Corporate Women’s Gains Fall Victim to Anti-Woke Backlash
As the political right blasts DEI efforts, the number of women in C-suite jobs at major companies fell for the first time in two decades.
When Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. named Rosalind Brewer chief executive officer in 2021, corporate America celebrated her appointment as a sign of just how far women in business had come. The former Starbucks Corp. and Walmart Inc. executive was a highly respected and sought-after leader whose new job put her in an exclusive club: the small but record number of female CEOs running a Fortune 500 company—and at the time, the only Black woman among them.
Less than two-and-a-half years later, Brewer was out. With the company’s stock down about 50% during her tenure, the Walgreens board decided it had given her enough time to try to turn around the company.