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Feb. 10--SACRAMENTO -- Women make up 46 percent of the work force and hold half of all managerial positions, but their faces rarely appear behind an executive desk, and their voices are seldom heard in a corporate boardroom.
In California, there is only one woman in a leadership role for every 10 men in the executive suites and boardrooms of the state's top revenue-producing companies, UC Davis professors reported Thursday.
California's lack of gender diversity at its 200 biggest public companies was criticized in a study released by the UC Davis Graduate School of Management -- the first to focus solely on California.
"I'm sad to say the Golden State is not a land of golden opportunity for women who want to be at the top decision-making places in our corporations," said Nicole Woolsey Biggart, co-author and dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. "This is a missed opportunity for corporate California." With California having the world's eighth-largest economy and being a "trailblazer in social trends," Woolsey Biggart said they had expected California to be at the forefront of corporate leadership.
Instead, they found: Women hold 8.2 percent of the 1,006 executive officer positions in California.
On corporate boards, women hold 11.4 percent of the 1,771 positions in the state.
More than two-thirds of the top 200 companies have no female executive officers.
Only six of those companies have a female CEO.
More than a quarter of these companies -- 55 of the 200 -- have no women directors on their boards and no women executives.
Smaller companies tend to have a greater percentage of women executives, but larger companies typically have a greater number of female board members.
Orange County ranks in the same ballpark as the state overall. At 29 Orange County companies included in the study, 9 percent of the highest-paid corporate officers were female, along with 11.2 percent of directors.
The statewide results are similar to national studies that have examined the scarcity of women leaders in traditional corporate settings.
But these studies might be looking in the wrong places, said Judith B.
Rosener, professor at the Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine and an authority on women in business.
"Where you look is what you see," Rosener said, pointing out that women are starting their own businesses at twice the national rate for all private companies. The most recent census report shows that women owned 28 percent of private companies in 2002. "Women don't want to work in these big companies. They're hierarchical, old-tradition, top-down and their work arrangements are not conducive to women today," Rosener said. "California women really are doing very well, but not in the big companies."
A unique aspect of the UC Davis study pulled together data from seven other U.S. regions that have studied big companies using a similar census report.
For each company, they looked at the CEO and the four highest-paid officers, along with board seats.
Among the eight regions, California ranks second behind Chicago in the percentage of board seats held by women, and it ranks sixth in percentage of executive officer spots held by women -- behind Georgia but ahead of Florida and Michigan.
The study also saluted 25 companies where women hold many of the top leadership positions. Golden West Financial Corp. ranked No. 1 and is the only company that had a 50-50 gender split for executives and directors.
Orange County made the top 25 list with WFS Financial, an auto-lending company in Irvine, and Advanced Medical Optics in Santa Ana.
Speaking at the presentation of the study, Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, urged companies to consider data, such as a 2004 report by Catalyst, that shows companies with the most women in top management positions produce higher returns to shareholders than those with the least women. Catalyst, in New York, is a nonprofit that advocates for women in business.
"It's important to realize that women represent 50 percent of all the investors in California," she said. "If they took their shareholder power seriously, they could change these numbers virtually overnight." Marion Sandler, CEO of Golden West, sent this advice to California companies: "Try harder." WFS Financial ranked 12th among California companies.
"The corporate culture here recognizes the importance of having women in our company as we look for the right person to fit the job," said Caren Roberson, director of marketing and communications.
At Advanced Medical Optics, Aimee Weisner holds the titles of corporate vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. She is one of four women on the 11-member senior executive council.
"Diversity is integral to our culture," she said. "Our CEO, Jim Mazzo, embraces diversity and the value that it adds to the organization. We all bring something different to the table."
By Michele Himmelberg and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. Staff writer Andrew Galvin contributed to this report.
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