I recently had the pleasure of spending time with Mike Cassidy, Business Columnist of the San Jose Mercury News where we talked about a myriad of issues including the significance of Hillary’s recent campaign and the lack of women CEO’s in Silicon Valley.

On Monday, Mike also wrote a follow-up post, reflecting the truly ongoing nature of this conversation.

On Saturday, we watched Hillary Clinton suspend her historic campaign. Regardless of your political affiliation or your perspective on race and gender issues in America, there is no denying that this event underscored what an incredible achievement Hillary’s campaign has been for women in America, and that has hopefully smoothed the course somewhat - in one way or another - for more women who deal with a range of barriers to professional success.

Hillary mentioned the glass ceiling in her speech stating: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the history of progress in America.”

But, turning to business, the statistics are still very unsettling and there is little progress being seen when it comes to shattering that glass ceiling at the most senior levels. Mike Cassidy alluded to this in his recent article about the lack of Women CEO’s in Tech.

David G.Thomson, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant and author of Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth, and upcoming speaker at FWE&E has recently written an article in USA Today where he reports that only 43 women have climbed the traditional ladder to become CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies in the last 35 years, and fresh research from executive women’s organization Catalyst suggests that the pipeline is not exactly filling up with future candidates.

But if 43 seems like a low number, consider how many companies were founded by women, then grew into the Fortune 1000. The total is three. And all were co-founded by men. At USA Today’s request, Thomson re-examined his data and re-interviewed women entrepreneurs to make sure that the early signs of a change weren’t around the corner. He learned two things: There are no signs of change and, “This is a very emotionally charged topic,” he says.

Women who have built big companies don’t know why they remain so rare, but explanations fall largely into two camps: discrimination and nature. They say men have easier access to money from bankers and venture capitalists, the lifeblood of growth. Women also are often more devoted to family, and even those who out-earn their husbands often remain responsible for children and households.

Turning back to Silicon Valley, moving women in to leadership positions in tech lacks the momentum that other industries experience. What does the future hold for women leaders in tech and what are the challenges women face in moving higher up the leadership ladder? Mary O’Hara Devereaux, CEO of Global Foresight and an internationally recognized business forecaster and strategist will be discussing this at an event on June 17th. She has some provocative insight into what women could be doing differently to start to change this picture but also how corporations need to be more conscious of the impact on their future results in not creating intention to change the statistics.

So, why are there not more women in senior management and CEO ranks? What is the critical value to society of having women in CEO and Board positions? Why is female leadership still such an emotionally charged issue? And finally, did Hillary’s campaign help raise awareness or continue to polarize the conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that exist?