down from the Q1 2025 peak of 30.4%, according to the latest Gender Diversity Index Report.
The 2026 Q1 index, published by the nonprofit 50/50 Women on Boards with its data partner Equilar, included 2,843 active companies on the Russell 3000 Index and 26,077 board seats.
Board composition changed by 241 seats during the first quarter of 2026. Women gained 138 seats and lost 83 for a net increase of 55. Men gained 404 seats and lost 218 for a net increase of 186 seats. Although women continued to gain seats, men accounted for 77.2% of the change in board composition, underscoring that progress remains uneven, the report said.
Notably, 86.2% of seats gained by women were newly added board seats, while only 13.8% came from replacing male directors. This reinforces a consistent trend: women’s gains rely more heavily on board expansion than on intentional board refreshment, the report said.
Among states with a significant Russell 3000 presence, Minnesota and Washington continue to lead, with women holding 34% and 33.7% of board seats respectively. California, which has one of the largest markets in the index, reported 34.4% women on boards.
States that were noticeably below the national benchmark of 29.9% included Nevada (23.9%), Oklahoma (24.4%) and North Carolina (26.6%).
New Jersey, which has over two dozen companies on the Russell 3000 Index, was slightly below the 29.9% national average. In Q1 of 2026, women held 29.6% of corporate board seats, up slightly from 29.2% in Q4 of 2025. However, the number of gender balanced boards in New Jersey increased more significantly from 12.8% in Q4 of 2025 to 14.1% in Q1 of 2026.
Nationally, gender balanced boards declined from 383 companies to 375 companies representing 13.2% of all Russell 3000 companies.
