????去年夏天，琳恩?古德成當(dāng)上了杜克能源（Duke Energy）的CEO。在她的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)下，這家250億美元的公司實(shí)現(xiàn)了利潤增長50%。作為前首席財(cái)務(wù)官，古德在過去一年帶領(lǐng)杜克能源經(jīng)歷了與Progress Energy的艱難合并。

????古德是去年全球范圍內(nèi)出任大型公司CEO的少數(shù)女性之一。管理咨詢公司Strategy&（前Booz & Company）的最新研究顯示，全球2,500家大型上市公司中有332家新聘請了CEO，其中只有10位是女性。雖然全球范圍內(nèi)有大批女性接受了高等教育，進(jìn)入了職場，但獲得最高層管理職位的女性數(shù)量近年來沒怎么變化。Strategy&公司的統(tǒng)計(jì)顯示，過去十年，只有84位女性獲得了全球大型公司的最高管理職位，而男性數(shù)量則為2,942位。

????Strategy&對企業(yè)高管性別失衡現(xiàn)象的初步調(diào)查結(jié)論或許不怎么讓人鼓舞（甚至令人意外），但它對未來的預(yù)測卻略為樂觀一些。根據(jù)女性接受高等教育的趨勢、職業(yè)女性比例以及社會觀念的變遷，研究人員預(yù)計(jì)，到2040年，女性在新上任CEO中的比例將達(dá)到1/3。

????我們怎么才能在25年內(nèi)從3%增加到33%？假設(shè)CEO的年齡中值53歲相對保持不變，今天進(jìn)入職場的女性等到Strategy&預(yù)測的2040年將達(dá)到入職CEO的年齡。二十世紀(jì)七十年代年以來，全球進(jìn)入大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)的女性人數(shù)增速近乎是男性人數(shù)增速的兩倍。美國2012年約40%的MBA學(xué)位攻讀者是女性。今天，女性已占到全球就業(yè)人口的約40%。

????Strategy&高級合伙人、這項(xiàng)最新研究報(bào)告的作者肯?法沃若將我們看到的女性就業(yè)比例上升與女性高管比例停滯之間的脫節(jié)現(xiàn)象稱為“數(shù)字游戲”。他解釋稱，今天進(jìn)入職場的女性需要時(shí)間才能獲得足夠的經(jīng)驗(yàn)問鼎公司里的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)職位。

????造成滯后的另一個(gè)原因或許更為微妙。

????“很多公司至少創(chuàng)立于50年前，當(dāng)時(shí)沒有工作女性，經(jīng)營的公司數(shù)量也要少得多，”法沃若表示。“職場文化的變遷需要很長時(shí)間……這是文化滯后，但這種滯后隨著時(shí)間的流逝將會減弱。

????法沃若解釋稱，美國和加拿大的公司文化進(jìn)化最快，過去十年它們的女性CEO比例最高。雖然這個(gè)數(shù)字只有3%左右，但日本的總比例更低。過去十年，日本獲得最高管理職位的女性比例還不到1%。

????法沃若和他的同事們有信心未來更多女性將成為CEO，但Strategy&的其他研究結(jié)論所顯示的前景較為黯淡。女性CEO被辭退的可能性高于男性；過去十年，38%的女性CEO非主動(dòng)離職，而男性CEO的這個(gè)比例只有27%。女性CEO更多是從外部聘請，法沃若認(rèn)為，這可能導(dǎo)致與公司的內(nèi)部關(guān)系較為薄弱。另外，法沃若還指出，總體上，聘請外部CEO往往出現(xiàn)在一家公司狀況不佳的時(shí)候。

????可以印證上述結(jié)論的一位前女性CEO是雅虎（Yahoo）的卡羅爾?巴茨。巴茨在把歐特克（Autodesk）打造成了一家成功的公司后，2009年獲聘成為雅虎的CEO，帶領(lǐng)它重現(xiàn)輝煌。盡管降低了成本，但她沒能改善收入增長，雅虎的廣告收入流向了谷歌（Google）和Facebook。2011年，雅虎董事長打電話解雇了巴茨。

????“他們轟走了我，”巴茨在遭到解雇時(shí)這樣告訴《財(cái)富》雜志(Fortune)。

????Strategy&的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)與巴茨的故事都支持玻璃懸崖理論，即女性提拔擔(dān)任領(lǐng)導(dǎo)職務(wù)往往都是臨危授命。這種理論最近受到了關(guān)注：通用汽車(GM)CEO瑪麗?巴拉正在應(yīng)對數(shù)百萬輛汽車召回的后果。正如《財(cái)富》雜志的艾倫?斯隆日前指出，今年當(dāng)巴拉成為通用汽車首位女性CEO時(shí)，她成為了某種符號，但現(xiàn)在她不得不應(yīng)對早在自己上任前就已經(jīng)存在的種種問題。

????法沃若表示，如果巴拉不是女性，或許我們不會在媒體中看到她受到如此這么多的批評。

????“我們第一次看到女性CEO的百分比時(shí)，我都驚呆了，”法沃若說。“瑪麗?巴拉升任CEO時(shí)，很多人都驚呆了……我們之所以能看到這么多的報(bào)道，是因?yàn)椋ㄅ援?dāng)上CEO）并不常見。它顯然不是個(gè)傳統(tǒng)?！保ㄘ?cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

????Last summer, Lynn Good became CEO of Duke Energy. Under her leadership, the $25 billion company experienced a 50% increase in profits. Formally the firm's chief financial officer, Good spent the year navigating Duke Energy (DUK) through a difficult merger with Progress Energy.

????Good is one of just a handful of women -- in the world -- who became CEO of a large company last year. While 332 of the 2,500 biggest publicly traded companies globally brought in a new executive officer, women filled just 10 of those positions, according to a new study from management consulting firm Strategy&, formerly Booz & Company. Despite droves of women entering higher education and the global work force, the number of women filling top executive roles hasn't budged for some time. In the past 10 years, 84 women have taken over the top role at the world's largest firms compared with 2,942 men, according to Strategy&.

????Strategy&'s initial findings on gender imbalance in the C-suite may not be encouraging (or surprising), but its projection for the future is slightly brighter. Citing trends in women going on to higher education, the share of women in the workforce and shifting social norms, researchers claim as much as a third of the incoming CEO class will be made up of women by 2040.

????So how do we get from 3% to 33% in 25 years? Assuming that the median age of 53 for a CEO stays relatively the same, the women entering the workforce today will be eligible for CEO status in their careers by Strategy&'s projected 2040. Since 1970, the number of women enrolling in colleges worldwide has grown nearly twice as fast as the number of men. In the U.S., roughly 40% of all MBA candidates were women in 2012 and today women make up about 40% of the global work force.

????Ken Favaro, Strategy& senior partner and author of the study, described the disconnect we see between the growing percentage of women going into business and the stagnating percentage reaching the executive level as a "numbers game." It takes time for women entering business today to get enough experience to become eligible for leadership roles within their firms, he explained.

????The other reason for the delay is, perhaps, more nuanced.

????"A lot of these companies were started at least 50 years ago when there were no women in the workforce, much less running companies," Favaro said. "It takes a long time for work culture to change ... It is a cultural drag, but it is a drag that will decline over time."

????Companies in the U.S. and Canada, where Favaro explained the culture is advancing at the fastest rate, have garnered the highest percentage of women CEOs for the past decade. Although that figure comes in at only about 3%, Japan's total is much smaller as less than 1% of women took on the top executive role over the last 10 years.

????Favaro and his colleagues are confident that more women will become CEOs with time, yet other Strategy& findings paint a bleak picture for the future. Female CEOs are more likely to be forced out of their jobs than men; during the past decade, 38% of women CEOs left involuntarily compared with just 27% of their male peers. Women are also more often hired externally, a finding Favaro explained could lead to weaker internal relationships within their firms. Outsider CEOs, in general, also tend to get hired more frequently when a company isn't performing well, according to Favaro.

????One such former female CEO that fits the researchers' findings is Yahoo's Carol Bartz. After building Autodesk into a successful company, Bartz was hired to in 2009 to bring Yahoo back to its heyday. Despite reducing costs, she failed to improve revenue growth just as Yahoo was losing the advertisement dollars game to Google and Facebook. In 2011, a Yahoo (YHOO) chairman fired Bartz -- over the phone.

????"These people f---ed me over," Bartz told Fortune at the time of her dismissal.

????Strategy&'s findings and Bartz's story both support the theory of the glass cliff, which claims that women are more often promoted into leadership roles in times of crisis. The concept has come into focus recently as GM CEO Mary Barra deals with the fallout of a recall of millions of vehicles. As Fortune's Allan Sloan recently pointed out, Barra became an icon of sorts when she became GM's (GM) first female CEO this year, but now is forced to deal with problems that started well before her tenure.

????If Barra weren't a woman, perhaps we wouldn't be seeing her name criticized so heavily in the media, Favaro said.

????"When we first looked at the percentage of women CEOs coming in, I was shocked," Favaro said. "When Mary Barra got promoted to GM, it was all over the place ... And the reason we were reading about it so much was because [women become CEO] so infrequently. It definitely isn't old hat."