Boardroom Diversity Commitments Fade Amid Broad DEI Retreat

Fewer boards plan to add people of color or women to their director pools over the next year, according to a new survey indicating that a corporate slowdown in diversity, equity, and inclusion is accelerating at the very top.

Last year, 21% of directors surveyed by PwC said their boards planned to add more gender diversity to boardrooms. This year, that percentage fell to 9%. For racial diversity, numbers were even lower—6% of respondents say they plan to add racial diversity to boardrooms, down from 13% in 2024.

These numbers, released Wednesday, come from 638 public company board directors quizzed by the Big Four accounting and advisory firm for its annual report dissecting boardroom attitudes on corporate governance.

The report from PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, comes as corporations retreat from DEI or rebrand their initiatives to make them appear as politically neutral as possible. The Trump administration pledged earlier this year to investigate public companies for “illegal DEI,” leading businesses to scrap DEI mentions from public filings and websites, unlink executive compensation from sustainability and diversity metrics, and more.

In a related boardroom takeaway: More than half of directors say at least one of their fellow board members should be replaced. Much of that sentiment stems from the need for boards to evolve as they navigate turbulence and uncertainty in 2025, said Ray Garcia, who leads PwC’s Governance Insights Center.

Boards prioritized diverse director nominations in the 2010s but have been de-emphasizing demographic characteristics in the 2020s since even before Trump’s second term began, said Brian Kushner, senior managing director at FTI Consulting.A recent breakdown from consultancy Spencer Stuart reinforces that, showing diverse candidates filled 58% of new director appointments in 2024, down from 67% in 2023 and 72% in 2022.

Every board should aspire to install the best people possible, said Cindy Fornelli, a director at TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC. For years, women and people of color weren’t even a part of the search. But then, the pendulum swung the other way, she said.

The economic environment may be supercharging the pivot away from seeking diverse candidates. With questions circulating about tariffs, inflation, and other economic factors, boards are seeking CEOs with experience in stewarding companies through volatile conditions, said Hillary Sale, corporate governance professor at Georgetown University Law Center. That candidate pool, however, happens to skew white and male.

Among directors who advocated for replacing members, 18% said the board hadn’t taken action to replace those members because “the director in question was added to increase an element of diversity,” according to the PwC report.

“Board inclusion is still an important part of effective governance,” Garcia said. But at the same time, boards are prioritizing industry knowledge, financial acumen, and operational expertise in potential directors—not exclusively demographics, he said.