Catalyst's Women in Corporate Leadership Study, 1996
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Background: Catalyst is New York City based independent not-for-profit organization founded in 1962 to enable women in business and the professions achieve their maximum potential and to help employers capitalize on the talents of their female employees.
Research Methodology:
Mail survey of executive women in Fortune 1000 corporations. A six-page survey questionnaire was sent to 1,251 women with titles of Vice President and above in Fortune 1000 companies. The mailing list was compiled from three sources: Standard and Poor's, a purchased mailing list of female executives, and Catalyst's in-house database of executive women. Two mailings were conducted, and 461 usable questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 37 percent. Twenty women executives and 20 corporate CEOs participated in telephone interviews designed to augment the survey information. Women were selected for interviews based on a random sample drawn from the survey database.
CATALYST FACT SHEET ON WORKING WOMEN
Women on Boards: 81 percent (404) of Fortune 500 companies have at least one female director, compared with 75 percent (376) in 1994, and 69 percent in 1993. However, women hold fewer than one in ten board seats of today's Fortune 500 companies (600 of 6,274), or 9.5 percent. This compares with 8.7 percent in 1994 (545 of 6,276) and 8.3 percent in 1993. An interesting trend: 54 percent of top 100 companies by revenue have multiple female directors, versus one-third of the Fortune 500 overall.
Women in Senior Management: In 1990, Catalyst found that approximately 5 percent of senior managers were women. That percentage has held steady: in 1995 the Glass Ceiling Commission reported that women represented just 3 to 5 percent of senior managers in major corporations.
Women Business Owners: In the last three years, the number of women-owned businesses has increased by 43 percent to 7.7 million. These 7.7 million firms employed 15.5 million workers in 1994-- 35 percent more than the total employed by the 500 biggest U.S. businesses.
Women in the Workforce:
In 1994, 60 percent of women over 16 in the U.S. were labor force participants, up from 33.9 percent in 1950. Among women 25-54, 75 percent worked.
In 1994, women working full-time, year-round earned 76.4 cents for every dollar earned by men. This wage gap increases with age: women aged 20-24 earn 94.5 percent of men's earnings; women aged 25-36 earn 82.9 percent; women 35-44 earn 72.6 percent; women 45-54 earn 67.1 percent; and women 55-64 earn 66 percent.
Of the total number of women in the workforce, 28.7 percent are in the "managerial and professional specialty occupation" category.
Women held 48.1 percent of all positions in managerial and professional specialty occupations in 1994, up from 33.9 percent in 1983.
Women in Specific Industries:
In 1960, only about 7 percent of the nation's physicians were women, but by 1994, their representation had increased to 22 percent. Women's representation in the legal profession jumped from less than 5 percent in 1960 to 25 percent n 1994. In 1994, women constituted 8 percent of engineers, 11 percent of the clergy, and 52 percent of accountants.
Women's Educational Attainment:
In 1993, women earned 35 percent of all MBAs (up from 4 percent in 1972), 42.5 percent of all law degrees (up from 8 percent in 1973), represented 35 percent of all students in medical school, and earned 38 percent of doctoral degrees in all fields (44 percent among U.S. citizens).
The National Center for Education Statistics projects that in 2003, there will be over million women in college, compared to 4.5 men. The corresponding figures for 1994 are about 4.7 and 4.3, respectively.
