Nov. 17--Four years after they began tracking the progress of women in leadership positions at California's public companies, researchers at the University of California, Davis, said Monday that very little progress has been made.

That's particularly true in Santa Clara County and the tech sector, both of which ranked near the bottom in their respective categories in terms of having women in business leadership positions.

"The proportion of women business leaders in the state has barely budged," said Nicole Woolsey Biggart, dean of the UC-Davis Graduate School of Management.

Even considering the lackluster performance of other sectors, "the high tech industry has trailed far behind," said Donald Palmer, who wrote the UC-Davis study and serves as associate dean of the management school.

Some findings:

--The number of female CEOs has remained static at just 3 percent. That's just 13 female CEOs and 387 male CEOS, and the female list includes Diane Greene, the VMware CEO and co-founder who was ousted in early July, just after this year's research ended.

--The percentage of female executive officers at the state's largest 400 public firms is 12 percent in 2008; a scant shift from 11.6 percent in 2007 and 11.7 percent in 2006. And, nearly half of the companies, 48.5 percent, have no women executive officers.

--The studied companies added 313 new directors between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2008. Only 47 of them, or 15 percent, were women.

--Only 8.4 percent of the directors of Santa Clara County-based companies were women, the least proportion of any county that was home to more than 20 companies. In contrast, women held 15.2 percent of board positions at San Francisco-based companies.

--Only 11.2 percent of executive officers of Santa Clara County-based companies were women, which tied with Orange County for the lowest proportion among counties that are home to 20 or more companies. Some 15.6 percent of executive positions at Alameda County-based companies were held by women.

--Telecommunications and semiconductor companies were the most likely to have all-male boards or all-male executive teams. Some 74 percent of telecommunications companies and 69 percent of semiconductor companies had no female directors.

The lack of progress for women in business comes in stark contrast to what's happening in politics, Biggart noted. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton conducted a historic race for the presidency, Sarah Palin ran for vice president and Nancy Pelosi serves as the first female Speaker of the House and Karen Bass was elected as speaker of the California Assembly.