Women lead 4% of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies. Ever wonder who performs the best? We ranked the 20 female leaders by how well each of their companies' stock returns have performed during their tenures as CEO, from least to greatest total return.
Using financial statistics from FactSet, FORBES found the return at the beginning of each CEOs tenure, and compared it to the return on May 24. Total return is defined here as price appreciation plus any interest, capital gains, dividends and distributions over that time period.
Of course, no CEO can totally control fluctuations in stock prices. But they are the best indication of how a company is performing.
The women of the S&P 500 had a median return of 96 percent, with wide variation on either side. Mary Barra of General Motors was the lowest-performing CEO, presiding over a decline of -15.5 percent since January 2014.
Debra Cafaro of healthcare real estate interest trust Ventas Inc. has seen the highest total return of 2,373 percent; she's held that position since 1999, when the company's stock was only worth about $8 a share. Cafaro is followed by Gracia Martore of broadcast and media company TEGNA, which has brought investors a return of 214 percent since 2011.
Meg Whitman and Susan Cameron have had slightly more complicated tenures. Cameron was the CEO of tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc. from 2004 to 2011. Cameron came out of retirement to lead the company for a second time in May 2014. We used the change in total return from her most recent, 96 percent.
Meg Whitman was CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 2011 until the company split and separated its enterprise technology and hardware branches in 2015. She became the CEO of newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise in October 2015. For the sake of simplicity, we included her total return from the beginning of her tenure at HPE, which is -1.12 percent.
How do the CEOs of iconic companies like Xerox, PepsiCola and Yahoo stack up? Click through the gallery to see.