Women remain a scarcity in the top rungs of Corporate America. Females held only 14.3 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies in 2012, a smidge more than in 2011, according to 2012 Catalyst Census, a report from nonprofit Catalyst, which promotes women in business. Women at these companies also only held fewer than 1 in 5 board of director positions, at 16.6 percent—reflecting only half a percentage point of growth over 2011. And more than one-quarter of Fortune 500 companies had no women executive officers.
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The problem may simply be lots of talk without any action, says one expert, and it makes for problems far below the C-suite level.
"It's not just about the glass ceiling. There's a gender gap in terms of wages up and down the economic spectrum and across races," says Sharon Lerner, a senior fellow at Demos, a left-leaning think tank, and author of The War on Moms, a book on the struggles of American working mothers. "It persists because we're not doing anything about it. Talking about it is one thing."
