RI’s Female CEO Deficit — Just 15% of Largest Employers Are Led By Women

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

GoLocalProv Business Team

Men dominate the corner offices in RI

Of the 103 largest employers who operate in Rhode Island, just 15.5 percent of those companies are led by women.

The data was provided by the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training and includes companies with 400 and more employees.

“Women are half the population and half the world’s brain power. If we’re going to solve our biggest problems, we need everyone at the table. But it’s clear that we have more work to do to empower women. When we invest in diversity, everybody benefits,” said Gina Raimondo, Rhode Island’s first female governor in an email to GoLocalProv.

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SLIDE: SEE THE LIST OF THE RI EMPLOYERS WITH MORE THAN 400 BELOW

Recently, Rhode Island lost two of its top women business leaders. Cheryl Snead, the former CEO of Banneker Industries passed away last month and Helena Foulkes, the CVS executive that ran two of the company’s largest business units, is leaving to take the helm of Hudson’s Bay.

Snead was one of the most active business leaders in the community in Rhode Island, serving on multiple boards, and Foulkes has been a regular on many of America’s most influential women and business lists.

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Gina Raimondo -- RI's 1st female Governor

What Are The Factors?

“Women are still underrepresented because there is a 'pipeline issue.' Based on data from 222 companies employing more than 12M in the US, women continue to be hired and promoted at lower rates than men on average (of course, it's even worse for women of color),” said Kelly Nevins, the Executive Director of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island.

“This happens right at the outset because fewer women are hired at the entry level, despite them being 57% of college grads. As you move through the corporate ladder, representation declines further. Women are 18% less likely to be promoted to manager than their male counterparts. By the time they reach Senior VP level, women hold only 21% of these positions. If entry level women were promoted at the same rate as their male peers, the number of women at the SVP and C-Suite levels would more than double. By the way, women are NOT leaving companies at higher rates then men do to focus on family,” adds Nevins.

Lisa Ranglin, who heads the RI Black Business Association of RI said, “Companies that continue to ignore the value of diversity and inclusion in their organization will never achieve their highest level of innovation and growth. It’s well documented that companies with diverse workforce at all levels outperform their competitors.”

“For way too long, diversity and inclusion meant having pictures on a wall with women, and people of color. Outdated recruitment approaches should be revamped to weed out unconscious bias. Companies must be intentional in building a pipeline with qualified diverse candidates. Also, there needs to be diverse cultural perspectives that inspire creativity and drive innovation," said Ranglin.

The Rhode Island number may be better than the percentage of women who lead Fortune 500 companies. According to the business publication, just 6.4 percent of the companies on the list are led by women.

"In my opinion, the state’s priority continues to be out of state large companies," said Ranglin. "It is unfortunate, but Rhode Island’s small business and minority-owned businesses have very limited access to develop and expand and they are typically overlooked as potential drivers of neighborhoods economic development and job creation."

Government Leadership Underrepresented Too

Business is not the only place that women are under-represented in Rhode Island. Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation is all male. Of the five general officers, three are male (Lt. Governor Dan McKee, Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, and General Treasurer Seth Magaziner) and two female (Raimondo and Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea). And, only one of the four legislative leaders at the State House is a woman — Patricia Morgan.

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Women in tech

What Can Change the Dynamics

Nevins says there are a number of initiatives that could change the status quo:

Implicit bias training for ALL employees, and particularly those who are hiring others or conducting performance reviews
Conducting regular hiring/promotion audits for demographic information to identify if challenges are in your workplace
Remove gender bias from written job descriptions and hiring process (use gender balancing services to ensure that an equal number of women's resumes get to the review stage, remove names from resumes, use mixed gender panel interviews)
Connect female employees with leadership development and mentoring programs, provide rotational training through stretch assignments, include them on formal pitch meetings and focus on accountability & results
Since women are 5.5 times more likely than their male counterparts to do all or most of the household work in addition to full-time jobs, making sure workplaces are flexible (with clear policies that focus on results) is key. Offering stipends, discounts, and reimbursements to soften the expense of childcare is also helpful.
By the way, these things also help men!
For more ideas and deeper information, WFRI offers our Gender Equity in the Workplace Toolkit at http://www.wfri.org/research. The toolkit includes a list of questions that can help companies begin to identify gender-related challenges in their workplace.

RI’s Female CEO Deficit — Just 15% of Largest Employers Are Led By Women

Related Slideshow: RI’s Largest Employers - 2018

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