CORPORATE CONNECTIONS
20 PE RC E N T BY 2020
“There’s good reason why Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer and Hewlett-Packard President and CEO Meg Whitman find themselves in the media spotlight and overly scrutinized for their performance while held up as role models for women aspiring to emulate their career success at top companies. There are so very few others like them.” — Dean Steven C. Currall Excerpt from December 5, 2012, Huffington Post column, “Still a ‘Boys’ Club’ at the Top of Corporate California”
www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/huff-post-boys-club
“Companies today know they need to increase innovation,” said Marilyn Nagel, CEO of Watermark. “They need talent on top that is tuned into customer needs. They need directors and executives who are strong, capable, qualified leaders in every sense. “However, while so many are bemoaning the lack of these qualities in candidates for their top positions, they are overlooking the women right in front of them who can deliver all of these qualities in spades,” Nagel added.
The Graduate School of Management partnered with Watermark, a Bay Area– based nonprofit that offers programs for executive women, to complete the study. The School and Watermark joined the national conversation on gender diversity in U.S. corporate boardrooms by holding an event at Deloitte’s headquarters in San Francisco on December 12. It was among 27 events nationwide in 21 cities on the same day organized by 2020 Women on Boards chapters. The goal:
To download a full copy of the study, including industry-by-industry and county-by-county statistics, visit www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/census
to raise the percentage of women on corporate boards in the U.S. to 20 percent or greater by the year 2020.
2012–2013 STU DY FAST FAC TS
W I L L I A M S -S O N OM A S TA N DS O U T
The company with the best gender balance in this year’s survey was San Francisco–based Williams-Sonoma Inc. The home furnishings and cookware company reported that women held nearly 47 percent of their highest-paid executive and board director seats. “Williams-Sonoma Inc. is proud to be a leader in diversity and considers this to be at the core of our business practices. We work to create an environment that attracts great talent, and we seek to motivate, inspire and recognize high performance among all employees,” said Laura Alber, the company’s president and chief executive officer. Williams-Sonoma was ranked ninth in last year’s study, with 31 percent of its executive and board member seats filled by women, and it has been in the top 25 companies in the list three years consecutively. The highest-ranking company two consecutive years previously, bebe stores inc. dropped to second place in the latest study while maintaining 40 percent women in its top positions.
0
NUMBER OF COMPANIES WITH A GENDER-BALANCED BOARD AND MANAGEMENT TEAM
PERCENT OF COMPANIES WITH NO FEMALE DIRECTORS
■■
44.8
The 128 Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) companies, which represent $1.2 trillion, or nearly half the shareholder value of the companies on the list, again showed the worst record for percentage of female executives. Only 6.6 percent of their highest-paid executives % are women, and only 8.4 percent of Silicon WOMEN Valley board members EXECUTIVES in our study are women.
6.6
1
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NUMBER OF WOMEN FOR EVERY 9 MEN AMONG DIRECTORS AND HIGHEST-PAID EXECUTIVES
Among counties with at least 20 companies, San Francisco County has the greatest percentage of female directors (16.3 percent) and Orange County has the least (8.7 percent). Alameda County has the most highest-paid female executives at % companies located SAN FRANCISCO there, with COUNTY 14.4 percent.
16.3
NUMBER OF FEMALE CEO S AT THE 400 COMPANIES
0
13
OF 400 ■■
NUMBER OF WOMEN AMONG THE HIGHEST-PAID EXECUTIVES AT FISCAL YEAR-END AT APPLE, GOOGLE, INTEL, CISCO, VISA, EBAY, DIRECTV AND PG&E
PERCENT OF COMPANIES WITH ONLY ONE FEMALE DIRECTOR
Firms in the semiconductor and software industries and those located in Silicon Valley tended to include fewer women on the board and in highest-paid executive positions. Firms in the consumer goods sector had the highest average percentage of female directors and highest-paid executives.
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