A new high mark.

• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

As CLOSE READERS of DIRECTORS & Boards know, in every issue we run a section called the Directors Roster, in which we track director elections cm a quarterly basis. A summary table (see page 53) gives the quarterly totals of the number of directors elected and the number of companies electing new directors, along with a breakout of the major categories from which the new directors were recruited. We also give the number and percentage of women that comprise the total of director appointments. And it is here that things get really interesting in our current compilation.

In the second quarter of this year, 48% of the newly elected directors were women. Yes, you read right: during the April through June quarter, almost 1 in 2 new director recruits were women.

This is an all-time quarterly percentage high in the 17 years that we have been tracking director elections.

The previous high mark for women board appointments was 43%, recorded in the third quarter of 2009. I remember being astounded when we tallied that number, being someone who quite clearly recalls the early days of our Roster data collection when women would represent less than 10% of new directors. A low mark was the fourth quarter of 1996, when there were 16 women among the 199 new directors recorded in that Roster. If you do the bleak math, that is 8%.

When we hit 43% two years ago, I wondered if that was an anomaly, a recruiting Stat that might never be surpassed. Well, surpassed it has been. And all of a sudden I don't have the same inclination to think that this high mark might be the last we record in our pages.

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When citing our Roster data, 1 always have to add the proviso that there is not a...