From the EDITOR.

• Position: Brief Article - Editorial

Some readers will probably look at our cover story on the rise of women CFOs and say, "So what?" or "Big deal." Well, my response is that it is a big deal. Women membership in FFI is 10 times higher, on a percentage basis, than it was 20 years ago, and it's no longer rare for a woman to come to a major corporation as CFO. Certainly, it's far more common than a woman being named CEO of a big public company. At the very top, the glass ceiling is still largely in place.

Writer Karen Kahler Holliday's story, with its profiles of five prominent women finance executives, doesn't treat the rise of women as a revolution. It isn't. It's evolutionary, and it has been taking place in a number of once male-dominated professions. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth exploring in detail, especially since today's female leaders will exert considerable influence on the profession and will likely be mentors for the next generation of women finance executives.

As the profiles demonstrate, there is no one preferred path. While some younger women have demonstrated something of a straight-line progression, others -- like Agilent Technologies' Dotty Hayes -- took an initial detour through more traditional vocations for women. Chase Manhattan's Dina Dublon isn't even a U.S. native, though a good deal of her professional training was done in this country. And Katherine Anderson of Applied Precisions worked in the public sector, then moved to a foundation before returning to the public sector.

Planning and budgeting are the focus of several stories in the issue. Freelance writer Laurie Kaplan Singh looks at the host of Web-based software systems that are allowing a new level of...