More Men in Executive Positions than Women: 10:1 Ratio
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According to a study released in October by the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, women are grossly under-represented in executive positions and board seats. Of course, this comes as no surprise, but it’s good to see these statistics being officially and publicly released.
UC Davis Graduate School of Management and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives studied the 400 largest publicly-held corporations in the state of California to compile the third annual “UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders: A Census of Women Directors and Executive Officers.” While the study was limited to the state of California, I think it’s safe to assume similar results would be found in other states throughout the country.
Here are some of the key statistics from the report:
- Women hold only 10.4% of the board seats and highest-paid executive officer positions. That’s one woman for every nine men in the top leadership roles at these 400 high-profile public companies.
- 122 (more than 30%) of California’s 400 largest public companies have no women in a top executive position or on the board of directors.
- Half of the 400 companies have no woman among their executive officers.
- 47% percent have no woman in the boardroom.
- Only 13 of these 400 companies have a woman CEO.
These results paint a disappointing picture, but with time comes change. I have to hope that females will continue to find more leadership roles in large and small companies over time.
What do you think about these results?
3 Comments
November 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
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January 20th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
[...] This is probably the only truth in the entire piece. How many women are in executive roles? Women on Business proclaims the ratio is 10-1, (10 being males in the role, women being 1.) In a recent study for [...]
January 23rd, 2012 at 7:12 am
With regards to this silliness about a 10:1 ratio:
yes, but what are the current trends in our business schools and in corporate america? Most of the new hirees and business school (the appropriate acronym is BS) graduates are female (white females tend to be over-represented, by the way) and they are staking out the corner offices – and have been, if we are being truthful, since at least the 1980s. Most of these male senior executives are old fellows who will be gone in another decade or so – probably sooner. They will be replaced by white females, and when they are replaced, those same women will justify hiring other women on the grounds that, since they outnumber men in the professional schools of the land, they deserve to be hired ahead of the male applicants. It’s a funny thing about women: 30 years ago, we were told that it was important to show women achieving success in non-traditional jobs because young women needed to be shown that they could achieve success in those spheres; 30 years later, largely because of the gynocentric bent of our culture, young men are an increasingly dwindling percentage of professional school applicants and graduates – and I don’t see anyone (certainly not privileged white women) calling for more advertisements and media images to be shown that depict young men achieving success in the professions. Don’t buy garbage like this: look beneath the surface and you’ll find that young men are falling further and further behind and that the real gender crisis we have in contemporary american society is with our sons.