Even so, those women remain statistical anomalies. And the complex question of why women remain so underrepresented in the corporate suite yields a variety of possible answers. A number of women leave their careers — sometimes by choice, sometimes not — to focus on rearing families. The remaining pool suffers from a lack of networking or mentoring programs, others contend.

Many other women end up in dead-end staff positions, says Ilene H. Lang, president of Catalyst. “Women are almost two and one half times as likely to be channeled into staff jobs like H.R. and communications than into operating roles where they would be generating revenue and managing profit and loss,” Ms. Lang says. “When more women hold line positions, there will be more women top earners and C.E.O.’s.”

Analysts and executive women also say that one of the biggest roadblocks between women and the c-suite is the thick layer of men who dominate boardrooms and corner offices across the country. “The men in the boardroom and the men at the top are choosing and tend to choose who they are comfortable with: other men,” Ms. Bartz says.

Women — particularly those who have made it to the top — may also shoulder some of the responsibility for the dearth of female C.E.O.’s. There is little consensus among them over how to approach the topic of women in power, or, in fact, whether the issue should even be addressed. Representatives of nearly all of the Fortune 500 female chief executives contacted for this article said that their bosses were either “too busy” or did not want to participate in an article about female C.E.O.’s. They said that these executives preferred to be acknowledged for their accomplishments, rather than for being women.

Another camp of women argues that until stories of women landing top jobs are no longer newsworthy — that is, as long as they remain curiosities or oddities — and until women’s occupation of the c-suite reaches a statistical par with men, women owe it to future generations to continue to address the topic.

“The truth is, left alone, I think the situation would get worse,” Ms. Bartz says. “I think the reason you see roughly 2 percent of Fortune 500 companies run by female C.E.O.’s is because there has been some discussion about the issue. If the topic didn’t continue to be highlighted as important, I do think that percentage would slide backward.”

MS. BARTZ, 58, reached a professional pinnacle in 1992 when, after contending with years of what she believed were stereotypes about women’s managerial aspirations, she assumed the chief executive’s job at Autodesk. The company had revolutionized the architecture and manufacturing design fields with software that allowed users to build multidimensional computer models of their plans.