Top HR executives say biggest concern facing corporate America is lack of women at the top.
Last fall, Working Mother hosted about three-dozen senior human resource executives from some of the biggest and most well-known companies on the planet for an in-depth conversation about the biggest issues facing their workforces today.
Our first question seemed like an easy one — What keeps you up at night? — but the answers floored us. To a man (and woman), nearly every HR executive reported that a lack of female representation at the highest ranks caused them the most sleepless nights.
One group working to get more women into those ranks is the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), a sister organization of Working Mother. To honor NAFE’s 40th anniversary, we featured its signature Top 50 Companies for Executive Women initiative in the pages of Working Mother magazine.
Combined, these 50 for-profit companies employ more than 3.6 million people, 53 percent of whom are women. To choose this list, we looked closely at each company’s female representation; advancement programs; and hiring, promotion and attrition rates to judge whether they are truly worthy of inclusion as a NAFE Top Company.
So what did we find? Here are just a few of this year’s results:
• At the NAFE Top Companies, women make up 23% of board of directors members vs. only 16% across the Fortune 500
• At the NAFE Top Companies, women hold 10% of the CEO jobs vs. 3.6% across the Fortune 500
• At the NAFE Top Companies, women make up 22% of all corporate executives vs. 14% across the Fortune 500.
Oh, yes, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but the NAFE Top Companies are committed to making real change. To start, these companies offer an impressive array of programs designed to help women build the skills and connections they need to improve and get promoted — from mentoring and career coaching to leadership training and affinity groups. Indeed, our story “The Sweetest Success” will help you navigate these many options and offer up some DIY options for those of you at smaller or less progressive companies.
I’ve said it before and now I’ll say it again: We women make up half the workforce. It’s time we made up half the bosses as well!
Jennifer Owens is director of the Working Mother Research Institute and editorial director of Working Mother magazine.
From the outset, billionaire
I genuinely enjoyed reading
In the role as "an addict"
Nearly every HR executive
I genuinely enjoyed reading
Jennifer, this is one of the
Thanks for informing us about
Thanks for informing us about the private sector. I only know about bosses in the private sector, since I have always been a town employee. I guess it's a dumb question, but would more than half of working women want to work more than 50 hours per week? Like many female educators, I also pursued an additional degree in administration, but I doubt that I will ever use it. Even when my daughter is in grade school, I cannot imagine a time when I would want to work more than 50 hours per week. I applaud women who want to be bosses, and I am glad to see so many female administrators in schools today.