Just four percent of S&P 500 CEOs are women. Only 19 percent of those companies' board members are women.
Yet even among the discouraging stats about the number of women in corporate leadership roles, this one stands out: Exactly one of the 87 new CEOs named to lead the largest public companies in the United States or Canada in 2015 was a woman, according to a new report.
The study, released Tuesday by the strategy consulting division of PwC, examined the 2,500 largest global companies and found that among the 359 permanent or interim CEOs named in 2015, only 10 of them - worldwide - were female. At 2.8 percent of all new CEOs, that's the lowest rate since 2011, according to the study.
In the United States or Canada, PwC said, the rate of new female CEOs declined for the third year, and dipped to its lowest point since 2004, when PwC began tracking the number. Just 1.1 percent of the new CEOs named to the job last year were women in PwC's analysis of North American companies — down from 4 percent in 2014, 4.7 percent in 2013, and 7.3 percent in 2012. (The distinction, PwC said, went to Andrea Greenberg, who was named CEO of MSG Networks in September after it was spun off from Madison Square Garden.)
At a time when the issue of gender diversity seems to be gaining more attention than ever — investors are pushing for it, companies are disclosing more data on it, and Sheryl Sandberg has sparked the whole "Lean In" moment — the numbers come as something of a surprise. "We were very surprised as well," said Per-Ola Karlsson, a partner with PwC, in an interview. "It was definitely a step back."