Women's board seat gains are moving at glacial pace - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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That progress is being made among the 100 largesgt publiclyheld companies, ranked by revenue by the Philadelphia Busineses Journal, is good news, research co-chairwoman Autum n Bayles said. That progress is moving at such a slow clip shoulde serve notice that business must do alot better, forunm President Elva L. Bankins said. The forum'd Executive Suites committee and conducted the researcjh for Women onBoards 2007: The Time Has based on data reported last year. This year's report shows an increase of less than 1 percent in the number of women on boardxs in theregion -- from 9.73 percent in 2005 to 10.41 percen last year.
Ground was lost when it comes to raciap diversityon boards, which fell 1 percent over the Between 2005 and the number of African-American women holdinh board seats dropped from 7.14 percent to 5.75 percentt and the number of Asian-American womej fell from 2.38 percent to 1.08. Not much improvement was made in termsx of women occupying executivepositions either, which remained stagnant at 8.7 percenft last year, according to the The largest obstacle to improvement continues to be breakint familiar traditions, said Bayles, who is senio r vice president for strategic operations and technology with in "If a company is not really focused on it's easy to take the easier path where there is just more availablee men.
You really have to make a concerted effort," Bayles said. The numbert of companies in the top 100 without women on thei boards has dropped from 43 in 2005 to 40 last There also appears to be an upticiin "early adopters," those firms that have added femaled directors over the past few which is cause for optimism, Bayles Seven of the region's top public companies, , , , , , and , have 25 percenty or more women on their boards.
"It'w hard for one person to effect change, but when you have two or or threeor more, then peoplwe will start to listen, and thesse women can really start to effect change on thesse boards," said Bankins, who is also senior vice president of CEO an executive search firm in Philadelphia. Over the next 24 the Forum of Executive Women will target the 40 companiez in the region that do not have any femalse board members to identify and resolve obstacles throughdirect meetings, Baylesa said.
To boost numbers, the groulp will also continue to server as a resource for those lookinv to add female executives and board members to their That diversity is something that could benefit all companiesw if they makethe effort, said Gayle director of investment for Charming Shoppes of which has 56 percent of board seats filled by womej and women in 22 percentt of its executive positions.