A former employer once gave me a female and minority hiring quota.

The company was Gan-nett, publisher of USA Today and other newspapers.

The quota requirement didn’t bother me.

Bringing in talented women and minorities was smart business.

My problem was finding those who met our requirements.

Those requirements were not that you had to be white and male.

You had to be able to do the work.

The company gave me 3 credits for hiring a female editor whose father was an Aleutian Indian and whose husband gave her a Hispanic surname.

You might consider it good news that the majority of us at the Chronicle are women, and that includes the publisher.

The trend is looking up elsewhere for women in business.

One survey by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that for profitable firms, a move to 30% female leaders was accompanied by a 15% increase in profits.

Yet progress is slow. A Catalyst analysis found that women were only 5% of CEOs at S&P 500 companies. Among the handful at the helm of blue chips are Virginia Rometty of International Business Machines, Mary Barra of General Motors and Vicki Hollub of Occidental Petroleum.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that all S&P 500 companies now have at least one female board member.

27% of all board seats were filled by women, up from 17% in 2012.

Women still lag behind men in corporate leadership positions, but they are climbing the ranks.

College enrollment rates are higher for women than for men, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.