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By Beth Kowitt /
Bloomberg Opinion
There was a moment, not that long ago, when it seemed as if corporations in the US might be at the beginning of a golden age for female chief executive officers.
You would not have known it by looking at the very top of big company’s corporate organization charts, which featured nearly as many men named John as it did the total number of women holding down the same job.
However, right behind them, a slate of women were in contention to take their spots running some of the biggest companies in the US, including Walmart Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Walt Disney Co and Apple Inc.
Photo: Reuters
As of Thursday, when JPMorgan announced that Marianne Lake, its chief of consumer banking, would depart, not one of these female candidates is still a contender. One by one, each was passed over or opted out of the top job. Other than at JPMorgan, the male CEOs of all these Fortune 500 enterprises handed the CEO baton to other men.
And unless there is a dark horse in the CEO race at JPMorgan that we do not know about, Jamie Dimon would, too, when he eventually steps down. As my colleague Paul Davies reported, Lake has been cut out of the CEO bake-off; she is retiring rather than take a lesser job when her current role is handed over to one of Dimon’s potential successors. Last year, JPMorgan lost its other top female CEO candidate when Jennifer Piepszak said she did not want to be considered to succeed Dimon at that time, instead preferring to operate “in support of top leadership.”
Taken together, it is hard to chalk all these examples up to a fluke when the broader data points to a clear pattern. The number of women running Fortune 500 companies is stubbornly flat year after year at 11 percent. At this rate of progress (if you can call it that), it would take about 100 years for women to reach parity with men in the corner office. In the S&P 1500, female CEO appointments dropped to 9 percent last year, down from the mid-teens the two years prior.
The regression in the numbers has followed a regression in corporate culture. As I wrote late last year, when yet another depressing survey was released about the state of women in business, female executives are “watching as their companies eliminate flexible work arrangements with little regard for how it impacts working women, who have most benefited from them. They have absorbed the recent calls for more ‘masculine energy’ and aggression in the US. They have heard the CEOs who say diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) went too far, even as the gender pay gap widened for the second year in a row.”
The hurdles do not disappear for women once they have reached the highest levels. That report, from consulting firm McKinsey & Co and women’s advocacy nonprofit LeanIn.org, found that senior women are less likely to receive training opportunities and career support compared with their male counterparts. They have high levels of burnout and worry their gender would hinder their progress. And while they are just as motivated to do their best work and view their careers as important as men at their same rank, they are less likely to want a promotion — in part because they have been passed over before and view these top jobs as unattainable. The data shows they are not wrong.
There is also something happening in the boardroom that is worth exploring. In times of uncertainty and rapid change like today, boards have a tendency to default to what they know and what feels safe and less risky — known as status quo bias. When it comes to CEOs, the status quo is White men. Meanwhile, the anti-woke, anti-DEI environment that is being championed by the administration of US President Donald Trump has given boards cover to consider less diverse slates of candidates.
This phenomenon is happening on the board level, too. Bloomberg News reported this week that 60 percent of board seats at S&P 500 companies have gone to White men so far this year — the biggest share in a decade, research firm ISS-Corporate said. Some of the reasons experts gave: Companies are deprioritizing diversity and are “looking to play it safe in an uncertain economy.” These choices trickle down into the C-suite; several studies have shown that more diverse boards are more likely to appoint female CEOs.
The pipeline problem is often blamed for the dearth of females CEOs — the excuse that women do not make it to the top because there are not enough qualified ones to choose from. However, we know from this just-out-of-reach golden age that the talent was there. Boards just decided not to choose it.
Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the corporate US. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune Magazine. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
