GM’s Mary Barra: Breaker of Glass

If the future is female, as the slogan says, then the future has arrived at General Motors.

In the five years since Mary Barra, 57, was appointed the first female chief executive of a major automaker, she has added the role of chairman. Among her possible successors, at least one is also a woman. And depending on decisions to be made later this month, GM’s board of directors could become only the third in the entire S&P 500 to have a female majority.

Advocates of gender balance and corporate diversity are watching Barra’s tenure with cautious optimism. She’s the highest profile in a small but growing class of female CEOs, joined April 15 by Best Buy’s Corie Barry. The glass ceiling is still a reality—women run only about 5 percent of large companies. So is the glass cliff, the phenomenon wherein women only get tapped to lead companies that are already teetering. Even in a stable environment, mostly male boards are often quicker to remove a female leader at the first sign of turbulence. Perhaps that could be called the glass rug.

Nevertheless, Barra—along with Barry, Lynn Good at Duke Energy, Gail Boudreaux at Anthem Inc. and the women running defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrup Gruman, and General Dynamics—could create the critical mass needed to pull other women to the top of the corporate ladder and support them once they get there.