UC DAVIS STUDY CONFIRMS ADVANCEMENT REMAINS ELUSIVE FOR CALIFORNIA BUSINESS WOMEN

By Joanna Rustin

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - October 16, 2007 – With over 4,000 members in attendance, a presentation by UC Davis at Professional BusinessWomen of California's annual conference revealed a harsh reality: top-performing women continue to be underrepresented in the executive suites and board rooms of the world's leading corporations. Findings from the third annual UC Davis study were revealed during the general session kicked off by former California State Senator and PBWC Founder Jackie Speier.

The study was made possible through a partnership between FWE&E and University of California Davis Graduate School of Management.

Katrina Ellis, Associate Professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and co-author of this study, explained the history of the study.

"Three years ago we started this study because we wanted to provide a California focus on women corporate leaders. Disappointingly, we have discovered that there are only a token number of women corporate leaders in California as in the rest of the country."

She added, "By publishing this study annually we hope to be a catalyst for change. The numbers are surprisingly low and the rate of change is glacial."

The study examined the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California. UC Davis gathered data from annual reports and notice of annual meetings of stockholders from the SEC website. These documents detail the board of directors and executive officers of each company. Statistics in the report are based on the number of women in these groups.

Dean Nicole Woolsey Biggart presented the results, noting "California, the world’s eighth-largest economy, likes to think of itself as a national and global leader of social and economic progress – and in many ways, it is. But in one area it is not: California is the headquarters for 122 companies, including corporate giants like Apple, that have no women at the top."

She added, "122 of California’s 400 largest public companies have no women in a top executive position or on the board of directors. This is 2007. You’d think we were still back in 1957."

View details or download the full report at www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/census.

Joanna Rustin is Founder and Publisher of PBWC Connections magazine and President of Rustin Communications, a marketing communications and public relations firm in the SF Bay Area.