Lack of bottom line experience is holding women back

Citation

(2005), "Lack of bottom line experience is holding women back", Women in Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/wimr.2005.05320gab.001

Lack of bottom line experience is holding women back

Lack of bottom line experience is holding women back

National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) counts who's in “Profit-and-Loss” positions in America's largest companies.

Women are managing the bottom line at only a few of America's largest companies, according to research by NAFE for the Top 30 Companies for Executive Women list, which measured for the first time the percentage of women occupying positions with “profit-and-loss” (P&L) responsibility from mid-management to the C-suite.

Avon Products excels in this area, and for the seventh consecutive year finishes as the top company for women. Hewlett-Packard, Liz Claiborne, Scholastic, PepsiCo, IBM, Prudential Financial, Xerox, Wellpoint, and newcomer Colgate-Palmolive round out the Top 10 companies where women succeed.

“Men still hold 90 percent of P&L positions among corporate officers at the country's largest corporations – the line jobs that provide essential experience for boardroom and CEO slots. Until women move in greater numbers into these jobs, we won't see many women running these companies,” states NAFE President Dr Betty Spence. At seven companies on NAFE's Top 30 list, women fill a ma jority of P&L positions: Avon, Charming Shoppes, Federated, Gap, Liz Claiborne, Nordstrom, and Scholastic. In the Top 30, women fill 32 percent of the total line positions.

“What companies need to do is to focus on remedial efforts to train women for P&L responsibility, because with those jobs historically relegated to men, women have to catch up,” said Spence.

Other trends among the Top 30 companies include:

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  succession planning programs which identify and then groom high potential women executives to run operations;

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  leadership training sessions exclusively for women;

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  new twists on mentoring designed to help women help each other; and

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  support for work/life balance, like phase-back-to-work for new moms, elder care, backup childcare, prepared meals and other concierge services.

The 2005 “NAFE Top 30 Companies for Executive Women” (listed alphabetically):

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  Aetna, Hartford, CT

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  Allstate Insurance, Northbrook, IL

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  American Express, New York, NY

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  Avon Products Inc., New York, NY

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  Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., New York, NY

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  Charming Shoppes, Bensalem, PA

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  Colgate-Palmolive, New York, NY

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  Compuware Corporation, Detroit, MI

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  DuPont, Wilmington, DE

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  Federated Department Stores, Cincinnati, OH

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  Gannett Co. Inc., McLean, VA

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  Gap Inc., San Francisco, CA

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  Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, CA

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  IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY

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  Knight Ridder, San Jose, CA

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  Liz Claiborne, Inc., North Bergen, NJ

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  Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ

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  Manpower Inc., Milwaukee, WI

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  Merck & Co. Inc., Whitehouse Station, NJ

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  Nordstrom Inc., Seattle, WA

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  The New York Times Co., New York, NY

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  PepsiCo Inc., Purchase, NY

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  The Phoenix Companies, Enfield, CT

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  The Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, IA

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  The Procter & Gamble Companies, Cincinnati, OH

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  Prudential Financial, Newark, NJ

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  Scholastic Inc., New York, NY

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  Target, Minneapolis, MN

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  WellPoint, Indianapolis, IN

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  Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT