Many women’s organizations bemoan the lack of women directors and report same in Censuses such as The Chicago Network has conducted for the past ten years. We would interpret the data as a glass half full and filling up fast.

The Chicago Network reported that, over the past ten years (1998-2008), Chicago’s top 50 public companies added 16 women directors, rising from 61 women in 1998 to 77 in 2008 (a 10.1% share rising to 15.0%). Not only did the number of women increase, but this happened in the same timeframe that the total size of corporate boards declined by 90 members, and the number of men on the boards also declined by 106 men. The average board size went from over 12 members to just over 10 members. To my mind, that is pretty good progress.

A common belief is that nonprofit board experience translates into for-profit board preparedness. It’s not necessarily so.

The Chicago Network surveyed nonprofits from 2005 through 2007, but stopped doing so in the 2008 census. In 2005, they surveyed 35 nonprofits, and 30 each in the latter two years.

Average board size for nonprofits was about 3 times that of for-profit corporations in Chicago. Nonprofit boards averaged 44 members per board in 2005, 60 in 2006, and 56 in 2007. It may be somewhat easier to get onto a nonprofit board, but it also likely to be more difficult to excel while on a nonprofit board. Working among 50 or so other nonprofit "committee members" to get substantive, productive results is far more complex than the work on a corporate board of 10 people, which is the average size of Chicago’s corporate boards today.

Interestingly enough, over the period 2005 to 2007, the number of women on nonprofit boards declined by 20 (maybe due to the change in the sample from 35 entities to 30). By contrast, the number of men serving on Chicago’s top nonprofit boards increased by 149 during the same period. Thus, women now hold an average of 20.6% of nonprofit board seats and 15.0% of for-profit board seats. The margin between the two is narrowing from both ends.

The number of women serving as executives on nonprofit entities also declined from 90 in 2005, to 40 in 2006, and 42 in 2007. The total number of executives declined from 249 to 141, and the number of men executives also declined from 159 to 99.

The real story is that women are taking on more top leadership positions in a variety of for-profit companies in Chicago and throughout Illinois at large, medium, and small firms. The increasing number of women executives, preparing themselves for leadership positions along many paths to success, means that we are beginning to reach into that 100% of the educated talent pool which includes women.

What is so impressive, though, is to break out the list of the names of women directors and executives from The Chicago Network's report: one-hundred and thirty-eight women are in top leadership positions at the top 50 Chicago corporations. Again: that is 138 individual women!

Wouldn't it be nice, for a change, instead of focusing on the "magic number" (the percentage share of seats occupied by women directors), if we would start to focus on the individual women who have achieved these incredible positions of leadership?

See: The Chicago Network Annual Census (2008) : http://www.thechicagonetwork.org/