Which Fortune 500 Companies Lack Female Board Members?

We Need More Women In Corporate AmericaWhich Fortune 500 companies are the worst for women to work for?  This particular survey collected data on which companies do not have women in their top-tiered management positions and which companies do not have any women on their Board of Directors. Both are interesting criteria and give a more interesting perspective than just looking at the companies based on wages alone.

So, which companies made the list?

Based on the cross-referencing the data using this criteria, it turns out that the Phillip Morris tobacco company is the single worst company for a woman to work for.  Apparently, the CEO of Phillip Morris claims that he is more interested in hiring the best workforce “whatever their background”.

• Nice try, Philip Morris. Not only are you a company largely responsible for thousands of cigarette-related deaths every year, you are a company of misogynistic pigs as well. The results of this particular data-collection didn’t include anything about how many minorities are hired at Phillip Morris, but I am guessing that the number is extremely low, so maybe you should consider putting some minorities on that board as well. I am not buying your feel-good web-site either.

• The next big name to hit the list of offenders came in at number three. Virgin Media is an arm of Richard Branson’s empire, employs 13,380 individuals, and of the 11 directors, 11 of them are men. I am a little surprised at this one, given Richard Branson's reputation as a humanitarian. Come on, Richard, real men are not afraid of intelligent women.

• Liberty Media (you may know some of their channels including QVC, the Discovery Channel and Starz) is a multi-billion dollar company who amazingly enough has NO female directors on their Board of Directors.

I haven’t heard of the other corporations on the list, who also had thousands of employees and no females on their board of directors. I find it amazing that although we are into the second decade of the 21st century, have a strong woman as Secretary of State, and Speaker Pelosi kicking ass in the House of the Representatives that these companies are still back in the hey-day of the “Good Old Boys Club”.

Not only is this not socially acceptable, as the writer of this article pointed out, it more than likely means that the women employed at these companies will not be given adequate compensation for their work or the proper respect for in-house sexual harassment claims.