CFO magazine, an award-winning business publication that reaches 450,050 financial decision makers 11 times a year, is set to release its most recent Women in Finance special report. Appearing in the July/August issue of CFO, the report will showcase extensive new data and insights from a recently fielded survey of almost 500 readers, as well as detailed research on the prevalence of women in key financial positions at the country’s largest 500 companies.
The cover story, headlined “Power Struggle” finds that after two decades of notable progress, the percentage of women holding the top finance spot at America’s largest companies appears to have reached a plateau. Worse, many expect that the current financial crisis will prompt companies to end diversity and mentoring programs that have helped women advance, and may encourage a return to familiar patterns of hiring and promotion that could exacerbate the current stasis.
Among the notable survey findings:
• 84% of men rate women’s opportunities in finance as excellent, but only 59% of women do. Another 36% of women say women’s opportunities in finance are average.
• A quarter of women at least somewhat agree that there is a glass ceiling in finance, compared to just 4% of men. This is a marked change from 2006, however, when 40% of women believed there was a glass ceiling in finance.
• 38% of finance executives say gender diversity is a “nice to have” in their finance departments, but not a priority. Another 30% say it is “somewhat important.”
The recent halt to women’s progress is due to several subtle factors, as our interviews with many current and former female CFOs found, but can be attributed to two broad structural barriers: a predominance of men among those who do the hiring, and work/family balance challenges that still affect female executives far more than their male counterparts.
“Power Struggle” is one of the most comprehensive portraits of gender differences in the workplace to appear in a mainstream magazine in some time.
*CFO Magazine provided the content in this blog entry and the statistics affiliated with this research report
