POWERHOUSE WOMEN
IN FRANCHISING
Be the Change You Want to See
W
elcome to our second annual issue on Women in Franchising. Last year we
profiled 24 of franchising’s “leading women.” This year we explore two themes:
Rising to the C-Suite, and Moms in the C-Suite. We’ve also collected facts,
figures, and ideas about the status and role of women in business. Let’s look at some now.
• According to Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on expanding opportunities for women
in business since 1962, women are 51 percent of the workforce—yet 95 percent of CEOs
in the Fortune 500 are men. See page 36.
• Research from FRANdata shows women CEOs and presidents at 15 percent of all
franchisor brands, up 1 percent from last year. Franchising is also seeing a rise in the
number of female CFOs, COOs, and CMOs. We are seeing gains for women at the top
levels of franchising, but it is still slow going.
• After seeing the disparity in opportunities for men and women during her nearly
20 years in high tech and venture capital, Lisa Lambert, an
Intel VP, founded UPWARD, a networking organization for
professional women. She still sees those biases today, despite
being a high-ranking executive at a firm ranked 53rd on the
Fortune 500 list. See page 34.
• A recent Harvard Business Review article, “How Female
CEOs Actually Get to the Top,” examined the career paths
of 24 women who lead Fortune 500 companies. The authors
discovered that the median long stint (continuous tenure at a
company before becoming CEO) for female CEOs is 23 years.
Then they pulled a random sample of male Fortune 500 CEOs:
for men, the median long stint is 15 years. Why the disparity?
The authors report, “It is hard to parse what drives the longtenure, insider path that so many of these women took or why
their experiences differ from those of the men…. An immediate implication of the long
climb is that for ambitious young women, company culture matters a lot.”
• A recent Bain & Company study on women in the workforce lends more insight
into this disparity. They asked more than 1,000 men and women in the U.S. at all career
levels about their interest in pursuing a top management position in a large company
and found that during their first two years at their job, 43 percent of women aspire to
top management, compared with 34 percent of men at that stage. However, over time,
Bain reports, “Women’s aspiration levels drop more than 60 percent while men’s stay
the same. Among experienced employees, 34 percent of men are still aiming for the top,
while only 16 percent of women are.”
So what does all of this mean for women in franchising? Is the long climb the common path for women running franchise systems? The career paths of the CEOs profiled
in this issue suggest something slightly different.
Why does franchising have 10 percent more female CEOs and presidents than the
Fortune 500? With more women role models in the franchising C-suite, do women f