The University of California at Davis is known for its schools of medicine, law, and winemaking. Now it seems to be swinging into the glass ceiling business. According to recent results from the ongoing Study of Women Business Leaders, headed by Katrina Ellis of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, the situation is rather grim.

In the 400 largest public companies in California, the study laments, women hold only 10 percent of board seats and executive positions. Only 87 of those firms have two or more women executives, and only three percent have a female CEO. These results show little difference from the 2005 report on the 200 largest California public companies. Author Katrina Ellis told reporters that the situation was a “disgrace,” and that “women are as much a token in California as in other places.”

Actually, women are not tokens in other places, and there are good reasons why this type of study presents a skewed picture. The Contrarian has tackled the subject before, but let me refer to a strong case Heather McGregor recently made in the “Women and Power” issue of the Financial Times Magazine. I should note that she wrote the piece in the wake of a similar report in the UK lamenting the lack of women in boardrooms of public companies. “The argument that women remain excluded from positions of influence is simply not true,” McGregor explains. “There are many women in senior positions in business, the economy, public policy, and the community right around the globe. It just does not suit commentators to acknowledge them.” Why it fails to suit them is a rather simple matter.

“Public companies, with their compulsory disclosures, offer an easy source of sensationalist headlines about career women,” McGregor explains. “In the more opaque worlds of the professions, the public sector, not-for-profit organizations, and, crucially, thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises, the role of women goes largely unrecorded. Most commentators take far too narrow a view of what constitutes success and influence. By concentrating exclusively on the boardrooms of large public companies, they are missing the point. The world has changed but they haven’t noticed.”

Ms. McGregor alludes to the thousands of women especially influential as entrepreneurs, and powerful women such as Karen Cook at Goldman Sachs, Sian Westerman at N.M. Rothschild, and former Wells Fargo president and CEO Terri Dial. She also takes note of Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The same issue of the Financial Times Magazine also profiles Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and we should also note Argentinean President-elect Cristina Kirchner. The issue does not neglect powerful women in Hollywood. These include Stacey Snider, chief executive of DreamWorks; Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists; and Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony. Don’t forget Sherry Lansing, president of Fox in 1980.

Getting into such a position of power, according to McGregor, “is a combination of merit and choice — women have leveled the playing field on merit, but sometimes make the choice not to compete in the public company arena. There are plenty of positions of influence and impact other than public company directorships.”

Contrary to the UC Davis study, “Women are not being held back from positions of power and influence; they are just choosing to pursue those positions outside the public company arena. Who can blame them? The pyramid structure of large public companies means that the odds of making it into the boardroom, whatever your sex, are very low.”

The glass ceiling, McGregor explains, is really a glass elevator that “can only hold a limited number of people (of either sex) as it speeds them to the top.” That requires being in the right place when the elevator stops, and for Heather McGregor, “perhaps women are better able than men to work out that there is more than one set of elevators.”

The UC Davis study seems to have missed that point, and a lot more, but the effort is not entirely useless. It confirms that political correctness has infected business schools, which have better things to do than count heads in boardrooms. The study is more evidence that California, once a leader, is now far behind the curve. The world has changed, but at UC Davis they haven’t noticed.