Women CEOs: Hope in sight?
May 6, 2009
by Judy Silver
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Virginia Rometty of IBM, Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup, and Ursula Burns of Xerox
If Business Week’s crystal ball is accurate, the next generation of corporate Chief Executive Officers could contain a higher percentage of women. Hope springs eternal!
As we wrote last month, currently women compose just 15 of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Let’s say that another way: men compose 485 of the Fortune 500 CEOs. In a blog piece a couple of weeks ago here, we questioned why some were celebrating that women had reached 15 out of 500, or 3%?
But alas, hope springs eternal. In this week’s edition of Business Week, the magazine highlights twenty “CEOs of Tomorrow”. Of the twenty mentioned, five are women. Unfortunately, fact is that women leak or are pushed out of the pipeline continuously. Business Week may have been unrealistically inclusive, but here’s to hoping that eventually the ratio will shift in our favor and women will be 25% of our Fortune 500 CEOs. Here’s to hope and then some!
Female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies today:
· Pat Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland
· Angela Braly, Wellpoint
· Lynn Elsenhans, Sunoco
· Indra Nooyi, Pepsico
· Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft Foods
· Ellen Kullman, DuPont
· Mary Sammons, Rite Aid
· Carol Meyrowitz, TJX
· Anne Mulcahy, Xerox
· Brenda Barnes, Sara Lee
· Andrea Jung, Avon Products
· Laura Sen, BJ’s Wholesale Club
· Susan Ivey, Reynolds American
· Carol Bartz, Yahoo
· Christina Gold, Western Union
One would have thought a long time ago that talent would trump such bullshit considerations as gender in the business world where efficiency, quality and profit matter most. Conversely, lack of female leadership can be viewed as a prime factor in the erosion and demise of many companies then, the price of patriarchy?
Well, usually, women open our mouths in order to be correct. Men do it to find their place in the pecking order.
Unfortunately, it’s the pecking-order bragging that turns your typical VC’s head.
I don’t think women should gain make bragging capabilities, only because my own tendencies make me cringe at that sort of posturing blather, and regard it with great condescension. But what we need is a better mix in VCs as well, where the people who make decisions as to who gets money are responding more to people who say, “I’d like to do X, here is my business model,” instead of being bowled over by some loudmouth in a sharp suit talking about thinking outside the box with his leveraged value-add resources to eliminate the competition.
Seriously — CEOs don’t just drop out of the clouds. Boards pick them, VCs back them. And chest-puffing bluster in the for-profit corporate world is usually privileged over actually being correct.
I’ve often said that “confident” is just the word used to describe the person who is wrong, first, loudest. I am still convinced of it.
As women we have the power to put a stop to this. If we recognize those companies with the least amount of women representation, as a group we boycott them. I have seen it done by gays (coors), blacks, and Cubans in Miami. It works. With conglomerates it is more difficult to identify what a corporation and it’s vast subsidiaries sell but it isn’t impossible. Unfortunatly for those of us who have worked and expereinced the bias in corporate America, there are so many women in other fields who haven’t expereinced and jsut don’t see what the problem is.
“MALE bragging capabilities,” sorry.
There is alos the perception that women aren’t in contention because they leave the work force to be home with our kids. In my case, i left the work force because my less experienced husband in the same field (banking) made 30% more. A decent career is worth juggling family for, but a career where we are judged on something other than merit just isn’t always worth the fight.
Janis, you said what I have always felt but could never put so eloquently.
Men spend their lives in a pissing contest!
[...] and what she has accomplished. As those of you who follow our writings at The New Agenda know, only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEO’s are women. One can only fathom how superior of a leader women such as [...]
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