This week’s Hartford Business Journal lists the top twenty largest in-state banks. Of the twenty, only two are headed by females — New Alliance Bank and Guilford Savings Bank. To put it another way, there are four people with the first name of John who are the heads of banks on this very same list.

Almost every discussion of wage and opportunity parity seems accompanied by reactionary, defensive attempts to justify this inequality, like how women just are not trying hard enough or how women choose to not get ahead. The Newsweek article, “Tracking the Wage Gap,” says this:

The biggest barrier to female leadership, according to the findings of a new World Economic Forum report, which noted that “Leading companies are failing to fairly integrate women in the workforce.”

In the same article, Bain & Company are quoted as explaining:

“Women have yet to rise to leadership levels at the same rate and pace as their male counterparts. Women enter the workforce in large numbers, but over time ‘vaporize’ from the higher echelons of organization hierarchy”