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What Fortune 100/500 companies have at least 50% women executive leadership? (C-level)
Hello! Thank you for your research request about Fortune 100/500 companies with at least 50% women in C-Level positions. The short version is, I was not able to find any Fortune 500 or 100 companies that have at least 50% women in C-Level positions. However, I did learn about the Fortune Knowledge Group Gender Diversity Index which analyzes the gender of senior executives and board members. From this, I calculated the percentage of women in C-Suite positions for the Top 10 companies. I summarized the information in this Google spreadsheet. Below you will find a deep dive into my research methods and the results.
To begin researching, I conducted advanced Internet searches using a variety of keywords and query types. I sifted through information from trusted news and media sites, industry reports and company websites. I defined C-Level as any person whose title contained the word Chief, Officer or Executive as explained by Investopedia, or people identified on the company’s website as members of the executive/management/leadership team. I confined the search results to within the last 2 years unless otherwise noted. I search for information that would fulfill any parts of the 3 scenarios in the request:
· A list of 10 Fortune 500 or 100 companies that have at least 50% women in C-Level positions.
OR
· A list of the Top 5 and Bottom 5 companies considered to be the best and worst in gender equality of executives.
OR
· A ranking, with data, of the best to worst companies in terms of female leadership.
RESULTS
After extensive searching, I was not able to find any existing data or statistics showing any Fortune 500 or 100 companies that have 50% or more women in C-Suite positions. Normally, I would not include any sources that are over 2 years old, but one of my colleagues found this 2012 census report from Catalyst, listing 138 Fortune 500 companies that had no female executive officers at that time. If you would like to submit an additional Wonder request, one of our Analysts would be glad to go through the list and check the companies for an update on the gender diversity of their officers. Additionally, a March 2016 article in Fortune says 37.6% of Fortune 500 companies don’t have any women in their C-Suites.
The most useful source I found is a 2017 report from Fortune Knowledge Group and RBC titled “Advancing the C-Suite: Developing and Advancing Women Leaders”. Among the interesting information in the report are the results of the Fortune Knowledge Group Gender Diversity Index calculations. This ranking compiles data related to the gender of senior executives and board members in the Fortune 500 companies. I searched extensively to try and find the raw data so I could separate out the board members, which I know you already had researched in a previous request. Unfortunately, it appears that data is not publicly available.
To make use of the data mentioned above in some manner that may be helpful, I decided to pull out the Top 10 companies, gather information from their websites and calculate the percentage of women in executive positions at each firm. In doing this, I made the assumption that the top-ranked companies on this index would be the most likely ones to have higher percentages of women in C-Suite positions. I summarized the information in this Google spreadsheet along with links to the web pages showing the personnel for each company. The formulas used for the calculations can be seen in the cells in the spreadsheet.
The Top 10 companies from the list are:
Ingredion
Avon Products
PepsiCo
Xerox
Sempra Energy
Lockheed Martin
General Motors
IBM
CH2M Hill
Frontier Communications
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I found some other interesting information about women in C-Suite positions that I wanted to include. I hope it is helpful for your project.
According to a January 2017 report in Forbes, about 4.4% of chief executive positions in Standard and Poor 500 companies are occupied by women. Also, the Fortune Knowledge Group report discussed earlier says that only 4.2% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are women.
A 2016 article in Harvard Business Review cites data from a paper written by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, stating that a company with more women in C-Suite positions can result in 15% increase in profitability for a company. From a global perspective, the Peterson Institute data also showed that “…having at least 30% of women in leadership positions, or the ‘C-suite,’ adds 6% to net profit margin”.
The firm Korn Ferry released some interesting data from a survey of 1,000 US companies in mid-2016, regarding women C-Suite title usage by industry. They found that for the most often-used titles, and across the consumer, energy, financial, life science, industrial and technology industries, only 24% of the positions were held by women. This report has a wealth of other information. It breaks down the data to show the representation of women with job titles like CEO, CFO CIO, CMO, etc. by industry. For example, the data shows that in the life sciences, less than 1% of the CEO’s are women.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, I was not able to find any Fortune 500 or 100 companies that have at least 50% women in C-Level positions. However, I did learn about the Fortune Knowledge Group Gender Diversity Index which analyzes the gender of senior executives and board members. From this, I calculated the percentage of women in C-Suite positions for the Top 10 companies. I summarized the data in this Google spreadsheet.
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