New Year – New Record

We’re hoping for a happy New Year for women in business, as 2012 kicks off with a record number of female CEOs at the nation’s top 500 public companies. This week, IBM’s Virginia Rommety moves into her new role as CEO, as does Mylan Inc.’s new CEO Heather Bresch.

In all – the year begins with 18 female CEOs, beating the previous record of 16 in 2011.

Five of them, including Campbell Soup’s Denise Morrison (click to read our exclusive interview!) and former eBay powerhouse Meg Whitman, now HP’s CEO, were all appointed in the last half of 2011.

But don’t get too comfortable. The list of women CEOs in the top 500 remains stuck at a measly 3 percent; stagnant since 2009, when it was a measly 2.4 percent. And that‘s not all. At the current rate of approximately one new female CEO per year, it will take more than 230 years to reach parity.

In December Avon announced the nations longest reigning top female CEO, its own Andrea Jung, who took the helm in 1999, will no longer have the title. Also in 2011 –Yahoo! fired Carol Bartz. The same day, Sallie Krawcheck left her top post at Bank of America.

We know companies with more women at the top are more profitable – cheers to a better New Year – and thus for corporate America and the economy.

But there’s optimism at Little PINK Book. We see more companies getting serious about promoting and hiring women for key jobs. In fact, we’ve been asked to work with organizations, including Chartis/AIG to help advance high potential women! Very exciting – stay tuned for more on this in coming months.

We also see women leaders being more comfortable in their C-suite jobs. Check out our new feature, “C-Suite Confidential,” here.

Case in point: for the first time ever, after holding dozens of PINK events in cities across the country for seven years, our recent Fall Empowerment event in New York focused largely on life/work balance issues. This is worth noting, since top women have steered clear of sharing those most female aspects of themselves and their lives for so many years.

So happy New Year to all of us women!

Cynthia Good, Little PINK Book CEO