By Patricia Lundy
Find a presentation of this blog at “Mind the Gap: Where are the Females in Tech and Business?”
Today, Forbes is having their Under 30 Summit, and one of their morning panels was focused on successful women. It was led by Kat Cole, the president of Cinnabon. You’d think in today’s world that we wouldn’t need a separate panel of women speaking about women at a summit. But unfortunately, female leaders are not as well integrated with the rest of the tech and business demographic. Female leaders in the business and tech realm are not as pervasive as they should be. And while that is changing, it’s changing slowly.
According to data from CATALYST:
- Women currently occupy 5.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions.
- Women currently occupy 5.4 percent of Fortune 1000 CEO positions.
(To see more data visit http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-fortune-1000).
Note that this data only reflects CEO positions and does not reflect CIO, CFO, or CMO, many of which are occupied by females. In fact, our own CEO met with many CMOs at Dreamforce this year, and many of them happened to be female. I attended DF14 this year, too. And while I was not seeking out female leaders, I noticed that they were not that visible. As I was cruising around the expos, I saw only two booths with female leaders.
Of course, there were more that I didn’t see. And of course, there were female leaders who were not present at their company’s booth. But the majority of vendors and attendees were male. The same can be said for the conference’s speakers.
That’s not a bad thing. It just accurately reflects the data as revealed by CATALYST.
And so, panels such as the Successful Women panel at Forbes’ Under 30 Summit are necessary. At our own conference in 2015, we are highlighting women in tech by featuring speakers such as Laurie McCabe and Maribel Lopez.
*If you would like to speak at PCMC 15, please contact Jim Lundy: jlundy@aragonresearch.com.
*Extra kudos if you are a female leader in business or tech!