Livid

Did you see the article this week announcing that the number of Fortune 500 female CEOs has hit an all-time record? If you didn’t see it, would you like to hazard a guess at what this new, exciting record level is?

37 out of the 500 CEOs are women. Yes, you read that right, it does say 37. That is an embarrassingly low 7%.

I was absolutely livid when I saw this headline. This is the problem, right here. It absolutely sums it up. Celebrating snail-slow ‘progress’ on gender equality from a a pathetically low base to a still pathetically low level. Given most people only look at headlines and can’t be bothered to plough through whole articles, all this does is perpetuates the myth (that many people believe) that we are making any real progress in this area. Lest we are in any doubt: we’re not. As one woman said to me, 33 last year to 37 this year isn’t even statistically significant and should be seen as a blip that can easily reverse, not a trend. Oh, and I should mention, one of the women has resigned since and was replaced me - yes, you got it - a man. One man pointed out that at this rate it will take us 53 years to get to equality and I had to tell him that I thought even this was headily optimistic at this rate of progress.

Please can we all agree that 7% is a very long way away from equality and that it is extremely patronizing to women to celebrate it, like we are some kind of charity case. It says a lot about the low opinion the people who wrote this article and the people who cheered it must have of women, our ability and our leadership potential.

Still livid.