For every woman in a chief executive role in the S&P 1500 firms there are four men named John, Robert, James and William, research has found.

The New York Timesturned a recent report by Ernst & Young report analysing numbers for board directors into a 'Glass Ceiling Index', which proves that the titular ceiling seems to have remained shatterproof.

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Credit: New York Times

The ratio of the number of men named James, Robert, John or William to the number of women was 4:1 for CEOs, with right-wing politics seeing a similar skew at 2.17:1

Those are in comparison to 0.12:1 for the US population as a whole.

Plotting the share of CEOs of S&P 1500 companies (a stock market index covering 90% of the market capitalisation of US stocks) by CEO name, John came out on top at 5.3%, followed by David at 4.5%, followed by all women at 4.1%.

Gender equality found an unlikely all with the Oscars last month, when Patricia Arquette used her award win to ignite a debate about women's pay and several other actresses championed the #AskHerMore campaign on the red carpet.