Women are losing power in corporate America.
Besides the news that struggling Avon (AVP) is looking to replace Andrea Jung as CEO, there is Catalyst's annual census, released this morning, showing that women hold 14.1% of executive positions in Fortune 500 companies today, vs. 15.6% five years ago.
The trend isn't a good one, especially if you consider that companies with more women at the top tend to perform better financially, according to Catalyst research.
At least corporations are adding women in the boardroom. Fortune 500 boards today are 16.1% female, vs. 14.6% in 2006, Catalyst reports. (Of all Fortune 500 companies, Avon has the highest percentage of women directors, 50%.)
An increasing number of companies have at least three women on their boards--as new CEOs such as Ginny Rometty at IBM (IBM) and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) inject the top ranks with bona fide female power.
Meanwhile, who are the guys who don't get it? They would be the directors of Avaya, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Caesars Entertainment, Chrysler, Dollar General (DG), First Data and 50 other companies that do not, according to Catalyst, have a single woman on their boards.
China's Yang Lan and Avon CEO Andrea Jung
In every successful career there is a moment: You could quit. But you resist, wisely.
For Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of Avon Products (AVP), this moment happened right after college, when she was in the management training program at Bloomingdale's. All day everyday, there she was in the stockroom, switching vendor hangers for store hangers on thousands of pieces of clothes. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 9, 2011 2:20 PM ET
China's Yang Lan and Avon CEO Andrea Jung
Fortune and Yahoo (YHOO) are teaming up to present weekly content -- stories and videos -- about Most Powerful Women. This is the first in a series of Postcards that will appear on Yahoo and Fortune.com.
It's the start of Most Powerful Women season at Fortune Magazine.
This is the time we begin hunting in earnest for the most successful women in business around MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jun 29, 2011 9:30 AM ET
By Patricia Sellers
Yesterday, Fortune wrapped up its Most Powerful Women Summit -- the three-day event that I'm lucky enough to chair -- with Senator Olympia Snowe in the early morning and Hillary Clinton and Avon CEO Andrea Jung just before noon. Warren Buffett (BRKA), our honorary Most Powerful Guy participant, was sitting next to me watching the show from the front row. Yesterday I shared with you some choice lines MORE
Fortune - Oct 7, 2010 2:39 PM ET
Steve Jobs is Fortune's "CEO of the Decade." As my colleague Adam Lashinsky says in the current issue's cover story, Jobs has created more than $150 billion in shareholder wealth--meanwhile, "transforming movies, telecom, music, and computing, and profoundly influencing the worlds of retail and design."
I've met Jobs just once, three years ago, when he came to Fortune's offices here in New York. I remember, he walked into our conference room MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 11, 2009 1:48 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Photo courtesy of Avon
Liz Smith, who was on track to succeed Andrea Jung as CEO of Avon Products (AVP), is moving to a new company and a new industry. Again.
The onetime star exec at Kraft (KFT), who made an unlikely leap from food to cosmetics in 2004, is the newly named chief executive of OSI, a chain of casual-dining eateries.
"What?!!" is a question that Smith MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 3, 2009 3:44 PM ET
Situational awareness: being aware of what's happening around you to understand how information, events, and your own actions will impact your goals and objectives.
This is how Wikipedia defines this concept that's been bandied about a lot lately, since those Northwest (DAL) pilots got distracted on their laptops and flew wayyyy beyond Minneapolis, their destination. Whatever the rogue navigators were viewing or doing on their mini computer screens, they were oblivious MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 28, 2009 2:45 PM ET
by Jessica Shambora
Photo courtesy of Avon
Some say patience is a virtue. Others say that if you want something, you have to go for it. This is the tactic Avon (AVP) president Liz Smith is taking, as the company announced today that she will step down from her post on October 30, to pursue a CEO job elsewhere. Smith, No. 29 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list, will not be MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Sep 17, 2009 7:06 PM ET
Leadership, essentially, is about inspiring others to carry on a mission. The leadership opportunity compounds in a connected, viral, global community.
Here's how leadership can spread: In 2006, Fortune and the U.S. State Department launched the Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Every year since then, we've selected two dozen or more of the best and brightest young women leaders in developing countries and invited them to the U.S. to shadow women MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 10, 2009 12:43 PM ET
"At the end of a day the performance of a company like Kraft has everything to do with the quality of the people that we have in the key roles and so I spend most of my time worrying about whether that's the case, making sure...we have the right people in the right places, that they have the resources that they need to get the job done."
-- Kraft (KFT) CEO MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - May 5, 2009 6:57 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
