The Last Male Bastion: Gender and the CEO Suite in America's Public Companies [Hardcover]

Douglas M. Branson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415872952 | ISBN-13: 978-0415872959 | Publication Date: December 8, 2009 | Edition: 1

Not until 1997 did a female become chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 corporation (Jill Barad, at Mattel Toy Co. Women’s progress since that time has been in fits and starts, exceedingly slow. The number of women CEOs reached 4 in 1999 only to slide back to 2 in 2001. Meanwhile, while not reaching anything approaching parity, women made significant strides in politics (as senators, cabinet secretaries and governors), in not-for-profit spheres (as CEOs of health care and hospital organizations or of United Way chapters, with budgets of billions of dollars), and at colleges and universities (23 % have female presidents or chancellors). Currently, 3%, or 15, of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

After examining in detail the educations, career progressions, pronouncements and observations, as well as family lives, of the 19 women who have risen to the top (sitting and former CEOs), this book asks, and attempts to answer, two questions:

Why haven’t more women reached the CEO suite?How might women in business better position themselves to ascend to the pinnacle?

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About the Author

Douglas M.  Branson received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and his J.D. from Northwestern University. He earned an LL.M. from the University of Virginia, specializing in corporate law and securities regulation. Before joining the faculty at Pittsburgh, Professor Branson taught at Seattle University. He has been a visiting professor at a number of schools, including the University of Alabama as Charles Tweedy Distinguished Visiting Professor, the University of Hong Kong as Paul Hastings Distinguished Visiting Professor, the University of Washington (Seattle) as Condon-Faulknor Distinguished Professor, Cornell University, Arizona State University, Washington University (St. Louis), and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Belgium, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, South Africa, and England. He holds a permanent faculty appointment as Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in its Masters of Law Program.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415872952
• ISBN-13: 978-0415872959
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,310,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Doug Branson is one of the 5-6 leading corporate governance experts in the United States. He wrote the first comprehenisve treatise on the subject (Corporate Governance (1993)). Lately, his interests have turned to diversity in governance with books "No Seat at the Table - How Governance and Law Keep Women Out of the Boardroom" (2007) and "The Last Male Bastion - Gender and the CEO Suite" (2010). He is the Edward Sell Chair in Business Law at the University of Pittsburgh and, currently, the Condon Falknor Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Washington (Seattle). He also teaches corporate governance each year at the University of Melbourne (Australia), where he is a permanent fellow. He has been a State Department sponsored consultant on corporate governance in Indonesia, Ukraine, and Slovakia. He is the author of 15 books and approximately 80 articles about corporate law and corporate governance. He has also been a consultant/expert in over 100 important corporate governance cases, in 26 states, including cases involving household name corporations.