Government action has yielded results in advancing parity at the board level. For instance, five of the top six countries with the highest percentage of women serving on boards in the study have some sort of quota legislation, ranging from around 33% (Belgium and the Netherlands) to 40% (France, Norway, and Italy). But quotas are not the only vehicle for progress. Continued government initiatives, such as the use of targets and disclosures, have also driven progress. For example, in the UK and Australia, women now hold more than a third of board seats. And while there is no magic number of board seats an individual director should hold, the geography-level data shows that the movement to increase gender diversity on boards has not caused “overboarding” as some may have feared.

However, government action alone is likely insufficient to reach parity. Stakeholders, including investors, should remain vigilant in setting expectations around gender diversity, despite the number of matters competing for investor attention.

Across regions, particularly Europe, more women are chairing board committees. In France and Italy we see an increase in women holding a majority of board committee seats or committee chair roles, and more than 40% of European compensation committee chairs are women. In Belgium, 51 %, of women hold committee Chair roles in audit and risk committees.

But there are stark differences between regions. For example, while women account for a majority of compensation committee chair roles in the UK (59%), Italy (57%), France (55%), and Ireland (51%), that figure drops to 27% in the US.

While it is encouraging to see women leading in these positions, more progress could be made in leveraging these committee chair roles to help women ascend to the board chair role.

While quotas and targets may help diversify boards, they do not seem to have the same effect on chair and CEO roles. Globally, the percentage of women chairing boards is nearly three times lower than the percentage of women serving on boards, with just 8.4% of the world’s boards being chaired by women.

When it comes to the highest executive roles, women’s representation drops even further: only 6% of CEOs in the world are women, representing just a 1% increase from our previous edition. At the current rate of change, global parity for CEOs would not be reached before 2111—almost 90 years from now.

Since many companies prefer to recruit board members with CEO experience, these numbers do not paint an optimistic outlook for pipeline development. Companies should expand their skills profile requirements to further diversify their boards and shore up critical skill gaps.