Fewer women are running American corporations.

I'm David Brancaccio in New York.

A new report says the number of women in the very top corporate ranks fell last year.

The data is from

S&P Global Market Intelligence and refers to women in what are often called

C suites, the letter C as in CEO, Chief Operating Officer or Chief Financial Officer, Marketplace's Henry Up has details.

Ever since S&P started measuring this in the mid 2000s, women have slowly but steadily

gained a larger share of C-suite positions, rising to 12% in 2022, but that

trend reversed last year, and the report finds that while women's share of all senior

leadership roles grew in 2023, the rate of growth slowed to its lowest level

in more than a decade.

That means it'll likely take years for corporate America to achieve gender parity in senior

leadership.

That could happen as soon as 2032, the report says, but among top executive roles, it could

take even longer, potentially into the 2070s.

S&P calls these findings surprising but does not attempt to

diagnose a specific cause. However, it does note that mentions of diversity and

inclusion in company calls with investors dropped last year to the lowest level since

2012. Those mentions have fallen ever since a surge in mid 2020 and more recently as

some conservative groups have launched legal challenges to corporate diversity

efforts. I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace. In what would be a first for Google, the company

is reportedly looking at ways to charge for part of its search service, perhaps a paywall

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