This morning, I was delighted to read that General Motors would be gaining a new CEO, it’s first woman. But yesterday, the diversity research group Catalyst published the results of its annual census that showed that Fortune 500 companies were making no progress over the last few years in terms of gender diversity.
A couple of its greatest findings were:
Women held only 16.9% of corporate board seats in 2013, indicating no significant year-over-year uptick for the 8th straight year. And only 14.6% of Executive Officer positions were held by women—the 4th consecutive year of no year-over-year growth.
The auto industry needed a facelift, anyway, although some at GM say that her appointment was not meant to explicitly make a statement about diversity or women.
I say that this appointment could signal a trend in male-dominated industries to promote women to the top, but I may just be overly optimistic.
Or maybe I’m on to something. There might be a structural buoy within GM that retains and rewards high-performing female employees. In the NY Times article that read this morning, the reporters make reference to a few other high-ranking female executives at GM. This car company makes gender diversity at the highest levels the norm, not the exception.
(photo via Brian Shorey)