Dive Brief:
- The National Association for Female Executives’ (NAFE) released its Top 60 Companies for Executive Women, which recognizes firms that advance women into high-level positions. The top 10 are Abbott, Adecco, Deloitte, Ernst & Young LLP, FleishmanHillard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, L’Oréal USA and Procter & Gamble.
- NAFE says the number of female CEOs rose by 4% from the year before. The percentage of women in the top 10% of wage earners grew by 2%, the biggest spike since 2013. Among the women promoted to higher level positions in the top 60 companies, most were elevated to the manager level. But men were promoted more often into senior management and executive positions.
- NAFE also announced that there was an 8% increase in the number of women heading up a billion-dollar business unit in the 60 top companies.
Dive Insight:
NACE’s 60 top company picks show moderate but welcome advances for women executives.
One important area of progress in the 60 top companies is in the boardroom: a third of the companies now have five or more women directors. Priti Shah, former VP of Leadership Product Strategy and Corporate Development at Skillsoft, previously told HR Dive that companies can advance more women into CEO positions by "creating leadership learning opportunities that are flexible enough to meet an employee's needs and solid enough that a young manager could bring their new skills to the workplace..."
Other studies also show snail-pace advancements for women into executive and senior-level positions, as well as the boardroom. Often, that inertia starts early, when women are overlooked for that first promotion in favor of their male peers.
