Last night Monar Consulting facilitated an inspiring event for Northwestern’s Kellogg Executive Women’s Network.  The topic?  How can women use their unique leadership talents to rise into executive roles in the next 5 – 7 years.  Tomorrow we will have a more in-depth blog about the event, but we wanted to give our readers a little teaser.

Take a minute to reflect on the statistics below.  Do they shock you?  Do you agree/disagree?  Can you identify with a specific statistic?  Share your thoughts with us.  Tomorrow we’ll let you know how a group of leading women professionals felt and dive deeper into the actions women can take to rise up the ranks.

Women’s earnings relative to men’s have stagnated at 73.2%.

Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.

Women often don’t know the market value of their work: Women report salary expectations between 3 and 32 percent lower than those of men for the same jobs; men expect to earn 13 percent more than women during their first year of full-time work and 32 percent more at their career peaks.

By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.

(Source: Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever, authors of “Women Don’t Ask”)

Fortune 500 executive officer positions held by women in 2010: 14.4%, or 735 out of 5,110. This is an increase from 13.5% in 2009.

The labor force participation rate of parents with children under 18 in 2009 was 71.4% for mothers and 93.8% for fathers.

Women in the U.S. earned 36.6% of MBAs in 2009-2010.

10.1 million firms are owned by women (50% or more), employing more than 13 million people, and generating $1.9 trillion in sales as of 2008.

Women-owned firms (50% or more) account for 40% of all privately held firms.

(Source: Catalyst)

Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65.  That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.

According to another recent survey, 24% of U.S. workers admit that they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.

(Source: The American Dream)

The 25 Fortune 500 firms with the best records of promoting women to senior positions record returns on assets 18 percent higher and returns on investments 69 percent higher than the Fortune 500 median for their industry.

Companies with the most women on their boards of directors outperform those with the fewest women on their boards on several key performance measures – return on invested capital is 65 percent higher in firms with strong female representation; return on equity is 53 percent higher; and return on sales is 42 percent higher.

(Source: Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress)

Profits at Fortune 500 firms that most aggressively promoted women were 34% higher than industry medians, according to Pepperdine University Study.

(Source: The Whitehouse Report)