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Out
of the 223 largest publicly traded companies headquartered in
the Bay Area, more than one third had either zero or just one
top position held by a woman, the study found.
Still, that represents a big improvement from five years ago,
when almost two-thirds of Bay Area companies had either zero or
one top position held by a woman.
Retailer Williams-Sonoma, biopharmaceutical company Medivation
and bank Wells Fargo ranked as the companies with the most
high-ranking positions held by women, researchers said. In the
technology sector, the most diverse player was software company
Zendesk, tied for No. 4. Search engine Yahoo, led by Chief
Executive Marissa Mayer, tied for No. 8.
The results come as major companies make public efforts to hire
more women and ethnic minorities. In particular, there has been
a national debate about the lack of diversity at Silicon
Valley's tech companies.
The study defined top position as either a company board member
or an executive whose compensation was high enough to be
disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Those with no women in a top position included network security
company Palo Alto Networks, data company Hortonworks and Cypress
Semiconductor.
Ingrid Burton, Hortonworks' recently appointed chief marketing
officer, said diversity was a "top priority" at the company.
Representatives of other companies said restricting the pool to
only those executives with SEC-reported compensation was too
narrow.
Software companies had one of the highest percentages of women
directors and the lowest of top-paid executives, said study
author Amanda Kimball.
Starting last year, many top Bay Area tech companies began
releasing diversity statistics, generally reporting around one
quarter of their top employees were women.
In the UC Davis study, iPhone maker Apple ranked No. 25, social
network Facebook No. 30 and search engine Google No. 68 among
Bay Area companies on gender diversity.
Chipmaker Intel, which at the start of the year said it would
spend $300 million over five years to improve diversity, ranked
No. 48. Networking company Cisco Systems, which started
releasing diversity figures a decade ago, ranked No. 41.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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