The situation for women in American boardrooms has dimmed along with the economy. The number of Fortune 500 companies with no women board directors increased from 59 in 2007 to 66 in 2008.
Overall, according to an annual year-end report issued by Catalyst this year in conjunction with Ernst & Young, women’s progression to the boardroom and C-suite was nearly stagnant. In 2008, women held 15.2 percent of the directorships at Fortune 500 companies, up almost negligibly from 14.8 percent in 2007, according to the “2008 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors of the Fortune 500.”
Ilene Lang, president and CEO of Catalyst, a nonprofit women and board leadership organization founded in 1962, decried the findings: “Exceptional circumstances require exceptional leaders. Now more than ever, as companies examine how best to weather an economy in crisis, we need talented business leaders, and many of these leaders, yet untapped, are women.”
Globally, the outlook for executive women is, by comparison, even grimmer. Differences in some characteristics between foreign- national and American directors of S&P 500 companies are mostly insignificant, except for gender, according to the “Global Board Index,” a report issued by Egon Zehnder International. American directors are far more likely to be female than their foreign counterparts: only 5.8 percent of foreign-national directors are women, according to the EZ report.