ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996 TAG: 9610180034
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: MAGGIE JACKSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's still lonely at the top.
Despite years of trying to enter the highest echelons of business, women hold only a few of the top positions and take home only a few of the fattest paychecks at the biggest U.S. companies, a research group reported Thursday.
The picture isn't all bleak. Last year, 10 percent of the corporate officers at the nation's 500 largest companies were women, compared with 8.7 percent in 1994, the Catalyst group found. Two percent of top earners were women, vs. 1.2 percent a year ago.
And outside the Fortune 500, women are gaining ground. They are starting their own businesses at an enormous rate, partly after bumping against the hard-to-break corporate ``glass ceiling.''
Yet the number of women at the top of large companies remains disproportionately small, according to the survey Catalyst says is the first of its kind.
``This will debunk the myth that women have made it in corporate America,'' said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, a nonprofit group that works on behalf of women's advances in business.
She blamed this myth - that women have already made great strides - for helping keep women back by reducing the urgency for change. And, she said, women are still not given the crucial jobs that lead to top management.
While women make up 46 percent of the work force, last year only 10 percent - or 1,303 out of 12,885 - corporate officers at the 500 largest U.S. companies were women, up from 8.7 percent in 1994, the survey found.
About 100 of the Fortune 500 companies have no women corporate officers at all, Catalyst reported, while 28 companies - mostly in the service sector - have women filling one-quarter of their corporate officer positions.
Women fared best in service-oriented sectors, where they work in great numbers. Such sectors include savings and diversified finance, publishing, retailing, food services and entertainment. Women fared worst in mining, crude oil, brokerages and manufacturing.
The Student Loan Marketing Association, known as Sallie Mae, topped the survey of corporate officers. Some 57 percent - 32 out of 56 - of the Washington-based company's officers are women. Corestates Financial Group and office equipment maker Pitney Bowes also were cited as having high numbers of women corporate officers.
The survey also found that few women have made it into the upper ranks of earners. Women make up just 2 percent of top-earning officers at the surveyed companies, up from 1.2 percent last year.
``Women-owned businesses are the most exciting single sector of the economy,'' said Sherrye Henry of the government's Office of Women's Business Ownership. She said the corporate glass ceiling ``is partly fueling this energetic economic development.''
The country's 8 million women-owned businesses employ one out of four American workers, or more than the global combined work force of the Fortune 500 companies, she said. And women are increasingly heading larger businesses than before.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB