Ranks of Women CEOs Shrink -- WSJ

Females are leaving at same rate as men, but some high-profile departures stand out

By Vanessa Fuhrmans

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (May 24, 2018).

If it seems like several female CEOs have lost or left their jobs lately, it is because they have. But so, too, have many male chief executives. So why do the women's departures seem so conspicuous?

One reason is there are so few females at the helm of major corporations to begin with. One year ago, a record 32 women were running Fortune 500 firms. Today that number is 24.

The high-profile exits of a handful of women leaders in recent months -- including Campbell Soup Co.'s Denise Morrison last week and Mattel Inc.'s Margo Georgiadis in April -- appear to have dramatically altered the C-suite's gender landscape. Other women who have recently left the corner office include Mondelez International Inc.'s Irene Rosenfeld, Staples Inc.'s Shira Goodman and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.'s Meg Whitman, who as eBay Inc.'s former chief has run two Fortune 500 firms. But women aren't leaving or getting pushed out of CEO positions in greater percentages than men, according to Equilar, a research firm that tracks executive hiring and firing.

At the 500 largest publicly traded firms, female CEOs have departed at roughly the same rate as their male counterparts since the beginning of 2017, Equilar data show. Recent high-profile male CEO exits include Steve Wynn from his casino company, Mark Fields from Ford Motor Co., Jeff Immelt from General Electric Co. and Richard Smith from Equifax Inc.

Significantly changing the absolute figures of women in the near term will be tough, say CEO recruiters and business leaders. Many companies haven't sufficiently stocked the pipeline with potential women leaders to bolster their ranks in any consistent way, let alone replace departing female CEOs with other women.

"As long as we have these fortuitous [women-CEO] appointments instead of a real gender pipeline being built as a regular course of business, the numbers are going to be volatile," said Jane Stevenson, head of the global CEO succession practice for Korn/Ferry International, an executive recruitment firm.

In the past five years, data from executive-recruiting firm Spencer Stuart show only one female chief at an S&P 500 company was succeeded by another woman: Debra Crew succeeded Susan Cameron as head of tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc. in January 2017. Ms. Crew left in December not long after British American Tobacco PLC acquired the company.

In the C-suite, women hold only about 20% of executive jobs, according to data compiled from 222 major companies last year by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Many senior women are also in roles that don't have a direct impact on the bottom line, such as overseeing legal departments, rather than operational roles with profit-and-loss responsibilities, which is the typical path to becoming a CEO.

Ms. Stevenson said the CEO-succession plan of a company she met with a couple weeks ago illustrates the point. Two senior executives -- a man and a woman -- are candidates to one day succeed the current boss. The woman has broad experience across the business, but has never been promoted to a role with profit-and-loss responsibility. The man, on the other hand, has had such posts.

"If they don't afford the woman a P&L role soon, what are the real chances they will pick her when the time comes?" Ms. Stevenson said, adding that getting more women into the CEO slot is like working a chessboard. "You have to set up the moves to be able to make the moves."

Some research suggests that once women do get to the top, it can be difficult to hold on to the perch. Studying the tenures of the 50 women who led Fortune 500 companies before 2015, researchers at Utah State University found that women were more likely to be appointed as CEO at a company in crisis than men, increasing the odds of a rocky tenure.

One reason may be that with so few CEO possibilities offered to women, they may be more likely to seize an opportunity their male counterparts might shun, said Donald Hambrick, a professor of management at Penn State University's Smeal College of Business.

Ms. Georgiadis, a former Google executive, took the helm of Mattel as the toy maker was in a protracted sales slump and struggling with adapting to a more digitally focused consumer base. She left after a year, succeeded by Ynon Kreiz, the former head of Walt Disney Co.'s Maker Studios. At the time, Ms. Georgiadis told shareholders, "It has been a privilege to lead such an iconic company at an important time for change."

Jewelle Bickford, a partner at Evercore Wealth Management who helps lead "Paradigm for Parity," a coalition of business leaders who have pledged to speed women's progress up the corporate ladder, said many companies that have put women at the helm are older legacy companies grappling with technological disruption in their industries.

"These are companies under pressure in the world we live in today, whether they are led by men or women," she said.

Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com

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May 24, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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