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A study launched six years ago by two Tuck School of Business researchers
and a colleague from Loyola University Chicago helps explain why there are so
few women CEOs in major U.S. companies. According to the paper, recently
published in Perspectives, the journal of the Academy of Management, nearly half of the
1,000 largest U.S. firms had no women in their official listings of principal
executives as recently as the year 2000.
Constance Helfat
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Constance
Helfat, the J. Brian Quinn Professor in Technology and Strategy at the Tuck
School, carried out the study with colleague Paul J. Wolfson, statistical
research computing associate, and Dawn Harris of Loyola University Chicago.
The study draws on a comprehensive set of information on some 10,000
high-ranking executives. The researchers analyzed the entire upper-executive
pipeline of companies to gauge how many women would rise to the top.
"Even if there are more women today in the upper pipeline than there
were when we launched this research in 2000, an improvement so recent is
unlikely to affect the number of female CEOs for at least a decade,"
Helfat says.
The study reveals a complete absence of women higher-ups in 48 percent of
the largest U.S. firms, while they seem to be only token presences in others.
Only 7.2 percent of 942 firms studied had more than two women in the top ranks,
and 2.6 percent had more than three. On the basis of the number of women CFOs
and the number of other female executives with high-level line positions (that
is, with direct profit-and-loss responsibility), the authors estimate that the
proportion of female CEOs will increase from the current level of about 2
percent to about 4.9 percent in 2010 and 6.2 percent in 2016.
"Even though 6.2 percent is more than triple the current
percentage," comments Helfat, "it's not that impressive since women
have now been in the management workforce for at least 30 years. "
Moreover, the estimates are based on the assumption that executives move up
one rank every five years on average, which, the study's authors suspect, is
" optimistic." The researchers gathered extensive data on individuals
listed in the proxy statements or official Securities and Exchange Commission reports of
Fortune 1000 firms, preventing potential over-reporting by firms on the number
of women executives, and uncovering the previously unnoted fact that half the
companies had no high-level female executives at all.
The study does reveal some promising trends. Many companies are aggressively
hiring and promoting women into their top executive ranks, according to the
researchers. Once women are in that executive hierarchy, they tend to do well
in terms of rank.
"Our findings suggest that companies achieved greater representation of
women in the top executive ranks through aggressive promotion and hiring,
policies that companies lacking women executives could emulate," the
authors conclude.
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