Who Heads Aerospace & Defense Contractors?
Aerospace & Defense Contractors
Eight of the Fortune 500 corporations are active in aerospace or defense. They include the five largest US defense contractors – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.
All told, the 23 mega-corporations in aerospace and defense in the Fortune 1000 employ 1,066,903 Americans, and their reach is felt throughout our economy. In 2017, according to a Congressional report, Defense Acquisitions: How and Where DOD Spends Its Contracting Dollars, the US had contracts out for $507 billion of goods, services and R&D[3]. The five largest recipients are in this group of companies.
Two of the 8 largest companies in this sector are headed by women – 25%.
(2 out of 8 = 25%)
Both are among the largest US defense contractors and profiled in a Barron’s June 2019 article titled The Captains of Industry Are Still Mostly Men — but Not in Defense: Phebe Novakovic is Chairwoman & CEO of General Dynamics (#84), and Kathy Warden is CEO & President of Northrop Grumman (#86) since 2019.
The business press is quick to report that defense companies are “ahead of the curve” in terms of female leadership, as compared to other industrial and manufacturing giants, with “twice the rate of women in management.” Moreover, these female leaders have been returning market-beating returns to their shareholders. Both General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman have moved up the rankings in the Fortune 500.
In addition to the women at the very top, women are filling the higher management levels at ever-greater percentages. In 2018, Northrop increased women VPs from 15% to 29%. Women hold more than 20% of the management positions at Boeing and nearly 30% of the board seats at Raytheon.
At Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson told Carlyle Group “Today, 22% of our leaders … and 24% of our workforce are women.”
What will it take for women to get into the Power Percentage of the Aerospace & Defense Sector in America?