The Big Picture:    December 2011 was a good month with 29 new women director announcements, according to press releases tracked by NewsOnWomen.com, bringing us back into positive territory and continuing our overall positive trend for the past two years.

The History:   With December's women director announcements, we have now reached 306 board announcements, breaking the 300 barrier for the first time since we began tracking announcements in July 2005. We have a grand total of 1,675 women announcements over the past five and a half years.

The chart below compares the annual totals for the past five full years. The prominant uptick to date is clear -- we are 82 new director announcements ahead of last year. Every month of 2011 recorded an average of 25.5 new women directors, surpassing the previous average peak of 24.4 in 2007 and well ahead of last year's 18.7 average per month.

What States?    Companies in 15 states announced new women director appointments this month. California led in December with 6 new announcements. New York added 4 new women directors in December, while Washington and Illinois added 3 each. New Jersey and Ohio companies added 2 each, while companies in eight states added 1 woman director each.

The monthly chart for the past two years (above) shows the overall positive trendline.

California led all states with a full year total of 63 women directors or 20.6% of the year's total of 306 women director announcements. New York is second with 36 women directors for the year to date (11.8%). Texas is in third position with 22 new women directors (7.2%). Massachusetts is fourth with 20 new women directors (6.5%). The top ten states indicated below have over two-thirds (69.3%) of all the year's new women directors.

Companies in thirteen states added zero women directors during the year.

BoardroomIQ.com reports that 16.7% of all director announcements (11 out of 66) were women in 2010, doubling to 34.7% (33 out of 95) this year in 2011. However, the chart below shows their under-reporting due to their focus, as with most governance media, on only the Fortune 500 firms. When we include the quarterly data from NewsOnWomen.com (in magenta), we see clearly that women are making significantly better progress by being added to other emerging boards.

Two great books by Elizabeth Ghaffari: Women Leaders at Work: Untold Tales of Women Achieving their Ambitions (Apress: 2011)    web site
Outstanding in their Field: How Women Corporate Directors Succeed (Praeger: 2009)   web site

What Exchanges?    Women directors for the month of December continue to be appointed to boards dominantly on the NYSE-registered companies. NYSE companies recorded 134 nominations for the year (43.8% versus 90 or 39.4% in 2010). NASDAQ companies recorded 92 for the year (30.1% versus 62 or 28.1% in 2010). Private firms named 59 women directors (19.3% versus 50 or 22.6% in 2010)). OTC, PINK, NYSE-AMEX listed companies named fewer than 20 women directors. There was one professional nonprofit and one government appointment of note for the year - the same as last year.

The chart below compares the number of women directors in Fortune 500 firms vs. all new women directors as reported by NewsOnWomen.com for 2010 and 2011. Fortune 500 companies adding women directors represented only 19.2% (or just 43 women for the entire year of 2010, as indicated by the small green bars in the chart below). The current year shows progress (rising to 71 women directors added to Fortune 500 firms), but still only 23.2% (as indicated by the light blue bars) of all the 2011 announcements (the darker and taller aqua bars) tracked by NewsOnWomen.com.