Number of Business Women Declining

One of my sources, titled Women Still Scare In Top-Level Jobs, addressed a major issue that is presently occurring in the business world. New studies have shown that the number of women holding top corporate positions has actually been decreasing. According to these studies, “women held 15.6% of corporate officer positions in 2006, which is down from 16.4% in 2005. This information is surprising to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, there has been several publicized appointments of females executives during the past couple of year. For example, Carleton Fiorina became the first female CEO for Hewlett-Packard in 1999. Because of these appointments, I was under the impression that conditions were somewhat improving for women in business. This news is also surprising because it contradicts many of the articles that I’ve read about women in business. Many of my sources have always implied that women are slowly catching up to men. Although these sources identify that it will take many, many more year for women to reach equity in the board room, they have never stated that the number of women is actually declining.