DiversityInc - May 2010

Reaching Critical

Mass Is Key

1.7 percent of corporate officer positions at Fortune 500 companies. (In contrast, among The 2010 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity®, 8 percent of women were CEOs and 23 percent held board seats.)

Achieving critical mass (or one-third) of women in

leadership is essential to building “a stronger economy, better institutions and a more representative democracy,”

write the authors of Benchmarking Women’s Leadership,

published by The White House Project, a New York City–

based nonprofit that aims to advance women’s leadership roles in communities and sectors. By Gail Zoppo

The group’s research, found at www.thewhitehouseproject.org and based on data collected from previously published sources and industry experts, found that women hold an average of only 18 percent of leadership positions in 10 industry sectors, ranging from a low of 11 percent in the military to a high of 23 percent in academia.

general—and women of color in particular—are vastly underrepresented,” states the study.

Not only do women lag behind male counterparts in pivotal leadership roles, their wage gap is widening as boomers age and move up the management ladder. Women earn only 78 percent of what men make annually—an improvement of less than a half penny a year since 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was signed, note the authors. Moreover, Black women earn 64 percent and Latinas earn 52 percent of what white males make.

In corporate America, for instance, women account for 16 percent of leadership positions, defined as holding corporate officer seats. They also hold 15 percent of board seats and 3 percent of the CEO positions. Black, Asian and American Indian women and Latinas fare even worse, holding 3.2 percent of board seats and a mere

“Both the leadership gap—and the wage gap—between women and men persists at nearly every level of employment,” states the report. “And [it] grows wider as the status, prestige and rank of the leadership position rises.”