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The investment firm State Street, the company that commissioned the Fearless Girl statue that once faced down the Wall Street Charging Bull sculpture and became a symbol of gender diversity in the workplace, has quietly ended some of its diversity policies as US companies continue to retreat from diversity goals.
Last year in its proxy voting and engagement policy the company said that it expected companies in its index funds to have boards with at least 30% female directors. State Street warned that it might vote against the nominating committee or the board leader if a company failed to meet the expectation.
“We believe effective board oversight of a company’s long-term business strategy necessitates a diversity of perspectives, especially in terms of gender, race and ethnicity,” the company’s policy said last year.
Just a year later, the company’s outlook seems to have changed dramatically. In its updated policy released at the beginning of March, the 30% gender requirement was gone. Also missing were requirements for companies to disclose the gender, racial and ethnic composition of its board to State Street and to have articulated diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals that contribute to the company’s overall strategy.
Instead, State Street said that it believed “nominating committees are best placed to determining the most effective board composition and we encourage companies to ensure that there are sufficient levels of diverse experiences and perspectives represented in the boardroom”.
The company commissioned the bronze Fearless Girl statue in 2017, in the months before the #MeToo movement started to blow up on social media.
At the time, the company commissioned the statue to advertise a State Street investment fund that focused on companies with female leaders. The statue, of a girl with her hands on her hips in a defiant pose, was initially placed in front of the famous Charging Bull statue of Wall Street, but was later moved to outside the New York Stock Exchange where it has become a popular tourist attraction.
State Street ended up suing the artist behind the statue for breach of contract and trademark infringement after she started selling replicas of the statue. The company and the artist, Kristen Visbal, reached a settlement last year.
State Street did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. In a statement to Reuters, the company said that it reviews its proxy voting and engagement policy annually “to ensure alignment with global protocols and local laws and regulations, guided by our core principles of effective board oversight, disclosure and shareholder protection and a singular focus on value creation”.
The change may seem small, but it speaks to a larger chilling effect that Donald Trump’s second term is having on DEI initiatives. Since Trump’s election, multiple companies including McDonald’s, Target, Meta and Amazon, publicly announced they were dropping their DEI goals. The Trump administration signed executive orders ending DEI within the federal government and has promised it is looking into how to curtail DEI in the private sector.
A Bloomberg report pointed out that BlackRock and Vanguard, two major investment firms in the US, similarly seemed to drop language encouraging diversity in corporate boards in their guidelines.
But some companies have reaffirmed their commitment to DEI. Costco and Apple both fought down proposals from conservative shareholder activists that called into question the companies’ DEI policies.
American consumers have started to respond to companies dropping their DEI programs with boycotts against brands like Target and Walmart for publicly ending their DEI initiatives.
