By Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) – Black people have made unprecedented gains in securing boards seats for companies. Women, however, account for only a third, according to a Spencer Stuart executive search report.

The report shows that 47% of all directors appointed in 2019 were from ethnic or racial minority groups, up 22% from the year before. Nearly all the growth was caused by the appointment of Black directors. These 33% seats were added between May 2020-2021. That’s an increase from the 11% previously.

Julie Daum is the North American director of Spencer Stuart’s North American board practice. She said that there was an “intentional effort” to hire African-American directors following the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.

Black Americans now account for 11% of board seats at S&P 500 companies, edging closer to their roughly 13% representation in the general U.S. population, the report found.

Women now make up 30% of all S&P 500 directors, a key threshold that advocacy organizations including the Thirty Percent Coalition have called for. This is an increase of 28% from a year ago and 16% from a decade ago according to the report.

Daum stated, “It was a slow process to reach there.”

Spencer Stuart discovered that women directors were no longer the top priority on boards. Daum described this as “disappointing.”

She stated, “There is a sense that we are there. So we don’t need to be focused on it.”

Reports show that 43% of the new directors are women, down from 47% over the previous year.

The report showed that 5% of U.S. corporate directors were Hispanics or Latinos, compared to their 18.5%.

Hispanics, Latinos, and Hispanics accounted for 7% of the new directors. This is an increase by 3% over the previous year.

The report looked at S&P 500 boards over a one-year period ending in May 2021. Daum explained that the majority of new directors were not replacements but additions to existing boards.

According to the report’s findings, retirement age of board directors is on the rise.

More than 48% of the population had similar policies. 51% were issued by boards that established the mandatory retirement age to be a director at 75 years or older.

About 70% of S&P 500 boards have a mandatory retirement policy, according to the report