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St. Petersburg electronics manufacturer Jabil Circuit is enjoying a strong financial year and a rising stock price. But you can't win them all.
Of the 11 Fortune 500 corporations based in Florida, Jabil was singled out this week as the only one that has no women on its board of directors.
Not that Jabil is alone. Sad to say, it is one of 54 companies nationwide in the Fortune 500 whose boards are still all male.
But things are improving. In 1995, 96 Fortune 500 companies had no women as directors.
At the country's biggest companies, women directors are increasing in number. Just more slowly than many predicted.
Women serving as corporate directors at the nation's Fortune 500 companies rose to 13.6 percent in 2003. That's up from 12.4 percent in 2001 and 9.5 percent in 1995, according to a new study by Catalyst, a New York research and women's advocacy group.
In Florida, women held about 15 percent - more than the national average - of the corporate seats at the 11 Fortune 500 companies based in the state. But having just 17 of 116 board seats at those companies is not much to brag about.
Among Florida's 11, Lakeland's Publix Super Markets dominates. Four of 11 (36.4 percent) of its directors are women, Catalyst noted. That's a percentage of women directors topped by only 10 other Fortune 500 companies in the country.
Four of the 11 Florida companies - Darden Restaurants, Office Depot, Ryder System and Winn-Dixie Stores - have two women apiece on their boards. Five others - AutoNation, FPL Group, Hughes Supply, Lennar and Tech Data - each had one woman director onboard. Jabil came in last with none.
Catalyst's study, which analyzed boards from late 2002 until March 2003, says the number of women board directors has increased at an annual rate of 4.1 percent since 1995. If that pace holds steady, it will take until about 2023 before women make up 25 percent of all Fortune 500 boards of directors, the study notes.
That's too long. In the mid 1990s, corporations showed a brief burst of guilt and tried to fill their boards with qualified people other than aging white men. But the pace of change turned glacial for several reasons.
First, lethargy and old habits returned during the economic downturn. White male CEOs filled most of their director slots with folks who look and think like they do. Second, where efforts to diversify did occur, boards tended to add African-American and Hispanic candidates (mostly men).
Last but not least, corporations have long complained that finding "qualified" women - those with senior experience in business or running some type of complex organization, or with strong financial backgrounds - is difficult.
That once was true. Now it's more of an excuse and a fear of sharing power to ignore female candidates.
Boards composed of a more diverse mix of people better reflect the quickly changing demographics of the U.S. workforce. Such boards also would foster a more independent culture among directors. That might discourage some of the subservient, go-along attitudes of directors that contributed to the recent scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other troubled companies.
Almost nine years ago, Joan Ruffier of Orlando was a director of Florida Progress, the St. Petersburg power company. At the time, she already was a former member of the state Board of Regents and had served on the boards of several banks.
"It has taken a long time for companies to recognize that women have something to contribute," Ruffier told the St. Petersburg Times in 1995. "But I think in the next 10 to 15 years we're going to see the numbers balance out."
Sorry, Joan. We're not on schedule. Ruffier herself, trained as a CPA and named a Florida Progress director in 1990, would later leave the board after it was acquired by a North Carolina company and renamed Progress Energy.
So who is the one and only woman who managed to become a director at one of the two Fortune 500 companies based in the Tampa Bay area? Kathy Misunas is the sole woman on the board with seven male directors at Clearwater's Tech Data. A business adviser and Tech Data director since 2000, Misunas formerly served as CEO of the SABRE Group, part of AMR Corp., as well as Reed Elsevier's Reed Travel Group.
A few other women are directors of smaller area companies, of course. At TECO Energy in Tampa, Sara L. Baldwin, now a private investor in her 70s, shares a board with a dozen men.
At Tampa's Outback Steakhouse Inc., two women share the board with 11 men. Debbi Fields Rose was the founder of the Mrs. Fields dessert stores. And Nancy Schneid is Outback's marketing and advertising executive.
At Progress Energy, this area's principal provider of electricity, two women are directors on a board of 14. Marie McKee is senior vice president of Corning Inc. And Jean Giles Wittner, president of Wittner & Co. in St. Petersburg, is a former Florida Progress director who survived the cuts in the board's size when the companies merged three years ago.
Still, there are some promising signs among companies prominent in the Tampa Bay area.
InteractiveCorp, the New York parent of St. Petersburg's Home Shopping Network, can boast of a board already 25 percent populated by women. So can Bank of America, Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom, says Catalyst.
Who is the No. 1-ranked Fortune 500 company, with women making up 55.6 percent of its board? Try California's Golden West Financial, the parent of World Savings, a long-established savings bank with branches across this part of Florida.
Companies still prone to boards packed with cloned white guys: Beware. The smartest women in business - the smartest business people of color, too - won't always be knocking at your door for a job. They will work for the competition, knocking your company for a loop.
- Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or 727 893-8405.