11.   Lucy Flynn, a consultant who formerly worked for Shawmut Bank, says she regularly sets up meetings between Minehan and young women executives looking for career guidance.

12.   Many were men who had the air of money and power, but there were also Third World diplomats, women business executives, clergy, academics and journalists.

13.   Mrs. Fili-Krushel, however, played down the significance of her status as the highest-ranking women executive in television in an interview Friday.

14.   Ms. La Roche and many other women executives reject such claims as a convenient defense of the status quo.

15.   One by one, women executives are breaking through the glass ceiling in the business world, ascending the rungs of the corporate ladder.

16.   Pearson becomes the first big British company with two women executives among its top management ranks.

17.   Reports of the departure of women executives in particular triggered a sharp response.

18.   Samantha Hudson, a publicist in North Miami, Fla., regretfully declined an invitation to join a club that included some accomplished women executives.

19.   She is the highest-ranking woman executive ever at Boeing.

20.   She also referred to the resignation in the past two months of several top women executives.