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MARGARITA BAUZA: Getting to top tough for
female executives
Men still have more jobs, better pay
October 24, 2005
BY MARGARITA
BAUZA
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
As more women than ever enter the workforce and graduate from
college, a new study to be released today shows how tough it still
is for them, particularly in Michigan, to reach the top levels of
big companies -- and to earn as much as men once they get there.
FEMALE LEADERSHIP
IN
MICHIGAN |
| •Women make up 5.7%
of all top-compensated executives, down from 7.1% in 2003.
•Women on the board of directors make up 9.9% of all Index
100 directors, up slightly from 9.6% in 2003. Index 100 refers
to the 100 publicly held companies headquartered in Michigan
with the overall highest value in company stock.
•Not a single Michigan Fortune 500 company has a top female
officer, down from four in 2003.
•Of the 85 companies on the 2003 list that also appear on
the 2005 list, 21 lost points compared with 17 that gained.
The rest stayed the same.
•Only 13 companies scored 10 points or higher, compared
with 18 in 2003 -- a 28% decline.
•Not a single board chair is a woman -- the same as in
2003.
•Only 21 companies have at least one female officer.
•Only 10 companies have more than 20% women on the board of
directors, and 40 have no women on their board of directors.
Source: 2005 Michigan Women's Leadership
Index
| The 2005
Michigan Women's Leadership Index, commissioned by Inforum, formerly
the Women's Economic Club, shows there are no women in the top five
most-compensated executive positions at any of Michigan's 20 Fortune
500 companies.
That's down from four women two years ago, when the study was
last conducted. Nationwide, 5.2% of Fortune 500 executives were
women in 2003. The numbers for 2005 are not yet available.
"The work and family problem has not yet been solved," Ellen
Kossek, a professor of human resource management and organizational
behavior at Michigan State University's graduate school of Labor
& Industrial Relations, said Sunday.
Michigan companies tend to be more traditional than those in the
rest of the country and have not moved beyond adopting policies that
support changes that help people who have family responsibilities,
Kossek said.
"Basically, we need to work 60-hour workweeks to be able to make
it to the top," she added. "That's an issue."
But work balance is only one part of the equation, she argued.
"There is still a glass ceiling," Kossek said. "Organizations
have cultural systems that tend to promote leaders that look like
those who have been leaders in the past. If we're going to make
changes, we have to be open to promote people who look different and
who work differently.
"I think it does go back to culture change and learning how to
manage differently and think about new ways this could benefit the
company."
Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and
Social Research conducted the research. It is the second such report
on female executives, but the first one to look at salaries of
top-compensated men and women in 100 publicly traded companies with
the highest value of stock in Michigan. The first index was
published in 2003 and conducted by researchers at the University of
Michigan.
In all 100 companies, there were 27 female executives in 2005,
down from 30 in 2003.
The study also found that the wage gap between men and women is
wider at the top -- 49 cents to the dollar for women in the top five
-- than it is in the state overall, 67 cents to the dollar.
Nationwide, women make 76 cents to every dollar a man makes,
according to 2004 data from the Institute for Women's Policy
Research in Washington, D.C.
"The results are disappointing," Terry Barclay, chief executive
officer of Inforum, said Friday. "We're surprised by the disparity.
While we know that there are wage differentials that have been
longstanding, we thought that once you got to this top level that it
would become more even."
Barclay dismissed the notion that women leave the corporate world
to spend time with families as a reason for the slide.
"I think that's an overemphasized argument that is used
disproportionately with women than with men. There is a proportion
of men and women whose priority is on the family and other aspects
of their lives other than work. Those men and women do not seek the
top office. If women are deflecting, in many cases it's because
they're discouraged about prospects."
Compuware Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Laura Fournier
said she believes women who leave the workplace before reaching the
highest rungs of management tend to do so because of family
responsibilities.
In her case, her husband chose to stay at home with their son
when he was born, Fournier said Friday, something that enabled her
to continue working and achieve higher positions within her company.
"There are many factors that contribute to these numbers,"
Fournier added. "For me, I just love what I do. And I think the
commitment you have and liking what you do all contribute to
deciding whether you're going to stay in for the long haul."
The report extracts salary and corporate executive information
from reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
which corporations are required to file by law, said Nat Ehrlich,
the MSU research specialist who conducted the study.
Ehrlich cautioned that executive pay was found to be considerably
higher for men because there are no women in the top five jobs at
Michigan's Fortune 500 companies, whose executives receive almost
three times the average male salary.
Companies are scored according to the number of women in the top
five jobs and female board members, with more weight given to
executives because of their day-to-day influence on operations.
Thirteen companies scored 10 points or higher, compared with 18 in
2003. The most a company can score is 30.
The top six scorers in Michigan were FNBH Bancorp, Compuware,
Energy Conservation Devices, Somanetics, X-Rite Inc. and Steelcase.
Automotive and manufacturing industries fared worse than
technology and service-based companies.
Ford scored a 4, General Motors scored a 2, and Lear scored a 1.
By contrast, the furniture maker Herman Miller scored a 10,
Steelcase scored a 12, and Compuware scored a 20.
"We have found that there are a great number of women in
technology," Tom Costello, senior vice president of human resources
at Compuware, said Friday. He explained that there is a wide pool of
female candidates to choose from.
"I think that's the case in our industry," Costello said. "It's
diverse, ethnically, gender-wise. That puts us over autos."
Compuware's score fell from 22 to 20 in two years because it lost
one female board member. It's still considered a top scorer.
Marlene Almquist, a senior benefits analyst at Compuware,
attributes the high performance to the company's family friendly
policies and initiatives, which she says appeal to women.
"Salary is important, but a big draw for me is being able to
balance my life," Almquist, 41, of Canton said Thursday. She brings
her 4-year-old son, Dylan, to an on-site day care. "It makes things
much easier.
"If he's having a bad day, I can just go see him," she said. "I
don't have to excuse myself and leave. My experience here is that I
don't see management pushing for you to give up your family."
A consistently low-scoring company is Southfield-based Lear, a
Fortune 200 company that supplies automotive interior systems. It
increased the number of women on its board, bumping its score up to
1 this year from 0 in 2003.
Jim Comer, president of Lear's North American joint ventures and
diversity, said the company is trying to change those numbers.
The company has been working on a plan to diversify its
workforce, including efforts to have more women in its jobs pool.
The company also is working on a plan to improve management
opportunities for women.
"We've been bringing talent in and we've been a great training
ground, but because they didn't feel it, they'd go somewhere else.
We're going to find a way to keep those people. We want to retain
that talent."
Marina Williams, director Lear's office of diversity, has been
traveling to university campuses trying to sell the company as a
place where women can flourish.
"We recently met with our recruiter and explained what our
expectations are in regards to how we manage our candidates," she
said Friday. "If they can't meet the expectations, we have to
reevaluate who we're using.
"Internally, we want to make sure everyone has access to
opportunities."
Barclay of Inforum said she's hopeful the numbers will turn
around at companies that don't have many women in the top jobs.
Companies such as General Motors Corp., Comerica and Ford Motor Co.
are focusing more attention on women's initiatives that hope to
change the findings of the study.
"We're seeing a deeper bench at those companies, and that's the
pool from which people will be tapped to reach the very top levels,"
she said.
She added that increasing the number of women on boards would
help improve performance for companies.
They "will be in the position to ask more questions and set
compensation levels. The more we have women asking questions, the
better we will be."
Contact MARGARITA BAUZA
at 313-222-6823 or bauza@freepress.com.
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