Small Percentage of Women Leading Fortune 500 Companies

Believe it or not, women are still a minority when it comes to heading Fortune 500 companies.

FOX’s Carole Zimmer tells you what one bank is doing to change that:

When will more women reach the highest ranks in corporate America?

When it comes to people who head Fortune 500 companies, women are still a minority. They make up about five percent of the top positions, according to a study by McKinsey and Company. At that rate, it will take more than a century for women to reach gender parity in the C-suite. Some companies would like to speed that up.

Paula Polito is a group managing director at UBS. She says the bank is working hard to help advance women:

(Polito) ”We also have a program called Project Entrepreneur, which is really helping female entrepreneurs kind of get engaged in what it’s like to create businesses and to to go from startup to actually having thriving businesses.”

Polito points out UBS has commissioned an exhibition of photographs currently on view in Manhattan…

People are gazing at the larger than life photographs at the exhibit “Women: New Portraits” by Annie Leibovitz. The photos are on view at the former Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan, which once was a women’s prison.

Now it features portraits of Serena and Venus Williams, Oprah, Hillary Clinton and other women whose life work has been about breaking boundaries:

(Polito) “We’re in the business of stocks and bonds and asset allocation. That’s really what we do, but at the end of the day money is very personal.”

Polito says UBS supports art projects because they help to put a human face on commerce.

I’m Carole Zimmer.