Many Investors, Stakeholders Support 'Improving' SEC Board Diversity Disclosure Requirements, GAO Report Says

The majority of a sample group of investors, CEOs and others -- 15 out of 19 -- supported improvements to the SEC's board diversity disclosure requirements, said a GAO report on the representation of women on the boards at U.S. publicly traded companies. The report, released Monday, said women's representation on the boards of U.S. companies has "been increasing, but greater gender balance could take many years." If equal proportions of women and men joined boards each year, beginning last year, "it could take more than four decades for women's representation on boards to be on par with that of men's," GAO said. Women were nearly 23 percent of all new board members in 2014, and 15.5 percent of all board members that year, said the report. The report said a group of large public pension fund investors and "many stakeholders" interviewed by GAO questioned the "usefulness of information companies provide in response to SEC's board diversity disclosure requirements" and petitioned the SEC to require specific disclosure on board members' gender, race and ethnicity. GAO said it didn't make specific recommendations in its report.