This is from the Wall Street Journal. Excellent long article. If you'd like a hard copy, I'm happy to email one to you if you leave your email in the comments section.
Why, when women earn the majority of college degrees and make up roughly half the workforce, do so few occupy the chief executive job?
Women today lead 167 of the country’s top 3,000 companies. That’s more than double the share a decade ago, but still under 6%.
For many, the barrier isn’t only a glass ceiling at the very top, but also an invisible wall that sidelines them from the kinds of roles that have been traditional stepping stones to the CEO position.
A Wall Street Journal study of executives at the top companies, the biggest publicly traded firms by market value, shows that men on the way up overwhelmingly get the management jobs in which a company’s profits and losses hang in the balance. So-called line roles with profit-and-loss, or P&L, responsibilities, such as heading a division, unit or brand, are what set executives on the CEO track.
Women promoted into C-suites—the “chief” jobs in companies—on the other hand, often fill roles such as head of human resources, administration or legal, according to an analysis for the Journal by Equilar Inc., a research firm that collects data on executives and boards. Though important functions, the jobs don’t have profit-generating responsibility, and are rarely a path to running a company.
“You can have a seat at the table and not be a player,” said Jewelle Bickford, a partner at Evercore Wealth Management and co-chair of Paradigm for Parity, a coalition of business leaders aimed at closing the gender gap at the top of American companies. “The way you become a player, that usually comes with a P&L role.”
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