No Advance for Women on Boards of US Blue Chips - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Women held 15.2% of the board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2009, unchanged from 2008, Catalyst reported in its annual report on US blue chips. In 2007, the share was 14.7%.

• Catalyst added a census of Corporate Officers among the Fortune 500, finding that women held 13.5% of these top positions. A woman was the top earner at only 6.3% of the companies.

• Not even 1 in 5 of the companies had three or more female Executive Officers, while nearly a third had none.

• By and large, the bigger of these biggest US companies were more likely to have women in board or top management spots, with the top 100 leading the other 400 in every rank except number of female Executive Officers.

• Among directors, the largest share of companies, at 36.5%, had two women on their boards, while 31.9% had one woman; both percentages were virtually unchanged from 2008. 12.3% had no women, against 13.2% a year earlier. 19.4% had three or more women, a percentage point higher than in 2008.

• 2% of boards were run by women, the same as in 2008. Women were Chairs of slightly more nominating or governance committees than in 2008, while falling by the same margin as Chairs of compensation committees.

• Nearly 4 in 5 of all women on boards were white; 69% of boards had no woman of color, 1.5 points more than in 2008.

The Catalyst board census and the Catalyst Executive Officers census

• There is a difference in methodology between the Catalyst Cenus on Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and 20-first’s WOMENOMICS 101 Survey (see below). But it is worth noting the WOMENOMICS 101 findings as a comparison point.

• US Leads: WOMENOMICS 101 compared the top Fortune 101 Companies in three world regions and found that US companies were ahead of their European and Asian counterparts, with 89% of the US companies having at least one woman on the Executive Committee.

• Staff or Line?: WOMENOMICS 101 also looked at how many of the women executives were in staff or line positions. It found that 104 out of 137 women executives were in staff positions in the US companies, like Human Relations or Communications, and thus not involved in the profit/loss functions of the company.

• Critical Mass: WOMENOMICS 101 also looked at how many companies had achieved a critical mass figure of at least 30% women on their Executive Committees, finding that only 11 US companies, and one European company, had reached that level. (List of Critical Mass Companies.)

• Methodology: While 20-first defined an Executive Committee as the core team of senior executives who report directly to the CEO (including the CEO), the Catalyst Census used the definition of “Executive Officer” to mean president, vice-president, those in charge of a principal business unit, division, or function, and any other officer who performs a policy-making function.