Women CEOs vs. James and John

The New York Times did a story back in 2015 on how there were fewer women CEO’s running major U.S. companies than CEOs with the first name John. Fast forward to now and U.S. financial group Bloomberg decided to revisit the topic, this time using an analysis of the share of women CEOs of S&P 500 companies versus those with the name John or a derivative, like Jon.

Analysts found that women overtook the number of CEOs with any single male name for the first time in 2018. As this chart shows, there’s still some way to go though, as the number of women CEOs only matched up to the number of CEOs named either James and John for the first time last year.

The following chart is based on Bloomberg’s analysis, which is supported by a similar study run by Lauren Harris, a Stanford University economics doctoral student.

Written by: Valentine Fourreau

Translated by: Anna Fleck