Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.2.2 percent are CEOs
7.6 percent are top earners
14.4 percent are executive officers
Yet women make up:
46.7 percent of the U.S. labor force
51.5 percent of management, professional and related positions
On Fortune 500 boards:
Women are most often on the nominating/governance committees (about 17 percent) and least often the board chairman (about 2 percent).
More than half of these boards had at least two women directors, but more than 10 percent had no women directors.
Source: Catalyst, www.catalyst.org/publication/132/us-women-in-business
ONLY IN THE WORLD-HERALD
When Ruth Ann Marshall comes to town, she's one of two women at ConAgra's board table. When Judith Richards Hope travels here for Union Pacific's board meetings, she's the lone woman with a vote.
Being in the minority is a familiar experience for both women, who rose to the top of their male-dominated fields, financial services for Marshall of Fisher Island, Fla., and corporate law for Hope of Washington, D.C.
That continues to be the norm nationwide for women, who rarely reach corporate America's upper echelons.
Women, who make up more than half of the nation's management and professional positions, hold about 3 percent of CEO spots at the nation's Fortune 500 companies and fill about 16 percent of those companies' board seats. That's according to Catalyst, an international nonprofit that measures women in leadership.
In Omaha, the corresponding numbers are zero and 11 percent.
And when you look at the city's nine Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, women hold 8 percent of the board seats.
The Women's Fund of Omaha recently tallied those numbers, noting that few women are at the table. And those who are don't live in Omaha.
“We have a long way to go as a community before we achieve gender equity in leadership roles by any measure,” said Ellie Archer, the fund's executive director.
The organization, which also has measured women in elected office and nonprofit leadership, has turned its focus to Omaha's corporate board rooms and C-suites.
Archer said the organization wants to identify the top three executive women at major companies and interview them about how they rose and barriers along the way.
Five of Omaha's nine Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 firms have one to two women on their boards. They are Berkshire Hathaway (2), ConAgra Foods (2), Mutual of Omaha (1), Union Pacific (1) and TDAmeritrade (1).
The four with all-male boards are Peter Kiewit & Sons Inc., Valmont Industries, Werner Enterprises and West Corp.
Jeff Laudin, a spokesman for Valmont, said the company's process of finding board members is “open to all qualified candidates irrespective of gender or any other qualities.” Laudin said a nominating committee of board members searches for candidates who have expertise in business or manufacturing.
A recent Wall Street Journal study on women in the U.S. economy cited Catalyst research about how women board members are good for a company's bottom line. Catalyst is a nonprofit group focused on women and business.
Catalyst this year found a 26 percent difference in return on invested capital between companies with 19 to 44 percent female board representation and companies with no women directors.
It's important to have a board with diverse viewpoints, particularly for companies interested in marketing to women, said Monica McGrath, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where 40 percent of MBA students are women.
“Boards who do not access (women) run the risk of losing a vital source of talent and perspective,” she said.
The three-fold explanation long given for women's absence in top corporate spots is pipeline, contacts and choices.
Women may enter an industry in strong numbers but few make it to the top in part because they're cut out of the formal and informal male networks, and many opt out. Frustrated women might seek more fulfilling work elsewhere or dial back careers to care for children or aging family members.
Business management professor Mary Uhl-Bien offers a fourth explanation: homophily — or bonding with, liking, then hiring “people like you.”
“This goes to diversity in general, not just women,” said Uhl-Bien, who holds the Howard Hawks Chair in Business Ethics and Leadership at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Marshall, one of two women on ConAgra's board, said she doesn't consider her experience as a director to be much different from that of the other woman and nine men on the 11-member board. All of them, she said, are faced with the “very challenging, rigorous mental exercise” in this economy of running a major business.
Marshall retired in 2006 as head of MasterCard's Americas region, which covered a chunk of the Western Hemisphere. She worked 12-hour days and traveled three days a week and three weekends a month.
Forbes.com named her among the 100 most powerful women in the world on a list that, in 2005, included former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, China's vice premier, Wu Yi, Oprah Winfrey and Melinda Gates.
Marshall attributed her corporate rise to early encouragement from her father, a former AT&T vice chairman; a good education; and her landing at companies that rewarded hard work and smarts.
She spent 18 years at IBM, which rotated her through different jobs every two years, helping her learn various facets of business. Male mentors, whom she described as “very open-minded, progressive and (who) valued your contribution” also helped her grow.
One male connection was corporate board colleague Steven Goldstone, the former head of RJR Nabisco. They formerly served together on American Standard's board, and he helped her to get on the ConAgra board.
Marshall also serves on the boards of Global Payments Inc., an Atlanta-based international company, and Pella Corp., the Pella, Iowa-based door-and-window company. She is paid for being on the boards and, at least for ConAgra, must meet in person half a dozen times a year with other board members plus participate in conference calls and other duties.
Marshall said it's important that corporations reflect the market they serve. When head of the MasterCard unit and faced with two equal resumes, she'd go with the one that offered a female or ethnic minority perspective the company didn't have.
Marshall said she doesn't feel outnumbered on ConAgra's board in part because she has worked in a male-dominated environment. During ConAgra's interview process, she felt she would have a voice.
“I wouldn't join where I think I wouldn't have been heard or respected,” she said.
Hope, at 22 years on the U.P. board, is the railroad's longest-serving board member. She is a Georgetown University law professor and president and CEO of her international counseling firm, Hope & Co.
She said being the first or only woman was more common in the past but isn't always so now, citing the General Mills Inc. board, on which she sits with three other women.
Given the major task of corporate governance, the must-have expertise in areas ranging from legal and political to customer service and financial, and the need to keep the board size small and nimble, it can be hard to include “all points of view.”
She said board service “has to do with skills and talents more than gender.”
However, she said it's important for national or international companies to bring perspectives from different regions.
At the publicly-held Union Pacific, any shareholder can nominate someone for the board through an outlined process. The outside firm ISS, which evaluates corporate boards, recently gave U.P. high marks for having just one employee on its board (CEO James Young) and for holding annual board member elections.
“It's not in our shareholders' best interest, nor is it in the company's best interest to restrict the scope of any potential board member, whether it's based on geography or gender,” said U.P. spokesman Tom Lange. “The goal is to get the best people on a board who can provide knowledge and experience that provides a good balance.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
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