Only 3 percent of firms going public had female CEOs, say Martin Kenney and Donald Patton.

February 12, 2014
(from the Wall Street Journal)

Professor Martin Kenney, Department of Human Ecology, UC Davis.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, reports on the finding of UC Davis professor Martin Kenney and project scientist Donald Patton, both in the Department of Human Ecology, UC Davis, that only 3 percent of companies that went public in the U.S. from 1996 to 2013 had female CEOs.

“It’s not necessarily that there’s some sort of discrimination, but rather structural factors,” said. Kenney.

Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at the Stanford University Rock Center for Corporate Governance, adds, “The deck is rigged against [women] at all levels. Women don’t get to hob nob with the board members. So the trust never builds.”

(Read the full article, by Telis Demos and Douglas MacMillan, Jan. 24, 2014, in the Wall Street Journal.)

 Media contact:

• Martin Kenney, Department of Human Ecology, UC Davis, 530-752-0328, mfkenney@ucdavis.edu

College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis, contact:

• Ann Filmer, Senior Director of Communications, (530) 754-6788, afilmer@ucdavis.edu