With the news that Google’s Marissa Mayer has joined Yahoo as CEO, the remarkable upswing in female CEOs continues. The following figure summarizes the trend, showing that there are currently 41 female Fortune 1000 CEOs, the majority of whom have joined in the last three years.
"Women still operate from a position of scarcity rather than a position of abundance. But we should not have to live with the paralyzing fear that this one will “get away.” Men don’t. Instead, they see windows of opportunity and encourage ambitious young men to walk through them. All too often, we encourage young women to look down the road well before they are there, and to look down, instead of up, along the way. But lowered eyes and folded arms do not lead to excellence."
- We Need to Tell Girls They Can Have It All (Even If They Can’t)
The electric dollhouse kit encourages girls aged 6 to 10 to create their own wired dollhouses (think fans, lights, motors, and buzzers) with circuits and wooden building components. The stackable rooms attach to one another to create a home. Instead of playing princess, girls are playing architect, artist, and engineer.
The 2012 ranking of the 500 largest corporations in the United States includes a record 18 firms helmed by female CEOs, up from 12 companies in 2011.
The previous record for women-led companies in the Fortune 500 was set in 2009, and included 15 firms run by female executives. Just seven Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs in 2002 and 2003.
Though this year marks a new high for female CEOs, women still run just 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies. And one in 10 Fortune 500 corporations have no women on their boards.
"As it is, women remain acutely underrepresented in the coding and engineering professions. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics study, in 2011 just 20% of all programmers were women. A smaller percentage of women are earning undergraduate computer science degrees today than they did in 1985, according to the National Center for Women in Technology, and between 2000 and 2011 the percentage of women in the computing workforce dropped 8%, while men’s share increased by 16%. Only 6% of VC-backed tech startups in 2010 were headed by women."