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 Times turned 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.

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, where 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.