Women on corporate boards in the Washington area increases slightly

Published November 7, 2018 by Veronica Garabelli

The number of women serving on corporate boards in the Washington, D.C. region increased slightly in 2018.

Still, women hold just 15.8 percent, or 243, of the 1,538 board seats at the 170 publicly held companies in the Washington region, a 1.1 percent increase from 2017, according to an annual study by The Leadership Foundry, a program of Women in Technology.

Of those 170 companies, 14.7 percent, or 25, had three or more women serving on their boards. That is up from 12 percent last year.

The study also found that the number of companies in the region without any women on their boards has decreased to 34. That was down from 43 in 2017 and 89 in 2010.

“While we have increased the number of women serving on corporate boards in our region, we still have a long way to go to achieve parity,” Denise Hart, chair of The Leadership Foundry, said in a statement.

The Leadership Foundry identifies and prepares women to serve on corporate boards.