The Baltimore business scene isn?t a boys? club anymore.
Women have made inroads to some of the biggest local companies, taking positions of power and transforming the business community with their creativity, intelligence and drive. Women-owned businesses in the Baltimore-Towson metro area generated nearly $10 billion in sales and employed tens of thousands of people in 2006.
But statistics still show that relatively few women at major companies are in true positions of power, where they have a shot at big promotions.
“What?s at the heart of it is that women are not in the profit and loss jobs that lead to the corner office,” said Betty Spence, president of the National Association of Female Executives.
Nationally, women are in the minority of top business executives and comprise only 16 percent of corporate officers and 15 percent of board members at Fortune 500 companies, according to the National Association of Female Executives. The top-earning female executive in the U.S. last year was Safra Catz, president and chief financial officer of Oracle, who pocketed $26.1 million in total compensation in 2005, according to Fortune magazine. The top-earning male executive, Eugene Isenberg, chief executive officer of Nabors Industries, took home $71.4 million. Across the board, women in full-time management and professional jobs made 73 percent of men?s salaries, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Spence and her group began asking companies to track the number of women in profit and loss jobs three years ago, and their most recent numbers show that just 9.9 percent of those jobs are held by women.
“Those myths are still out there, that they?ll leave to have children, that they can?t manage men,” Spence said. “The corporate world is very, very slow to change.”
One woman in a profit-loss job is Karen Schonfeld, who oversees business banking for M&T Bank in the mid-Atlantic region. Schonfeld is responsible for $900 million in clients? funds, including $1 billion in deposits, and oversees 90 employees.
Schonfeld said that early in her career, she dealt with some feelings of discomfort in some business situations. She?s learned to adjust but said she still hears some unintentionally biased comments from men in business.
“Talking about family, what they?ll say to me is they?re ?fortunate? enough that their wife can stay at home,” she said. “I always think to myself, ?Do they think we?re bad off, that we have to work?? It was a choice for me to work.”
