Is that all?

Boards of fashion, beauty, and retail brands are more likely to have a higher number of female members than those of other publicly held companies. However, the female board members rarely account for 50 percent of the board and are more likely to be less than a third of it.

Even among the companies that the National Association of Female Executives has named the "Top 50 Companies for Executive Women," it's a tough sell. From its top 10 companies, the ones that deal in consumer products -- Johnson & Johnson and American Express -- have three out of 11 and two out of 12 board positions occupied by women, respectively.

A study of European companies commissioned by WWD shows that women represent 23.8 percent of board seats in a selection of 17 listed fashion, beauty, and retail companies in America, above the 21.3 percent average for the Dow 30. Women accounted for 19.1 percent of the corporate boards across the entire sample group of fashion firms: 45 public companies in nine countries. The sample group contains companies in fashion, beauty, and retail in nine countries.

American companies seem to have some standouts -- women represent a full 50 percent of the board at Avon. Macy's has four women serving on its 11-member board. Coach has two women on its six-member board. J.Crew has two female directors out of eight, while of four of its six executive officers are women. Gap Inc., however, has no women on its board.

The reasons are numerous, but the glaring one is there just is not a deep enough pool to draw from. "For there to be continued growth, there needs to be a wealth of candidates," retail consultant and former Coach executive Kate Buggeln tells StyleList. However, "There are more women directors today than there were pre-Sarbanes-Oxley act, when the mandate was to get more outside representation on boards."

Buggeln is on the boards of DressBarn, Vitamin Shoppe, and Noble Biomaterials, as well as on the governing board of the Business Council for Peace (BPeace). She is one of two women on the eight-person DressBarn board and one of three women on the 10-person board at Vitamin Shoppe.

"When I am in the boardroom, there are three reasons I am there," she explains. "I am filling the seat of a person from outside the company. I am there as a woman to bring the feminine point of view as someone who shops and uses the products, and then I bring an expertise that goes beyond gender [marketing and developing businesses]."

She adds, "Truth be told, having a bunch of men on a women's apparel or fashion company would bring a very myopic point of view."

Juxtapose Buggeln's corporate life with her not-for-profit life on the BPeace board, which has one male member out of eight total. "Women have applied their skills and talents over the years to philanthropies," she explains. "They've reached critical mass."

Still, she continues, "I'm not a person who has been held back by my gender, and I've seen enormous strides in my lifetime. Men aren't trying to keep us out of the boardroom, there's just a dearth of good candidates. Men have been doing this for 1,000 years and we've been doing this for a few decades.

"We need to get more female CEOs, CFOs, and COOs, and there will be more women sitting on boards."

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