We examined the executive teams and boards of directors at the 100 largest companies in the S&P 500 (as of October 2015), and collected data on the breakdowns of these positions by gender. Below is a summary of these results.
10: Percent of Companies with Female CEOs
Women hold the CEO role at ten of the companies analyzed. There are slightly higher representations in the CFO role (17 percent), overall executive team (19 percent)[1] and board of directors (23 percent).
The following table shows the ten companies currently led by female CEOs, along with the board composition for each:
Three of the ten companies led by women are in the technology sector; four consumer companies have female CEOs. None of the seven energy companies, 17 health care companies, or 14 financials companies has a female CEO.
Among the entire S&P 500, there are only 20 companies (approximately 4 percent) led by a female CEO. The following chart shows these 500 stocks by market value, with female-led companies in yellow:
1: Company with Female CEO and CFO
Only one company, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), has females in both the CEO and CFO role. (Oracle has two co-CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd; the company does not have a CFO position, though the finance department reports to Catz.)
2: Companies With Women in 40% of Leadership Roles
Women represent less than 20 percent of the executive teams at the 100 companies analyzed, and are in the minority at all 100 of these companies. Only two — Duke Energy (DUK) and Target (TGT) — have women in more than 40 percent of leadership positions.
Reflects the 100 largest companies in the S&P 500, as of October 2015.
By contrast, 16 companies have less than 10 percent of leadership positions filled by women. Four don’t show a single female among their executive teams: ExxonMobil (XOM), Comcast (CMCSA), Schlumberger (SLB)[1], and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO).
2.7: Average Female Board Members
The companies examined had an average of 12 board members, approximately 75 percent of whom are men. The average board of directors consists of 9.2 males and 2.7 females.
45: Percent of Companies with 1 or 2 Female Board Members
Of the companies examined, 45 percent had either one or two female board members (all had at least six male directors). Only four — Wells Fargo (WFC), Procter & Gamble (PG), Texas Instruments (TXN), and General Motors (GM) — had five or more female board members.
The table below shows the nine companies with only one female board member:
Of the 100 companies examined, 48 have a male CEO as well as leadership teams and boards consisting of at least 75 percent males.
The following image illustrates the boards of directors of three companies not included in the stats above, but noteworthy because they generally sell to female customers. None has a female CEO or a female majority on the board:
Please share any thoughts on the data above in the comments below.
Note on methodology: for data on executive teams, we relied on the individuals profiled on the companies’ public web sites (see examples of these pages for Apple and Microsoft). Where possible, the data reflects information for the most senior level of executives. For example, Schlumberger includes 36 individuals on their site; only the ten for whom bios were available were counted for purposes of this analysis.
This article, A Visual Guide to Women in the C-Suite, first appeared on Dividend Reference.