When Women Lead; A growing number of women are rising to the top--and beginning to change the culture of the workplace.(Cover Story)

Byline: Rana Foroohar

This should be a season of celebration. After all, by many measures, there's never been a better time to be a woman. In places like Scandinavia and Britain, a third or more of all corporate managers are now women. The number of female executive directors of FTSE 100 companies nearly doubled from 2000 to 2004. Latin America has seen a 50 percent jump in the number of women politicians in the last decade. Japan voted 26 new female parliamentarians into office this year. Of course, the jewel in the equal-opportunity crown was this fall's election of Angela Merkel--once nicknamed "the Girl" by Helmut Kohl--to Germany's highest office.

But as always, statistics tell a multifaceted story. Sure, it's no longer an anomaly to have a female CEO--but there are still only 17 female executive directors in the largest FTSE 100 companies. In the EU Parliament, only 23 out of 162 members are female. Yes, women represent more than 50 percent of students in higher education in many parts of the world. But as a recent report by Catalyst, a U.S. research firm specializing in women and work, noted, the representation of women in corporate leadership has been stagnant for the last several years. In Britain, studies show that women have never been more dissatisfied with the workplace. No wonder: the EU pay gap between men and women shrank only one point in the last couple of years, to 17.5 percent.

So where does all this leave us? With some big challenges that require more female leadership to solve. At some major companies--including Shell and British Telecom--women are ...