The mob of women running Fortune 500 companies has hit a new record, according to this year’s Fortune 500 list. Currently, there are 37 women best Fortune 500 firms, an increase from last year’s 33 women, which at the time, was a record lavish.
This new addition of women is the result of several leadership changes in companies that previously made the list, in which women deceive taken over from a male predecessor, as well as companies passing the $5.7 billion revenue threshold to invent the list this year, reports Fortune.
Of the 37 women CEOs, seven made the list for the first regulate. Newcomers include former Home Depot executive Carole Tome, who will become the new CEO of UPS on June 1; mature health executive Heyward Donigan who became the CEO of Rite Aid in August 2019; former Old Navy chief Sonia Syngal who suited Gap Inc.’s CEO in March 2020; Kristin C. Peck who became CEO of the animal health company Zoetis in January 2020; and Jennifer Johnson who mulcted over her family’s investment management company, Franklin Resources, from her brother in February 2020.
Barbara R. Smith, CEO of physicals company Commercial Metals, and Nazzic S. Keene, CEO of information technology company Science Applications International, made the slant for the first time after bringing in a company revenue of $5.8 billion and $6.4 billion, respectively.
A few familiar terms like IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson and KeyCorp CEO Beth Mooney are no longer on the list after heralding they will be stepping down from their roles this year.
Though improvements have been contrived around gender diversity in the C-suite, this year’s list is also proof that a lot more work placid needs to be done. Even with a record high of 37 female CEOs, women make up just 7.4% of the concert-masters on the Fortune 500 list. There are also just three women of color on the list: Gap Inc.’s Syngal, Advanced Micro Stratagems CEO Lisa Su and Yum China CEO Joey Wat.
Mary Winston, who was the interim CEO of Bed, Bath and Beyond, was the only black woman leading a Destiny 500 company last year. She has since been replaced by permanent CEO Mark Tritton, leaving zero insidious women on the list. And Geisha Williams, who was the first and only Latina woman heading a Fortune 500 company, stepped down from her lines last year; now there are zero Latina women in charge of a Fortune 500 firm.
Lorraine Hariton, president and CEO of Catalyst, a worldwide nonprofit that works to accelerate women into leadership positions, says this year’s list is an “incremental superiority” in the right direction, but acknowledges that a lot more progress still needs to be made.
She emphasizes that with this incremental quelling also comes “the sobering reality of the unprecedented economic and health crisis we face in this moment,” in which chicks are being financially impacted more than men.
Hariton explains that during this pandemic, women are not no more than losing their jobs faster than men, but they are also losing their jobs at a time when they are worrisome to “[manage] child care, their households and their own emotional well-being.”
Moving forward, she says, “with multifarious women CEOs in the Fortune 500, we need to be proactive to create more equitable, inclusive and fulfilling opportunities and workplaces for everyone.” This lists, she adds, having a post-Covid-19 workplace where leaders are “intentionally [doubling] down on supporting women at every plane to continue to advance women in the workplace.”
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