Are you ready to take Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and lean into an executive position at a top company? We’ve got a list of 10 places where you may have the best shot at climbing the career ladder.
The National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), a division ofWorking Mother magazine publisher Working Mother Media, has just released its annual list of the top 50 companies for executive women. NAFE also highlights 10 companies it says are the “best” for women. They aren’t ranked from one to ten. They’re all considered to be great places for women to work and advance.
Women still have a long way to go until they are well-represented in corporate leadership. Only 4.6% of the 1,000 largest U.S. companies now have female CEOs, compared to 4% last year. “The number of women in CEO positions isn’t exactly inching up,” notes NAFE president Betty Spence. “It’s going up by millimeters.” But at least it’s headed in the right direction, she adds.
The 50 companies on NAFE’s list are all places where women are progressing more quickly than in the rest of corporate America. The leadership at these firms has decided to make women’s advancement a priority, through sponsorship and mentoring programs, goal-setting and hiring initiatives.
To be considered for NAFE’s list, companies need a minimum of two women on their boards and at least 1,000 employees in the U.S. NAFE chooses the top 50 based on women’s representation at all levels, employees’ access to and use of programs and policies that promote women’s advancement, training opportunities and managers’ accountability. NAFE sends out invitations to 1,000 companies. To participate, a firm must fill out a lengthy form with some 200 questions. NAFE chose the 50 best companies from 250 firms that responded.
IBM IBM +0.26% stands out because it’s the only one of the top 10 with a female CEO. In 2011 the century-old tech giant tapped Virginia Rometty for the top job. IBM also has an impressive share of female senior managers, 26%, and 22% of its executives are women, according to NAFE. Those are strong numbers, given that 30% of its 433,000 employees are women. IBM even goes after female executives who have left the company through something called the Reconnections initiative, which offers continuing education and networking.
Ernst & Young is another standout. This is the first year the company participated in NAFE’s survey and it went straight to the top 10 list. Some 46% of its 29,400 employees are women and 45% of senior managers are female. Also women now make up 24% of partners, principals, executive directors and directors, up from 13% in 2000. The company has a sponsorship program, which is like a mentorship on steroids, where partners advocate for women in their groups and help them get promoted. Example: Beth Brooke, EY’s global vice chair of public policy, works to get women slots on highly visible projects.
Marriott is also in the top 10. Some 55% of the company’s 98,400 employees are women and a greater share of managers, 58%, are female. Among executives, 34% are women. At least nine women head up divisions worth more than $100 million annually. “This is a company that takes people who come into the company at the lowest ranks, as chambermaids or bartenders or front desk clerks, and grooms them so they can move up,” notes Spence.
A company that didn’t make the top 10 that Spence sees as an up-and-comer: Walmart, where 57% of the company’s 1.3 million employees are female and women represent 35% of senior managers. That number could be higher but Spence says the company is making strides. Its global head of human resources is a woman, Susan Chambers, and the share of women in executive positions, now 28%, has increased 46% in six years. That includes Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Sam’s Club and Gisel Ruiz, chief operating officer for Walmart U.S. “Who knows what Walmart will look like in five years?” says Spence.
Spence explains that NAFE’s goal with the list is to signal to women where the best opportunities are. “I don’t believe you should be working at a company where you’re going to be beating your head against a wall,” she says. “Ten percent of companies in the Fortune 500 have no women on their boards,” she adds. “Those are Neanderthal companies. When you’ve got so many other things to deal with in your life, why should you have to deal with Neanderthals?”
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