A group of 136 top companies appointed no women among their top five executives. Moreover, there are 26 Fortune 500 firms which have appointed neither a female board member, nor a woman in executive management. Data collected by the nonprofit Catalyst, also reveals s that 60 of the Fortune 500 corporations have no female directors.
Above half of the American workforce consists of women. They are paid lower wages than their male counterparts and the numbers are even worse for coloured women.
This disparity upsets women at every level of the job market. Women, who comprise almost 40% of the students attending elite business schools, find it especially difficult to rise into the ranks of senior management among the States’ largest public companies.
The companies were classified in category by industry, after reviewing the Catalyst data. 24/7 Wall St visited their corporate websites to see whether they had any women in top management at all. When they did manage to find somebody, they were usually in human resources, public relations, investor relations, or accounting.
The figures are horrendous and point to an ever lingering misogyny in the executive suites and board rooms in the majority of the largest companies. It is unfathomable how these public companies in the 21st Century can still rule women out from such vital roles, when Intuit Inc states that a billion women will enter the workforce by 2020.
It is widely recognized that females make up a powerful global consumer force which has resulted in greater knowledge of mobile technologies, urban migration, increased access to education for women and a much wider use of the Internet. The study showed that with micro-credit burgeoning and low market entry fees, that a ‘she-economy’ is about to evolve.
More women are currently holding national positions such as, 3 queens as Head of State, 4 Governor Generals and 14 concurrent female national heads, than at any other time in history.
This, united with the study’s findings, has led some experts to say that we are on the verge of entering the ‘women’s decade’. This claim however, is definitely not reflected in the board rooms and executive suites of the world’s business sector. In the arena of global politics, females are still only noticed through their lack of a majority presence.
Rick and Wendy are CEO’s of YouMe Support Foundation charity that gives away non repayable high school education grants to children who will never have the opportunity to have a high school education without outside assistance.