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&lt;p&gt;&quot;At present, there are 12 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.&quot; So begins a sentence in a recent &lt;em&gt;Wall Street Journal&lt;/em&gt; article on the challenges facing female executives. But wait: this isn&#39;t another lament about the fact that just 2.4 percent of major companies are led by representatives of a group that makes up more than 50 percent of the population. Nope: the rest of the sentence goes on to point out that 11 out of those 12 are mothers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fact that motherhood is no longer the barrier to ascending to the top of companies that it once was is something to be celebrated&amp;mdash;especially in the midst of National Business Women&#39;s Week. But the article makes clear that there&#39;s still a long way to go: the discrepancy in numbers isn&#39;t limited to quotas--&quot;manager moms&quot; still take home just 79 cents for every dollar made by &quot;manager dads.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the piece doesn&#39;t provide stats on how many of the males running the other 488 Fortune 500 companies are parents; that would have made an interesting comparison point&amp;mdash;particularly for figuring out the overall likelihood of ascending to such a position while remaining childless. Indeed, the 11 out of 12 stat begs one significant question: why are women with children more likely to run Fortune 500 companies than those without?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin suggests one possible&amp;mdash;albeit not entirely satisfactory&amp;mdash;answer in the piece: &quot;that the highest achievers can handle big challenges.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does that suggest that the key to getting ahead as a female executive is now to &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; children? If so, it&#39;s hardly a step forward in terms of achieving equality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--Phil Stott, Vault.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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