Extract from Why Men Win At Work by Gill Whitty-Collins

yes it is an issue
all-time record’ announced that 37, or 7%, have women ceos
(and not one has a black female ceo). 2 It is also worth noting
that these women leaders are concentrated at the bottom of
the Fortune 500, where the companies are smaller. Europe is
even further behind, where less than 3% of Europe’s s&p 500
companies have a woman ceo. 3
One defence I often hear is that most women don’t want
to be a ceo because they have other priorities in life. While
this may be true for some, don’t try to tell me that 90% plus
of men want to be ceo but only less than 10% of women
do. In fact, 45% of women – versus 54% of men – say they
would like to become a ceo. 4 Furthermore, at the beginning
of their career, 43% of women – versus 34% of men – aspire
to reach top management. (Although, after two or more years
of experience, this is down to 16% for women, while for men
the number remains the same.) 5
We will discuss why this happens later, but nothing here
indicates that only 7% of women want to get to ceo level,
even once they have started to see the barriers they will face.
And this is not just an issue of men versus women at ceo
level. The Hampton-Alexander Review recently celebrated
the ftse 100 having 32.4% women in board positions (still
a long way from 50%) with only 23.1% women in executive
committee positions; and this is not on track to improve
given that 68% of the new appointments are going to men. 6
Another stat to note, 66% of the hr executive positions are
held by women but only 15% of the Finance Director (fd)
positions. Only 25 of the ftse 350 boards have appointed
a woman as Chair. Two of the ftse 100 boards and six of
the executive committees are all-male, as are 38 of the ftse
250 executive committees. Six ftse 100 companies have no
female directors. 7 Only 19% of us board positions are held
by women 8 (somehow it seems more shocking to say that
men hold 81% of board positions).
A 2018 McKinsey report found that 65% of all female
executives are in non-management roles 9 and Grant Thornton’s
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