Director Search founder and CEO, Ken Taylor, announced last week that European public companies lead the world with respect to female representation on their corporate boards.

At a level of 18% female board member representation, European public companies are 50% above the global average of 12% female board members.

Although the S&P 500 companies often are cited to have 21% female representation, the boards of all U.S. public companies, with 6,517 female directors out of the total 55,037 corporate directors, average 12% female representation.

While 945 (94.5%) of the Fortune 1,000 companies have at least one female board member, 4,708 (64%) of the remaining 7,341 U.S. public corporations do not have a single woman on its board of directors.

Currently, more than 10% of the 306,186 board members of the world's public companies are age 70 and older, with many being a member of more than one corporate board.

In the U.S., 19% of the corporate directors are age 70 and older, compared to 7% for European companies.

This means that over the next 2-5 years, public companies, particularly those in the U.S., will replace many of these directors as they retire due to age or are not re-nominated. These factors suggest there is a significant opportunity for public company boards to consider female director inclusion and diversity.

Please go to Directors Search and click on Statistics to see the full report, which is updated daily.

The Director Search platform allows companies to directly access the global talent pool for board members and senior executives, including female directors and executives.