The share of Fortune 500 businesses run by women can’t seem to budge beyond 10%
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Halla Tomasdottir will become Iceland's next president, Outdoor Voices gets a new owner, and women run 10% of companies on this year's Fortune 500—again. Have a thoughtful Tuesday!
- Still 10%. The 2024 edition of the Fortune 500—Fortune’s flagship ranking of the largest American businesses by revenue—is out today, and that means we have some new insight into the diversity of CEOs leading the U.S.'s top companies.
Overall, the story is more of the same: The share of Fortune 500 companies run by female CEOs held steady from this time last year at 10.4%. Since that stat first crossed the 10% threshold at the beginning of 2023, the number has barely budged.
This year, 52 out of 500 Fortune 500 chief executives are women. Newbies include JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty, the first woman to run a major U.S. airline; Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin; and Sherwin-Williams CEO Heidi Petz.
Departing names and companies include Walgreens, which parted ways with CEO Roz Brewer (while her interim successor, Ginger Graham, was a woman, the company opted for a male CEO as its permanent replacement); Rite Aid, which cut ties with CEO Heyward Donigan before it filed for bankruptcy; and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which had been led by women through its tumultuous decline and ultimate brand business sell-off to Overstock.
Brewer's exit lost the Fortune 500 one of its very few Black female CEOs; remaining are TIAA chief Thasunda Brown Duckett and Toni Townes-Whitley, the new leader of SAIC, who took over in a rare female CEO-to-female CEO handoff.
While the share of Fortune 500 businesses led by women seems to have stalled around 10%, that number represents a gigantic leap from just six years ago, when only 24 Fortune 500 businesses had female leaders, and from when our data begins in 1998. Then, there were only two female Fortune 500 CEOs—total.
For a more detailed report on this year's Fortune 500 and the full list of female CEOs, read my full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com