NEW YORK — Debra Meyerson thinks it's time to pen a fresh metaphor to replace "the glass ceiling."
So far she's coming up short as she spins out her take on why the executive suite is more welcoming to men than it is to women.
"It's the foundation, the beams, the whole structure of organizations that are, in very, very subtle ways, built around the male experience and for male interests, and that inadvertently disadvantages women," said Meyerson, one of a group of women academics dissecting how women and corporations relate to each other.
A rather bleak assessment, especially given the string of high-profile executive assignments women have snagged in recent months.
In May alone, for instance, Betsy Holden was promoted to chief executive of Philip Morris Cos.' Kraft Foods Inc. unit, and Anne Mulcahy was named president of Xerox Corp. Though it's been almost a year since Hewlett-Packard Co.'s crowning of Carleton "Carly" Fiorina as chief executive, the move is still held up as a watershed moment for corporate women.
What's troubling Meyerson, a professor at the Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons Graduate School of Management in Boston, is that such prominent appointments can eclipse this reality: The upper berths of America's biggest companies still look like they hung out a male-only shingle.
In its most recent census released last fall, Catalyst reported that women held only 11.9 percent of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions, an increase of 37 percent since 1995, but still a slim proportion. The women's advocacy group also said men held 93.2 percent of the "line officer" jobs that generally lead to the top posts.
The number of women who are currently chief executive of a Fortune 500 company is a very short list indeed, made up of the duo of Hewlett's Fiorina and Avon Products Inc.'s Andrea Jung.
"The progress is undeniable," said Meyerson. "It's also very important to look carefully at the progress, and not be seduced into complacency by a few women who have made it through the glass ceiling and who have gotten a lot of visibility."
So, what are these patterns of organizational behavior which play out in subtle ways? Risk-taking is one, a valued management attribute; when men take risks and fail, the event wins a positive spin and everyone apparently learns from the flub, she finds. When their female counterparts take similar daring leaps and flop, it's taken as evidence of incompetence, Meyerson said.
While the upper echelons of corporate America remain largely a male preserve, there are those who point out that women are making it to officer ranks in escalating and significant numbers.
In April, Census Bureau figures were released that showed there were more than 7.1 million women in full-time executive, administrative or managerial positions in 1998, a 29 percent increase from 1993.
Women are seen as making headway in more recently hatched companies, often technology or Internet concerns, the type of companies that could eventually elbow their way into elite corporate lists like the Fortune 500. Carrying the torch for her sisters in the Web world, for one, is eBay Inc. Chief Executive Margaret Whitman.
"When you look at the Internet, there are many more chief executives," said Lisa Gersch Hall, chief operating officer of Oxygen Media Inc., a cable and Web startup geared toward women. The venture was founded by veteran cable executive Geraldine Laybourne, who also holds the position of chairwoman and chief executive.
And don't discount the female executives who are running major divisions or have titles a notch below chief executive.
Kay Koplovitz, the broadcasting pioneer who founded USA Networks in 1977 and is now chief executive of Working Woman Network, offered up Patricia Russo as a prime model. Russo is chief executive of Lucent Technologies Inc.'s service provider networks group, a $24 billion division and the company's largest.
"If you're running a $25 billion revenue stream, you don't have to be CEO," Koplovitz said.