"The Facts"

After feedback from my last two blogs about women’s equality in the workplace, I’m compelled to share some facts on how we are doing, and it’s not very encouraging:

• Women only hold 5 percent of CEO seats, a number that has not budged in five years.
• A recent “American Business Journals” analysis of 1,800 publicly traded companies found women account for only 15 percent of all board seats, up from only 11 percent five years prior.
• If the parameters are expanded to the country’s 3,000 largest publicly traded companies, representation of women directors was 31 percent during the first half of 2018.

As for how the U.S. does in a global context, “only six countries give women the same workplace rights as men, and the United States is not one of them,” Washington Post’s Samantha Schmidt recently reported. “Sadly, more than 60 countries scored better than the U.S.”  Not only is the U.S. embarrassingly behind in its representation of women in positions of power and influence, it’s taken years of legislation just to draw attention to this shortcoming of the country the world sees as the most powerful.

Progress in this area is moving at a very small creep despite the rewards:

• Fortune 500 companies with a higher representation of women on their boards of directors outperform their peers by 53 percent in return on equity and 42 percent in return on sales.
• Companies with 50 percent women in senior roles show 19 percent higher return on equity on average.

Statistically, a higher percentage of women involved in business is a smart, bottom-line strategy.

Please continue to share your thoughts and stories with me on this topic. Like the #MeToo movement, discussing the topic openly can only help the situation.

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