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DEI Rules That Changed Corporate Boards Are Vanishing

Companies are back to appointing fewer women, minorities as political pressures shift

By Theo Francis, WSJ

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Feb. 19, 2026

Anti-diversity activists are going after DEI policies for corporate boards, but a new analysis finds that companies have largely abandoned those goals already.

S&P 500 companies are adding women and minority directors no faster than they did a decade ago, shortly before diversity, equity and inclusion policies became more common across the corporate world, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of board data.

“It shows that all along, this was expendable,” said Doug Chia, president of consulting firm Soundboard Governance.

Companies adopted such policies in droves over the past decade in the face of pressure from institutional investors and states such as California to diversify their largely white and male boardrooms. Goldman Sachs, until a year ago, also mandated that companies have diverse boards as a criteria for the bank to take them public.

But as the political winds have shifted, companies have swiftly retreated. This week, the Journal reported that Goldman Sachs plans to drop a policy of considering candidate demographics—including race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation—when recruiting its own new directors.

Other companies have already done so. Just a quarter of S&P 500 companies had a policy last year of considering gender, racial and ethnic diversity when adding directors, down from about half the year before, according to PeopleReturn, which collects and analyzes corporate human-capital data. Among the nearly three dozen companies making disclosures so far this year, that share has shrunk to 14%, PeopleReturn said.

Companies are also appointing fewer women and Black or Hispanic candidates to their boards. Nearly three quarters of last year’s newly appointed directors were men at S&P 500 companies, and roughly four in five new appointments were white, PeopleReturn said.

That is on par with levels seen in 2016 at the same companies and a sharp decline in appointments of new Black, Latino and female directors, which peaked in 2021. That year, 40% of incoming directors were women and 45% weren’t white.

Even where boards aren’t intentionally de-emphasizing diversity, they could wind up seating more white men if they seek out experienced candidates to help in uncertain economic and political times, Chia said. “They’re looking at an older generation of director, and typically that is not going to be women and minorities.”

Simply paying less attention to diversity is also likely to leave boards looking more homogenous, said Atinuke Adediran, a Fordham University law professor who analyzes corporate diversity policies in a recent book, “Disclosureland.”

“When you de-emphasize that, then you just call up your friends as you were doing before,” she said.

Board seats turn over slowly—about one seat a year per board, PeopleReturn data show. As a result, the overall demographics of S&P 500 directors don’t change much year to year: Around three quarters of directors have been white, and around two-thirds male, for the last several years.

The days of “stale, pale and male” boards—as the adage criticizing boards filled with mostly older, white men goes—aren’t back just yet. A decade ago, 79% of directors were male and 85% were white at today’s S&P 500 companies, PeopleReturn data show.

Still, at the current reduced pace for adding women, boards in the Russell 3000 wouldn’t be half female until 2044, compensation and governance data firm Equilar projects. That is five years later than it projected last year and 11 years later than two years ago.

Behind the scenes, a range of factors are easing the pressure on companies to diversify their boards. Nasdaq’s brief requirement that boards meet racial and gender targets, or explain why they haven’t, was struck down by a federal appeals court in December 2024. California rules designed to foster a minimum number of female board members—as well as ethnic and racial minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender directors—were struck down separately.

Early last year, Institutional Shareholder Services, the influential proxy-advisory firm, said it would no longer consider directors’ gender, race or ethnicity when making voting recommendations.

Big investors have also backed off: BlackRock dropped a 30% target for diverse directors at S&P 500 companies in its portfolios. Fidelity, the mutual-fund giant, stopped threatening to vote against directors on insufficiently diverse boards. Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley all dropped similar requirements, too.

Goldman said its proxy-voting changes reflect shifts in the legal environment. “It doesn’t change our strong belief that successful boards benefit from diverse backgrounds and perspectives,” a spokeswoman said.

Then there are the activists. Anti-DEI groups began filing more shareholder proposals opposing diversity policies and other environmental, social and corporate-governance practices they describe as misguided or too liberal, reaching 123 proposals last year, according to ISS-Corporate, a unit of ISS.

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Most shareholder proposals fail, and those opposing ESG policies rarely garner support from more than a few percent of shares cast. Like other activists, however, their proponents sometimes win concessions in return for dropping their proposals.

The activists have influential allies, too. President Trump started his term ordering federal agencies to end diversity-related contracts and programs, among other initiatives. Late last month, the federal General Services Administration proposed a new certification for organizations receiving federal grants—promising their practices don’t violate federal antidiscrimination laws. They include “those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs, the GSA said.