Since 2005, women's level of participation in the executive suites and boards of directors of the region's top 100 companies has barely budged.
At that, it has been more a matter of diversity by attrition, as women have managed to hang on to their board seats and executive positions even as the number of directorships and top jobs has shrunk with the economy.
What does 11 years of stagnation say about sexism in corporate Philadelphia? Bazemore points to one issue: It's just human nature for mentors to give high-profile assignments "to people who remind them of themselves."
It can, then, become a self-perpetuating trend - if there are fewer women and minorities in power, then there are likely to be fewer people of the same type moving along the pipeline.
To overcome that, she said, women need to deliberately cultivate male mentors, executive women must to try harder to mentor their younger peers, and companies should institute practices that can upend typical patterns.
Nationally, the Philadelphia region ranks in the middle regarding the profile of women in the community of executives and board members.
Minnesota has the highest percentage of female executives; Texas has the lowest, with three out of four Lone Star companies having no female executive officers, according to research by ION, the InterOrganization Network, an affiliation of organizations.
Fortune 500 companies tend to have more female board members, but Philadelphia has only about a dozen Fortune 500 companies, the ION report said. Women hold 16.5 percent of the region's Fortune 500 company board seats - again, in the middle, with Minnesota at the top with 20.1 percent and Florida, at 12.6 percent, at the bottom, the ION report, released in March, said.
