Also read: women executives, KPMG, DiversityInc Top 50, DiversityInc Best Practices

This edited article originally appeared in the March/April 2009 issue of DiversityInc magazine.  Click here to read the digital edition of this article.

Where are all the senior women executives? The enormity of the gap that exists became very apparent to me a few months ago when I visited one of the nation's largest companies as part of their benchmarking service.

The chief diversity officer of this company, a very accomplished woman, shook her head sadly when I pointed out how plentiful women were in their lower-management ranks and how that pipeline dried up as they moved into middle and senior management.

"I know that it's a problem for us and for everyone. We just can't get them to stay," she said.

While women are 51 percent of the population, they are just 36 percent of managers nationwide (according to the EEOC). When you look at CEOs, only 2.6 percent of the heads of Fortune 500 companies are women. The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® are considerably better, with 45 percent of managers and 8 percent of CEOs women, but those percentages still don't mirror the population or the untapped talent.

Dr. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, says women leave so they can have more balanced lives. In her 2007 "Hidden Brain Drain" study of 34 companies employing 2.5 million people, she asked why "after decades of creating opportunities for women and proactively nurturing diversity, companies are still struggling with the challenge of retaining and advancing women?" Her subsequent answer was that women have more nonlinear careers and deal more with both childcare and eldercare--and that corporations are not accommodating them.

Many companies, including several in the DiversityInc Top 50, are experimenting with flexible schedules, on- and off-ramping (leaving for extended periods and remaining connected) and other innovations.

There's progress, especially at these companies. Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, a tax partner at KPMG, No. 21 on the 2009 DiversityInc Top 50 list, tells us in the "Women We Love" feature how accommodating the firm has been to her. She even received a major promotion after saying no to one that would have involved a relocation.

More common is the reaction of the chief diversity officer I met. "We know we need more women at the top but we aren't ready yet to change our expectations of what that means," she said.

In this economy, it's even more critical to retain and develop the best and the brightest. We are researching the best practices that are starting to produce results at DiversityInc Top 50 companies. We'll share that research with our benchmarking customers and on their diversity-management web site, www.DiversityIncBestPractices.com. 

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