Women Now Make Up 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Hooray?
I gave a talk in 2016 where I remarked that, at the time, there were more CEOs named John than there were women CEOs. I may have made a joke that played on the double-entendre of how common the name “John” is (I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.) It seemed shocking to me that more than a decade into the 21st century there were still so few women in top leadership positions.
So fast forward to 2023 when, we’ve just learned, that women now make up 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Fifty. Five. Zero. (Actually it’s 53, meaning they make up 10.6%. I’m guessing you don’t need me to do this kind of basic math for you, but that does mean men make up 89.4%.)
Once upon a time when I was younger and perhaps less tired, I would cheer each new milestone. More women in congress! (Still too few, but more, that’s good, right?!) The first woman to {fill in the blank}. Even more embarrassingly, the first Black woman or man to {fill in the blank}. I no longer find this kind of news hopeful – it just seems to underscore how little progress has been made and how very long it’s taken to make it.
Women make up 51% of the population. They’ve been achieving (and overachieving) in college degree attainment for decades. With each succeeding year the explanations for why more women aren’t seen in the top jobs across nearly every field become thinner and less believable. It’s about the sexism, the misogyny, the systemic barriers that hold women back.
Am I happy there are now 53 Fortune 500 CEOs who are women, compared with 44 in 2022? I guess. But the pace is so slow and the backlash against women’s progress is so intense right now. I can’t help but wonder if we’ll be able to maintain this progress, never mind advance to numbers that come closer to representing the population.