Women's stagnation in the corporate penthouse continues, according to Catalyst, a New York-based organization that aggregates data about and presses for women's advancement in the corporate hierarchy.

Catalyst's just-released census shows that the percent of female board members of Fortune 500 company board positions has stagnated during the past five years:

Women held 15.2 percent of board seats, a number that reflects little growth over the past five years, and women of color held 3.1 percent of all board director positions, compared to 3.2 percent last year, the 2009 Catalyst Census found. The nonprofit's Census also showed:

* Almost 90 percent of companies had at least one female director, but less than 20 percent had three or more, the same as in 2008.

* Women's share of board chair positions remained flat at 2 percent.

I had a lengthy breakfast yesterday (it lasted 3.5 hours) with a very senior female of color executive at a major computer and federal contract firm. She graduated from Princeton with a degree in advanced economics and has fought over her 20-year career to stay in positions where she was responsible for the bottom line: so-called profit-and-loss positions.

She has two children and said she fought back against gender- and race-based preconceptions to stay in profit and loss -- or P&L -- positions, but saw many of her female colleagues herded into non-P&L positions in human resources, public relations, etc. That, she and many experts believe, is the mistake most female corporate executives make. She says it's critical to maintain P&L responsibilities to make it to the top. And even women who have succeeded in raising corporate income don't always get promoted as quickly as their male colleagues.

My unnamed source says she has seen men promoted based on their networking and "potential," whereas female would-be captains of industry are not usually promoted until they have "proven" their worth to the company.

She's not the first I've heard mention P&L responsibilities as critical to women's advancement in the workplace. But the new Catalyst data prove women are advancing at a much slower rate than anyone foresaw. Whether women avoid P&L jobs (which I doubt) or corporate bosses are loath to give women those responsibilities and more likely to steer them toward other career paths (which I believe is more likely the case) has yet to be proven.

 

 

Breaking the Corporate Glass Ceilings
Dan Gilgoff

With an African-American serving as the nation's chief executive, a woman heading the State Department, and a Latina settling into a new job on the Supreme Court, are there any glass ceilings left for minorities and women aspiring to leadership positions?

The Ethics of Reality in the Workplace
Daneen Skube

How do you recommend people handle ethics in the workplace? I have a strong sense of right and wrong and get pretty upset about how often people lie, or behave badly. How can I best communicate my values at work?

Crisis Management: Leading Successfully Through the Storm
Bret Schulte

Contemporary examples of strong crisis leadership are in surprisingly short supply, experts say. And all too often, the reaction to a crisis is to hunker down and ride it out. But there are a few modern standouts, especially in the business world.

Financial Crisis, Enron, Hurricane Katrina Examples of Leadership Gone Wrong
Tamara Lytle

The New Orleans masses who huddled in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, the Enron retirees who lost their life savings, and the laid-off workers buried under the economic ruin of financial companies all live with a simple truth. Just as spectacularly as great leadership can spark success, failed leadership can bring down cities, businesses, and economies

Journalism: Desperate Metaphors, Revenue Models and the Need for Better Journalism
Arianna Huffington

Apparently, some in the old media have decided that it is, in fact, an either/or game and that the best way to save, if not journalism, at least themselves, is by pointing fingers and calling names. It's a tactic familiar to schoolyard inhabitants everywhere: when all else fails, reach for the nearest insult and throw it around indiscriminately.

FedEx and UPS Feud Over Union Rules
Alex Kingsbury

The country's two largest private package-delivery companies, UPS and FedEx, have their horns locked in battle on Capitol Hill over the patchwork of laws that determine the rights workers have to form unions.

 

(C) 2009 U.S. News & World Report