A Compendium of News

Going, g o i n g, g o n e
WSJ reports that women are leaving financial institutions at a rate far greater than their male counterparts (see above).

"In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, or 2.6% of female workers in finance, left the industry. The ranks of men grew by 389,000 in that period, or 9.6%, according to a review of data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The shift runs counter to changes in the overall work force. The number of women in the U.S. labor market has grown by 4.1% in the past decade, outpacing a 0.5% increase in male workers.
The difference is pronounced at brokerage firms, investment banks and asset-management companies."

Thanks to Francesca for the heads up on this story.

Thumbs Up... Thumbs Down
As part of the Clinton Global Initiative, Coca Cola has committed to have women represent 50% of their micro-distribution centers (basically individual entrepreneurs who distribute product to retailers). While this is great news on one level, my trip to Guatemala in June was evidence of two dangers from American beverage companies: an overabundance of waste in developing countries without the infrastructure to handle it and the very sad feeding of cola products to infants.

Let's Hear it for the Swiss!
For the first time, Switzerland has more women in its cabinet than men. This a mere 40 years after women gaining the right to vote. Now, why is U.S. so far behind after nearly 100 years?

"The four-three majority makes Switzerland only the fourth country in the world to have more women than men in its cabinet, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The others are Cape Verde, Finland, and Norway."

Vision 2020
Speaking of 100 years of women's suffrage...Next month is the first meeting of Vision 2020, a decade-long initiative to advance women's equality in advance of the 100th anniversary of women's sufferage. I am honored to be one of the delegates from RI and look forward to the first meeting next month. Please reach out to your state's delegates and ask what you can do to make change.

And speaking of what's left to be done. Here's what Jenna Goudreau of ForbesWoman has to say.

"In 2010, women are legally able to achieve equal footing. But have they? They are now half of the workforce, but earn only 78% as much as men. They earn the majority of bachelors and masters degrees, but are still more likely to serve as primary parent and housekeeper for the family. We came close to a female president but haven’t had one. Meanwhile Ireland, India, Costa Rica and Liberia have elected a female leader. Women are 51% of management and professional workers, yet in the largest companies in the U.S. only 3% have female CEOs and only 16% of board members are women. For the first time in history, we have three female Supreme Court justices. Time to celebrate? Only 17% of Congress members are women, and only six of the nation’s 50 governors are women."

More on the "Glass Cliff"
In 2004, the term "glass cliff" was coined to describe women who are placed in leadership positions in organizations in precarious financial situations. Summarized in the British Psychological Society's Research Blog, the study by Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla Branscombe finds:

"...the phenomenon occurs firstly, because a crisis shifts people's stereotyped view of what makes for an ideal leader, and secondly, because men generally don't fit that stereotype. '...[I]t may not be so important for the glass cliff that women are stereotypically seen as possessing more of the attributes that matter in times of crisis,' the researchers wrote, 'but rather that men are seen as lacking these attributes ...'."

That's Dr. Ms....
For the first time ever women earned the majority (50.4%) of doctoral degrees awarded in 2008-09. Most in public administration, health sciences and education.

Women continue to lag behind in mathematics, computer sciences, physical sciences (all <30%), style="font-weight: bold;">Going, going, g o n e?
Women in financial institutions are disappearing, well relatively speaking. (See graph above)

"In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, or 2.6% of female workers in finance, left the industry. The ranks of men grew by 389,000 in that period, or 9.6%, according to a review of data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The shift runs counter to changes in the overall work force. The number of women in the U.S. labor market has grown by 4.1% in the past decade, outpacing a 0.5% increase in male workers.
The difference is pronounced at brokerage firms, investment banks and asset-management companies."

Goldman Sachs in the Crosshairs
Once again a financial institution has been sued for gender discrimination. If it goes the way of Morgan Stanley, it could come at a substantial cost. Morgan Stanley paid out a $54million award.

"Wall Street doesn't get it," said Kelly Dermody, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP representing the plaintiffs.

"Even as some (women) do crack the glass ceiling, Wall Street continues to pay them less, relegate them to jobs that have less upside potential, and exclude them from important clients and business opportunities," she added."

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls. She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.

So Many Stories, So Little Time

Here's a collection of summer stories of interest all wrapped up with a bow.

• Does anyone else see the irony that Manpower is named by PINK Magazine as one of the top companies for women? BTW, PINK won't be printed as an in-hand magazine any more. Sad loss.
  
• How about this: On Women's Equality Day, a story from the Gainesville Sun reported that of the top 150 public companies in Florida 63 had neither a woman executive nor a woman on its board.

In case you missed it. NAFE's Top 50 Companies for Women. Leading Women is proud to be partnering with several of these companies. Read about them here. This page highlights actions that women's initiatives/networks/affinity groups can be taking to help advance women.

Debunking Jack Welch
I knew that his comments to SHRM were inflammatory and inaccurate because of the research I did about the F500 women CEOs, but Janet Bagnall's article in the Montreal Gazette hit the nail on the head going even beyond the F500.

"There's no such thing as work/life balance," Welch is reported as telling the U.S. Society for Human Resource Management's annual conference last month. He is said to have added, "We'd love to have more women moving up faster. But they've got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one."

Subscribers to the Wall Street Journal can get the full benefit of Welch's antiquated analysis.

Welch's thesis is ridiculous, which is something he could have figured out on his own. He didn't have look farther afield than Forbes magazine's 2008 list of 100 Most Powerful Women to find out how wrong he is. The No. 1 place is held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is married (although she has no children.)

Carrying on, however, the women in the next five places are the heads of hugely important institutions and companies:

Sheila C. Bair, chairperson of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is married with two children. She describes balancing work and family as her "biggest challenge."

No. 3 on the list is Indra K. Nooyi, president, chief financial officer and director of PepsiCo. She is married and has two children.

Next up is Angela Braly, CEO of WellPoint Inc., the largest health insurer in the U.S. She is married. Her three children are aged 18, 15 and 12.

No. 5 is Cynthia Carroll, chief executive officer of Anglo American PLC, one of the largest mining companies in the world. She and her husband have four children.

In sixth spot is Irene B. Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods, the second largest food and beverage company in the world after Nestlé SA, as well as its board chairperson. She and her husband have two daughters. (Rosenfeld was the highest paid among this group of female CEOs, with a total compensation in 2008 of $16.9 million. Welch earned $94 million a year by the time he retired in 2001.)

It's not hard to understand why Welch would be reluctant to admit he's from another era. But why does the next generation pay any attention to a 73-year-old, three-times-married former CEO? Work/life balance? He seems to have failed spectacularly at it, unashamedly admitting that he spent his weekends at the office talking sports with his male subordinates while his wife raised their children."

Women CFOs
Kate O'Sullivan wrote extensively about women in finance for CFO Magazine in July. The number of women CFOs at F500 companies is stagnating at 9% over the past 3 years. Why? Well, men don't think it's the glass ceiling any more:

"One quarter of women responding to the survey either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that a glass ceiling for women exists in their companies' finance departments. That's a significant decline from the 40% who held that view when CFO last asked the question, in 2006 (the percentage of men who believe there is a glass ceiling declined as well, from 10% to 4%). But many finance executives said that women continue to bump up against something, if not many things, in their efforts to rise to the top."

Bump up against something - if not a glass ceiling, then what?

One way to increase these numbers is to increase the women on corporate boards.

"Pamela Craig, CFO of global business-services firm Accenture, says more executives need to make that kind of commitment to significantly increase the number of women at the top of the profession. "Lots of men are always going to be qualified. If you want to move the needle, you need people who are committed to making a change," she says. "'Boards need to believe that diversity is important. The fact that we had three women on our board helped me [get the CFO job]. I don't think it was big, but I think it was there.'"

The Role of Stereotypes
Here in the US articles about the impact of stereotypes don't get a lot of play (notice the hesitance about blaming stereotypes for the low number of women CFOs in the above article) So, it isn't exactly a surprise that I didn't see any American papers pull this together as the Canadians did in an article by Donna Nebenzahl for Canada.com. At the top, nearly 3 times more women than men are losing jobs in this economy:

"Unexamined stereotyping can seriously undermine a female leader. Could it be responsible for the number of high-potential women with lost jobs and fewer promotions?"

Also noted in a Canadian MetroNews column. Not to mention the fewer women who are seen as high-potential in the first place. See earlier post here.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls (Dec 2009). She blogs on networking for PINK Magazine. Follow her on Twitter.