• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • SCB YouTube
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Supply Chains in Crisis
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • THINK TANK
  • WEBINARS
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Library
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » 'Challenging and Lonely' Path of Women CEOs Slowly Gets Busier

'Challenging and Lonely' Path of Women CEOs Slowly Gets Busier

Mary Barra
General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra. Photo: Bloomberg.
April 18, 2019
Bloomberg

If the future is female, as the slogan says, then the future has arrived at General Motors.

In the five years since Mary Barra, 57, was appointed the first female chief executive of a major automaker, she has added the role of chairman. Among her possible successors, at least one is also a woman. And depending on decisions to be made later this month, GM’s board of directors could become only the third in the entire S&P 500 to have a female majority.

Advocates of gender balance and corporate diversity are watching Barra’s tenure with cautious optimism. She’s the highest profile in a small but growing class of female CEOs, joined April 15 by Best Buy’s Corie Barry. The glass ceiling is still a reality — women run only about 5 percent of large companies. So is the glass cliff, the phenomenon wherein women only get tapped to lead companies that are already teetering. Even in a stable environment, mostly male boards are often quicker to remove a female leader at the first sign of turbulence. Perhaps that could be called the glass rug. 

Nevertheless, Barra — along with Barry, Lynn Good at Duke Energy, Gail Boudreaux at Anthem Inc. and the women running defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrup Gruman, and General Dynamics — could create the critical mass needed to pull other women to the top of the corporate ladder and support them once they get there.

“Being the CEO is a tremendously challenging and lonely position,” said Connie Matsui, who chairs the board of biotech company Halozyme Therapeutics Inc., one of only a few companies with a female CEO and a female board leader. “For some women who found themselves in a crisis situation, I just wonder if they had enough of a network. That’s another kind of community that could be developed — to help these women persevere.”

The auto industry is still overwhelmingly male — 14 of the 16 speakers at this week’s New York auto show are men. But Barra’s set herself, and GM, apart for other reasons. She’s been willing to make unpopular choices, idling plants and cutting white-collar jobs to shift focus to future technology, even as the company remains profitable. GM’s acquisition of autonomous driving startup Cruise Automation in 2015 looks better by the day. And while she’s drawn consistent criticism from President Donald Trump, the company’s employees respect her, said Rebecca Lindland, a long-time Detroit auto analyst and founder of Rebeccadrives.com.

Wall Street’s been equally sanguine: A majority of the 28 analysts that follow the company rate it a buy and only 1 recommended selling GM shares, according to Bloomberg data. Rod Lache, Institutional Investor’s top-ranked U.S. auto analyst for six years running, signaled his confidence in January. 

“To the extent that investing in any company is to a large extent investing in the company’s management team, this company clearly stands out,” he said at the Wolfe Research conference in Detroit. 

Six of GM’s 13 corporate directors are women; among the remaining seven men, three have hit the mandatory retirement age of 72, including lead director Tim Solso. The board could extend their terms or choose to replace them. Depending on what they decide, it could flip to a female majority for the first time.

GM declined to comment on the future of any directors ahead of the next proxy, which will disclose the slate. The company typically files its proxy in late April, ahead of a June annual meeting and the formal vote to pick a new group of board members.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather. I didn’t think I would live to see that happen.” 

Women still make up less than 25 percent of directors at larger companies. Michelle Ryan, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Exeter who coined the term “glass cliff,” says boards dominated by men may be more willing to give second chances or the benefit of the doubt to other male executives. Among 64 CEOs of S&P 500 companies who resigned under pressure from 2010 to 2018, 13 percent were women, more than double their share in the broader CEO population, according to data from Spencer Stuart.

The power dynamic could shift as more women join corporate leadership, said Axogen Inc. CEO Karen Zaderej. Her otherwise all-male board named Amy McBride-Wendell its lead director last year. Zaderej says having another woman at the table, and in a leadership role, has helped bolster her position on some topics at the company, which focuses on nerve repair and protection. 

But it’s more than solidarity, Zaderej says. As with autos, more than 80 percent of health care decisions are made by women. When the board was discussing whether Axogen should consider business related to breast-reconstruction after cancer treatment, the duo were able to give a broader picture of women’s views on the topic. Boards are “recognizing that you really need to have that woman's voice in the board to make sure that you’re thinking about your business from a consumer perspective,” Zaderej said.

Only Viacom and CBS have a majority of women directors among the companies in the S&P 500. Best Buy will join that short list when Barry’s appointed in June. But another half dozen are split evenly, while about 25 are one woman shy of parity or even majority.

“I really think we are on the verge of another springboard level,” said Anne Doyle, a former Ford executive and author of “Powering Up: How American Women Achievers Become Leaders. “I think that Mary Barra was one of the very first of the next wave to truly crack those truly big, top, global CEO positions.”

It was Barra’s former boss, Dan Akerson, who presaged the rise of a woman to run a major automaker. “Someday, there will be a Detroit Three that’s run by a car gal. I actually believe that,” Akerson said in a 2013 speech to members of Inforum, a Michigan non-profit that advocates for the advancement of women in the c-suite. At the time, Barra was GM’s chief product officer.

And when Barra became CEO? “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” said Terry Barclay, CEO of Inforum. “I did not think I would live to see that happen.”

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Logistics Business Strategy Alignment Education & Professional Development HR & Labor Management Automotive Industrial Manufacturing
KEYWORDS Automotive Business Strategy Alignment Education & Professional Development HR & Labor Management Industrial Manufacturing
  • Related Articles

    Making the Supply Chain a Better Career Path for Women

    Making the Supply Chain a Better Career Path for Women

    Work Habits of Millennials Challenging, Maddening - and Highly Beneficial

Bloomberg

Amtrak Bottleneck Turns Biden’s Focus to His Favorite Rail Route

More from this author

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter!

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • A MAN IN A SUIT SHAKES HANDS WITH A WOMAN IN A HARD HAT, NEXT TO A STACK OF CONTAINERS

    Three Procurement Technology Evolutions for 2023

    Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
  • DOCUMENTS BEARING THE INSIGNIA OF US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION LIE ON A TABLE

    New CBP Regs Call for Greater Diligence by Brokers in Reporting Security Breaches

    Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
  • The blank stare of a child's eye who is standing behind what appears to be a wooden frame

    The Alarming Continued Rise of Modern Slavery in Supply Chains: How Procurement Can Help Reverse the Trend

    Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
  • A WORKER IN A WAREHOUSE, SUPERIMPOSED WITH GRAPHICS SHOWING SUPPLY NETWORK

    Enabling Intelligent Visibility With Supply Chain Analytics

    Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
  • A GROUP OF WORKERS RANGED IN AN OFFICE, OF DIVERSE RACE, GENDER, AGE AND PHYSICAL ABILITY

    Podcast | The Supply Chain Workforce of the Future Is Already Here

    HR & Labor Management

Digital Edition

Scb nov 2022 sm

2022 Supply Chain Innovator of the Year

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • New Revenue for Cloud-Based TMS that Embeds Orderful’s Modern EDI Platform

  • Convenience Store Client Maximizes Profit and Improves Customer Service

  • A Digitally Native Footwear Brand Finds Rapid Fulfillment

  • Expanding Apparel Brand Scales Seamlessly with E-Commerce Technology

  • How a Global LSP Scaled its Security Program and Won More Business

Visit Our Sponsors

Orderful Yang Ming Alithya
Barcoding Blue Yonder BNSF Logistics
CoEnterprise Data Capture Deposco
E2open GAINSystems Generix
Geodis GEP GreyOrange
Here Honeywell Intelligrated IFM
Infor Inmar Keelvar
Kinaxis Korber Lean Solutions Group 2H
Liberty SBF Locus Robotics Logility
LogistiVIEW Lucas Systems MCA Connect
MPO Nvidia Old Dominion
OpenText ORTEC Overhaul
Parsyl PMMI QIMA
Redwood Logistics Ryder E-commerce by Whiplash Saddle Creek Logistics
Schneider Dedicated Setlog Holding AG Ship4WD
Shipwell Tecsys TGW Systems
Thomson Reuters Tive Trailer Bridge
Vecna Robotics Verity
Verusen
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • On-Demand Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright ©2023 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing