More and more women are breaking through the highest glass ceilings in corporate America and becoming CEOs of the largest corporations in the country. Giant U.S. companies like General Motors (GM),Reynolds American (RAI) and Campbell Soup (CPB) all currently have female CEOs.
It’s certainly an accomplishment in itself for a woman like Mary Barra to even become the CEO of a $50 billion company and 107-year-old American institution like GM in the first place. But in true “battle of the sexes” style, I decided to take a look at just how many S&P 500 companies currently have women CEOs and compare the performances of their respective stocks to the overall S&P 500. Here’s what I found.
A Long Way To Go
Maybe this is unnecessary, but in the spirit of being thorough, I’ll start off by establishing that 50.4% of the U.S. population is female. So half the country is female. Shocking.
But I’m sure it will come as no surprise to learn that females are grossly under-represented in CEO positions among S&P 500 companies. In fact, only 20 S&P 500 companies have females in the top position. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 4.0%. GM, RAI, and CPB being among them.
Although that percentage is well short of 50%, there’s no question that female business leaders have made huge strides compared to where they were two or three decades ago.
Still, there are a number of arguments that can be made (feel free to comment) as to why, in a country that prides itself on equality, only one in every 25 CEOs is female.
The Numbers
Perhaps the best way for women to go about changing the male-dominated status quo in the top tier of the business world is…
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