A report released by Secretary of the State Denise Merrill Tuesday showed diversity on the state’s 175 boards and commissions has improved over the past two years, but women and Latinos are still underrepresented.
“While 2011 numbers definitely show some improvements in the diversity of our state boards and commissions, it is still troubling that the representation of women and Hispanic members of our community on these crucial, deciding bodies is not where it needs to be,” Merrill said in a press release.
In 2011, women only represented 40.1 percent of the appointed membership on state boards and commissions. This was an increase in representation for women by 1.6 percentage points over 2009 numbers. Conversely, men represented 59.9 percent of the appointed membership a decrease of 1.6 percentage points over 2009 numbers.
Hispanics represented 3.7 percent of the membership which was up from 2.8 percent in 2009. However, it was far below the Hispanic population in the state which is around 13.4 percent of the total population.
For the first time since 1993 African-Americans reached parity with their representation in the state’s general population.
“We see now for the first time since we have collected this data that the percentage of African Americans serving on boards and commissions is finally at parity with the African American population of Connecticut,“ Merrill said. “But even though women represent a slim majority of our state’s population, there are still nearly 20 percent more men on these bodies than women. Likewise, the Hispanic community is the fastest growing ethnic group in our state, yet less than 4 percent of the appointees on these important panels are Hispanic.”
Click here to read the full report.
