Here are some facts from 2012 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Women made up 27.4 percent of chief executives in the “management, business and financial operations occupations.”
• Women made up 81.9 percent of “insurance claims and policy processing clerks.”
• While the the ratio of women's to men's earnings for all occupations was 81.2 percent in 2010, the gap for “insurance sales agents” (not specifying which kind) was 66.7 percent.

One of the highlights of the upcoming IICF Women in Insurance Global Conference will be the unveiling of a survey conducted by St. Joseph's University on female representation in the industry. Understandably, IICF didn't want to leak these numbers before the event, so I looked for other sources to find out about how women were represented in the insurance industry. There isn't too much available where insurance isn't lumped in with financial services.

According to Catalyst, a nonprofit organization tasked with improving women's business opportunities, here's the breakout for women in the U.S. finance and insurance sector:

• CEOs: 2.6%
• Board directors: 19%
• Executive officers: 18.6%
• Industry labor force: 56.1%

Of course, numbers don't tell the whole story. And the pleasant surprise is that when it comes to workplace diversity, the independent agency system is actually pretty progressive, said Madelyn Flannagan, vice president of agent development, education and research for the IIABA. Newer agencies are especially prone to be gender or racially diverse, with 33 percent having a female agency principal, according to the 2010 Big I Agency Universe study.

Here's the breakout for agency personnel from the 2012 Agency Universe study:

• Agency principals/senior managers: 88% men, 31% women
• Non-principal agency managers: 39% men, 73% women
• Non-principal producers: 69% men, 56% women
• CSRs: 20% men, 90% women
• Other (administrative): 26% men, 84% women

Yeah, we know, that's an awful lot of women CSRs. But in many cases, CSRs serve as the feeder system for future ownership, Flannagan said.

“If you have four agency owners, usually one will be a woman,” she said. “Many principals start out in a CSR capacity, and there is obviously family ownership. Because of the type of business, agenies attract women, and they do well.”

And they don't have to be producers to wield power within an agency. Flannagan pointed to events like the recent NetVU conference, where the roughly 3,000 attendees were primarily women who are running the tech show at their agencies.

Still, the lack of representation at the upper levels could boil down to a lot of things, including less female representation in the actuarial sciences or finances, she said. Without sounding sexist, Flannagan points out that “women are service focused” and that they “do well at making people feel secure.”

This is borne out in the new “2013 Women, Money & Power” study released by Allianz Life, which finds that 69 percent of women don't view their financial professionals as a “go to” source for information about how to save, spend and invest. The study concludes that with more women than ever making family financial decisions, it makes sense to increase the ranks of female financial advisors.

And while this study deals with financial advisors, it has implications for agents as well.

“Women are empathetic and listen well,” Flannagan said. “And you have to be a great listener to be a great producer.”