NewsFlash: "Few Women Top Executives!" Is that bad news?

Here is an excerpt from a UC Davis School of Management News Release issued November 17, 2008:

Women's Gains in Politics Not Seen in Board Rooms, CEO Offices

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Half of California's 400 largest public companies have no women in top executive offices, according to a study reported today by University of California, Davis, researchers. Almost half do not have a woman on the board of directors. Nearly a third -- including household names McAfee, Quicksilver and Hansen Natural -- do not have a woman in either a top executive post or on the governing board.

The fourth annual UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders found that only 13 of California's 400 largest public companies have a woman CEO. Overall, women hold just 10.9 percent of board seats and executive positions -- insignificant progress from 2007, when the figure was 10.4 percent, and from 2006 and 2005, when it was 10.2 percent.

Is it bad news that there are few women top executives in California's largest public companies? Perhaps not. 

I think more and more women are choosing NOT sit on these boards and are instead creating their own businesses, many with boards of one!

Juxtapose the study with this a letter to the editor from NAWBO Sacramento Chapter President Rosanna Garcia to the Sacramento Bee newspaper (July 23, 2008) in response to the article "Smaller share of U.S. women in work force" (July 22, 2008):

Women aren't dropping out or giving up.  Rather than return to a flagging industrial workforce, one that still pays women only $.59 for every dollar a man makes for the same labor, women in droves are starting their own businesses.  According to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Women's Business Research, one in 11 adult women is an entrepreneur.  Every minute five women start a business in the United States.  Nearly 10.4 million firms are 50% or more owned by women, and we employ more than 12.8 million people.  Even in this economy, that's about $1.9 trillion in sales.  Between 1997 and 2006, majority women-owned firms grew at twice the rate of all firms (42% vs. 24%).  What does this spell?  Success outside the workforce for millions of women. 

The National Association of Women Business Owners--Sacramento Chapter is dedicated to that success.  Through our educational and advocacy programs we help the region's thousands of women entrepreneurs "strive and thrive." Taking a hint from Dan Weintraub ("Tiny businesses becoming engine for new economy, Wednesday, July 23"), we are all about helping women help themselves.  For more information, go to www.nawbo-sac.org.

Welcome, world, to the women's business REBELution!

Jann Taber - The RebelWoman