Gender issues addressed at FEI women's forum.

• Author: Lundquist, Karen
• Position: Events

The Plaza Hotel in New York City was the venue in March for FEI's Executive Women's Networking Forum, featuring The Plaza's fabled "high tea." Over 30 executive women in finance attended, from organizations as diverse as the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., State Street Corp. and The Canadian Wheat Board.

Dr. Meryle Maher Kaplan, the keynote speaker, discussed "Success Strategies for Executive Women." Kaplan is vice president of Advisory Services for Catalyst, the leading research and advisory organization working to advance women in business. A respected authority on diversity, Kaplan detailed Catalyst's study, "The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity," which establishes a persuasive link between business performance and diversity at the upper levels of management.

Examining 353 Fortune 500 companies, Catalyst found a connection between gender diversity and financial performance, measured both in return on equity (ROE) and total return to shareholders (TRS). ROE and TRS were found to be 35.1 percent and 34.0 percent higher, respectively, among companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams.

Kaplan expounded on other realities facing women in Corporate America. The Catalyst model reveals that while women represent 50.3 percent of management, professional and related occupations, there is a sharp drop-off for senior management positions, with women representing only 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officers. Women figured in just 5.2 percent of the Fortune 500 top earners and only nine of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Why so few? She looked at aspiration, success strategies and barriers. Aspirations to the CEO position are not the issue, she said, with 55 percent of executive women aspiring to that position versus 57 percent of executive men. Nor are are success strategies the issue. Across four key parameters: exceeding performance expectations, successfully managing...