Back in 2008, there were 12 women running Fortune 500 companies. Even though that equaled a measly 2.4 percent, it was still progress. A decade earlier, that number was 0.4 percent, or just two women (Jill Barad at Mattel Inc. and Marion Sandler at Golden West Financial Corp.).

I remember these stats well because at the time I had just started at Fortune Magazine, where one of my first assignments was working on its Most Powerful Women in Business list that tracked the comings and goings of the handful of women who had managed to claw their way into the C-suite. Since then, I’ve used the count of female CEOs as a telling — albeit imperfect — measure of the advancement of women in corporate America.

This year’s number has just been published and it’s alarming. Women run 55 Fortune 500 companies, or 11 percent. Objectively, this is an improvement. But if the growth continues at the same pace, it would take about 100 years for women to reach parity with men.

What concerns me even more is that the number, while tied with last year’s record, didn’t even move an inch. If corporate America were the meritocracy that everybody claims to want, women — who make up about half the labor force and earn most college degrees........

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