Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
When we told you about Margaret Getchell LaForge, who’s believed to have become the first female retail executive when she was hired as the second-in-command at Macy’s in 1866, we mentioned that women still are far from achieving parity when it comes to being the chief executive at retail companies.
- Among the National Retail Federation’s list of the biggest companies by revenue, there are only three women CEOs in the top 25, or 12%.
Now the New York Times is noting another blow to parity: a bevy of major retailers that have recently named men to CEO roles that had previously been held by women.
- The Gap, Kohl’s, the RealReal, Stitch Fix, Victoria’s Secret, and the Vitamin Shoppe all hired men to succeed women as CEOs.
- There are 86 retail companies in the Fortune 1000, and only 13 had a woman CEO as of July 2023, down from last year, according to Heidrick & Struggles data cited by the Times.
Women make up 50.4% of the population, according to the Census Bureau. And while they may not be running the show at retail companies, they’re more likely to be running the registers:
- Women represent 56.5% of retail workers, according to Census data.
As for MBAs, a common degree held by CEOs, more and more women are listing them on their LinkedIn profiles.
- Women accounted for more than 41% of enrollees in full-time MBA programs at the top 56 US business schools in 2022, according to Forté Foundation data cited in Fortune.
- Some MBA programs have reached or succeeded parity when it comes to female enrollees, including Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (50%), Johns Hopkins University (52%), and George Washington University (59%), Forté found.
“It reminds me of the Barbie movie,” Kimberly Lee Minor, CEO of consulting firm Bumbershoot, told the Times. “We live in this society where women control the majority of consumer spending. They make the decisions and yet we still haven’t moved forward.”