Rate of Women's Advancement to Top Corporate Officer Positions Slow
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Catalyst, July 2006
Women continue to be severely underrepresented in top corporate leadership positions, according to a census study released by Catalyst, a leading nonprofit research and advisory organization working to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. Notably, the census, which tracked women executives in Fortune 500 companies, found that it could take 40 years for women to achieve parity with men in corporate officer positions.
The 2005 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners of the Fortune 500 found that in the last three years, average growth in the percentage of corporate officer positions held by women fell dramatically to 0.23 percentage points per year, the lowest yearly gain in the past ten years. Between 2002 and 2005, the total number of women corporate officers increased by a mere 0.7 percentage points to 16.4 percent.
According to the census, the average Fortune 500 company had 21.8 corporate officers in 2005; on average, women held only 3.6 of these positions. Women occupied only 9.4 percent of clout titles (those higher than vice president(2), up from 7.9 percent in 2002. More than one-half of the Fortune 500 had fewer than three women corporate officers. Only eight companies in the Fortune 500 were led by a woman CEO in 2005, and none of those companies were among the Fortune 100. Women held only 6.4 percent of top earner positions, up just 1.2 percentage points from 2002. And fully 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies reported no women as top earners.
The study also found correlations between certain factors and the number of women reaching upper management levels. Companies that were ranked higher on the Fortune 500 list had greater numbers of women in clout titles. Also, there were more women in corporate officer positions at companies in industries in which women represent 49 percent or more of the total workforce, including finance, insurance, real estate, retail trade, and services.
