A couple of things. Most men don’t match the standard of 6 ft and a deep voice either.
There’s nothing stopping women from creating a Fortune 500 company so the idea that we have to promote them seems asinine. If diversity leads to more successful businesses then it should only be a matter of time that the existing Fortune 500 is replaced.
Work life balance in the workplace isn’t defined by men or women. It’s defined by capitalist competition. We compete against the world and if our expensive employees want to compete against the third world we need to work more hours and better than them in order to command the 10 fold salaries.
So, just to see whether I understood you well: your point is that we need to adopt a worldview where it's we, the wealthy West, against the poor third world, and in order to win that war, we need men, because if not we won't be able to "compete". Is that it?
If yes: any reason/scientific study showing that the most effective way to obtain a thriving society and economy here in the West is to adopt this kind of worldview?
You guys need a course in statistics - the year before women CEOs surged by a larger percentage than they dropped the next year - nobody can argue there isn't a bias against women - but coming to conclusions about a massive drop or surge based on low statistics is not helpful - the real story is the numbers are so low they suffer from huge fluctuations and that the long term trend is rising - anything else is just sensationalism or ignorance of basic math
1
There's absolutely nothing in this article contradicting what you write here, you're actually merely summarizing its main point.
So rather than the NYT needing "a course in statistics", it seems to be appropriate to thank the NYT for:
1. addressing this topic
2. providing the statistics.
No?
1
Women are allowed to lead the companies that are in decline so a man's resume is not sullied. Now that things are looking up, men are taking back the jobs. Also, men are more likely to engage in bribery, and Failing 45 is the king of crime.
1
Oh my God, we have twelve less female CEOs thsi year than last. This is an emergency!!! The sky is falling. Evil men are taking over again and conspiring to deny women their positions.
In reality, I don't think the exact number of female CEOs make a huge difference. I don't see that the female CEOs have done anything significantly different from male CEOs.
As long as men and women have the same opportunities, no one can guarantee the same result.
2
The point is, if you read the article, women DON"T have the same opportunities.
1
As the number of female CEOs is only a tiny fraction of the number of male CEOs, and indeed it is well-known that female CEOs have the same capacities as male ones, there's only one possible explanation for this huge difference: men and women do NOT have the same opportunities AT ALL ...
2
It’s still just an assertion. If you want more women CEOs then women need to start more businesses. Oh wait they already do. If you count all businesses and not just the Fortune 500 you’ll see there are more women CEOs than male.
As the proverb says: we reap what we sow.
I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1981. I research early twentieth-century business women. Many of these women entered business management believing that women could successfully combine work and marriage. They said motherhood and marriage would always still come first. But then these married women who reached the top of the business world, such as Rose Knox of Knox Gelatine, or members of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, didn't talk about the servants they used or the traditional gender roles they abandoned. They tried to make it look easy. But maybe... the public didn't believe it was easy to combine both... and still doesn’t.
2
It is incredible to me that articles like this, although earnest and well meaning, never ever look at some very relevant *general* differences between men and women. For the most part men do not care about how successful a potential wife is, how tall she is, how dominant or powerful she is in her given career. Men are generally indifferent to such characteristics in women.
Women on the other hand care a great deal about such traits in men. They reward men who display such behavior patterns or inborn characteristics.
Even today most married men do not enter into marriages with the expectation that they will leave the workforce or work less when they have children. Few men will decide that it's their wife's responsibility to be the primary breadwinner while they write the Great American Novel or pursue a more interesting but less remunerative career calling. Most women won't tolerate that.
So when you put all that together, the sum of our individual choices will add up to something like what we see bemoaned in this article.
Absent some sort of "Harrison Bergeron" level of social intervention, there is never going to be "equality" between men and women, or at least not the kind that would satisify the NYT.
5
Lilo--Few women believe THEY will work less, if they enter into marriage, because most of the time, married men never work as hard as married women do, particularly after children arrive. This is why fewer women see marriage as any kind of benefit to them. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle! Not so, the other way around.
1
As soon as you study the history of philosophy and/or anthropology, you cannot but notice that these differences aren't biological, hard-wired ones. They're the result of dominant ideas belonging to specific cultures.
And since cultures exist, they've changed.
If not, African-Americans today would still be seen as "Negroes".
Now is the time to finally start changing US culture when it comes to gender differences. And that starts with you and me, here and now.
2
@Ana It's silly to compare gender to race because the racial differences are not as "real" as gender differences.
And in the US at least, racial discrimination and hatred is FAR stronger than gender discrimination. As studies routinely make clear, including some referred to in the NYT, anti-black discrimination, particularly against black men, remains a key part of American society.
Pointing to the percentage of (white) female CEO's and top corporate leaders as a bellwether of gender discrimination or patriarchy doesn't give us a true picture of reality.
I am a female leader at a 140k+ person, private company who works with most Fortune 500 (and smaller public) companies. Once that is overwhelmingly white male at the top.
Yes, do we, as a nation, have gender issues in hiring, firing, managing and nurturing female talent? You bet. But as big an issue is the demands placed upon a public company and the definition of success as a leader of said public companies.
Wall Street places two conflicting demands on public companies...highest profits with lowest possible costs.
To be an executive at a pubic company, your job demands total energetic focus, long hours, and time away from personal time (however one defines it). It is particularly hard for mid level executives who are in competition for the coveted, increasingly smaller number of, positions at the next level. Once one mid level leader throws their life away to get ahead, their competition must do the same to keep in the same cohort group. And they don't have the flexibility to change the definition what it means to succeed.
I bet if the NYT (or academia) did similar studies at private companies, you'd see a heck of a lot more female leaders. I'm not saying that organizations can't be better at promoting workplace equality for all genders, sexual orientations, and colors. They absolutely can. But we should be careful about combining two important variables (female leader, public company) to tease out findings on one of the variables.
1
When I read articles like this, I am always surprised that they don't raise a significant contributor to inherent bias in the system. Currently, as the data indicates, most of the senior leaders of companies are men. In many cases, those men are married to women. It's a broad generalization but I believe data would suggest that many of those women are not also in corporate leadership and frequently have subordinated their careers to care for their families. Particularly for the men over a certain age who are currently running companies, their relationships with their wives has got to influence consciously or unconsciously how they see women in the workplace. Moreover, although the vast majority of women in the country are employed full-time, this is less the case among households with the highest incomes. Those high income households tend to live near each other and socialize together. I don't want to get into the many reasons behind this outcome or pass judgement on people's choices. I just want to suggest that it is worth considering whether men bring bias to the workplace because of their experiences with women outside of work.
2
You could also look at it from the perspective that when money is no longer a concern the wives prefer to focus on the family as opposed to a career. It would beg the question that if money was no concern for the rest of us if the same pattern would emerge.
I just watched the Munk debate on political correctness and two speakers - Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson - pointed out that the PC movement goes too far in many instances. This article is one such. It’s another example of applying disparate impact to draw conclusions that don’t actually reflect causality. Women disproportionately choose the social sciences in college and then disproportionately choose staff rather than line careers. It’s also true that many women often decide to be less single minded in their focus on their careers. Finally, becoming a CEO of a firm large enough to be included in the data gathering process means that the sample is really small. Anyone who joins the club is a member of the extreme tail of the population distribution. The reality is that men are more likely to be represented in this particular tail than women. Just as men are more likely to be represented in the tail of the population that commits extreme violence
4
Of course that's the reality, nobody is denying that.
What this article shows is that there's no reason whatsoever why we should accept this kind of reality.
Any arguments supporting the idea that we should?
3
Because in this case trying to change reality makes as much sense as trying to hold back the tide.
Men and women are hardwired differently. And no amount of social tinkering is going to change that.
How about counting female presidents of major universities.
3
It is very demanding for women to be a mother
and CEO of fortune 500 company. A large
company is geographically diversified requiring
travel. Hours are long, CEO can't do the job
8:30AM to 5PM. I worked in a large company
and also lived close to the HQ. Even on
Saturday the senior executives parking lot
used to be full. Where is the time for motherhood
when CEO has to put in so much time. Male
CEOs miss out on relationship with the children.
Corporations own you if you are in senior
position. Case of Mr. Perlman, owner of a
cosmetic company, exemplify it. He fired his
CEO because Mr. Perlman didn't approve of
him taking time off to care for his cancer stricken
wife. Wall street puts tremendous pressure
on CEOs of listed companies to produce
constantly growing revenue and profit. If
mother cares about raising children properly
and have close loving relationship, a reward
in itself, forget about being a CEO.
1
Are these white women? Women is too general a description to apply to this drop in female CEOs.
1
Back again. In my profession, it wasn't HR departments who filtered out the cvs from 10,000 applicants. The jobs were specialized, to the point that it was the hiring committees themselves that made the shortlist. (The all-male hiring committees). The only time I encountered a recruiting firm resulted in a bizarre non-interview. I was summoned to a meeting with the headhunter. The museum director suddenly showed up, unannounced. Neither the headhunter nor the director was willing to discuss the job on offer, or aspects of anything professional. Actually, they didn't want to discuss anything at all. The director was only there to (literally) take a look at me. This enabled him (yes, him) to circumvent legislation barring discrimination on the grounds of gender, age, race, national origin etc. etc. And hire...another guy who would 'remind him of himself'.
2
I'm a female CEO and a mother. This article glosses over the demands of motherhood. I agree with your statement that one reason for women’s underrepresentation in the workplace is "that it’s too hard to run a big company and be a mother." I disagree with what follows: "But it’s increasingly clear that this explanation overlooks deeper issues about the way workplaces operate, some experts say." Yes, we MUST look at biases in the workplace. But, it's a mistake to gloss over the demands of motherhood. The demands of motherhood and workplace bias are independent of one another. I am the founder and CEO of my own business. My job flexibility or benefits are not an issue whatsoever. The issue for me is - I have 2 kids that require my presence every single day. Yes, I have a husband. Yes, my husband does a good deal of housework including cleaning, errands, and helping with the kids. My husband is the one who gets both kids ready for school every morning. Yet, it's just different. At least for our family. And for hundreds families that I know with working mothers. And, it's not anyone's fault. It's just different. Motherhood takes times, it's not something that can or should be outsourced. While we can outsource many aspects of it, like laundry and ordering in dinner, We can't outsource the bond we owe our children. And that takes dedication and time, over decades. And that's not worth giving up for any job, even a CEO one.
6
I don't see why fatherhood would take up less time, and why it would be worth giving that up for any job ... ?
As long as we women somehow continue the myth that raising children would in the end be a "female" thing, we'll contribute to a corporate culture where women get less opportunities and aren't treated equally.
2
Well said. I also would add that someone should be promoted to that position, because he or she is that good. Not just to get a stastical figure correct that you push the certain gender foward. You gotta do what you oughta do. job must be done, and whoever does it the best, should be selected.
ANA--In THIS country, fatherhood always takes up less time than motherhood. That's part of the reason for our rapidly declining birthrate.
The glass ceiling is offend made not of glass but granite. After the age of 45, women who can tough it out on the executive floor are far too often time stamped as too old for the C-suite.
3
Paul, we can play your game for days. "When 50% of all military leaders are women, then 50% of all nurses will be men (and we will probably have a lot fewer wars!).... When 50% of all kindergarten teachers are men, then 50% of CEOs will be women..."
Let's not introduce these kinds of false illustrations or comparisons into a discussion about gender bias and corporate CEOs. I assume by your comment you are a white man. You've clearly never experienced gender bias, racism, or sexism.
1
Can we please stop obsessing on equality of OUTCOME and train our focus on making sure everyone has equality of OPPORTUNITY?
No institution will every perfectly represent the demographics of the country at large. Nor should we expect it to. Men and women are -- micro aggression warning -- different in many ways. We should never expect -- and it should not be our goal -- for the NBA to be 50% women or stay at home parents to be 50% men. We will not stop this judicial injustice until 50% of all convicted murderers are women!
4
This is a great statement. You give them equal opportunity and the one who is better excels. Stop chasing that imaginary number. I would want a better CEO, regardless of men/women.
1
Or maybe a smaller percentage of women are pathologically driven by wealth and power?
3
Two things:
(1) in our current capitalist "Fortune 500" paradigm, the only ones who can make it to the C-Level in general must be sociopathic. It is sort of sick system, isn't it? It's the same with the current political system. Healthy-minded, fair and open people will almost always lose in this game to the sociopaths, sort of like the TV show "Survivor". Are men more likely to display sociopathic tendencies?
(2) in all of these studies and articles, I never read anything about something I've definitely observed: "internalized misogyny". Isn't it common knowledge that women are each others' worst enemy in the workplace? Most of my female friends seem to tell me that. One famous study said only 1/3rd of women would choose to have a female boss. Why would that be? 55% of white women voted against HRC. Why did that happen? I'm not saying men are blameless, but neither are women and no one wants to bring this up. Could we find a study that shows that women generally prefer to be led by men by a larger percentage than men who prefer to be led by women? That would tip the scales right there.
2
Here we go again. Another feminist denigrating women's agency!
Have you noticed how nothing ever happens to women "just because of their individual choices"? Or how, in the feminist narrative, women are almost always referred to in the passive voice -- they are always being (or not being) "mentored" or "empowered," etc. Or from this op ed: "women are not given opportunities." Rarely do we hear about women creating their own opportunities. (I'd like to have seen the man who dared to "mentor" Margaret Thatcher!).
Women will never be truly free until (to paraphrase Obama) they stop clinging to their victimhood. That means liberating themselves from the defeatist feminist narrative that teaches that success is something that women are entitled to. For women to have a crack at success, Cain Miller suggests, men must be prevented from working long hours! She would enforce mediocrity and call it a level playing field.
Miller should start respecting women's choices even if those choices don't yield strict numerical balance or parity in the C-suite.
2
How many women are running for the POTUS/CEO job? Seems like 50+% of the country would vote against the current POTUS so it might be a golden opportunity for a woman. Sure hope so.
2
A majority of voters DID choose a woman for POTUS/CEO in 2016--and an even larger majority might do so in 2020!
The number of female C.E.O.s in mega-corporations no more helps the average woman in America than the fact that Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Khaleda Zia of Pakistan, Tansu Çiller of Turkey, and Indira Gandhi of India, who were the heads of their governments, notably helped the average woman in their countries.
2
The way things are going these days with all the man hate it's a wonder that a male-owned business would be skeptical of even hiring a woman at all. You could lose your business for just looking at her too long - whatever that means.
1
What difference does it make?
Worrying about gender is sexist.
1
Take an analogy from politics: Why do Republicans consistently use Nancy Pelosi as a foil to drive turn-out for their base? Is it because she is a liberal, coastal elite? No more so than Chuck Schumer, and you don’t see political ads around the country tying candidates to him. Rather it’s because powerful women are viscerally repulsive to a large swath of Americans. Think about what that means, day to day, for working women in this country.
3
So some of the companies tried to be politically correct and it backfired on them.
2
If the bottom line now is the unconscious (bias or stereotypes or whatever) we are in very slippery ground. It is too elusive, vague and ultimately unfathomable and unchangeable.But again not everyone wants that kind of power. Are you counting power of executives in non profit companies too?
1
There are more men than women whose ambition is to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company
The vast majority of parents who give up their careers and stay at home with the children are women
So why would we expect 50% of the CEO's to be women?
4
I understand that 25% looks way more dramatic on a graph - which by the way still shows an uptrend - but let's not forget most of these women quit by choice. Do you want to blame them for it? Being a CEO is incredibly demanding and to me not desirable at all. So a decline by 8 woman executives shows systemic sexism in the Fortune 500? You are being lazy in making this argument. Volatility obviously is extremely high in an overall sample of 500 - or in case of the 25% of 32 - and the year isn't over, right? There just was a study at one arbitrary moment in time.
If a woman quits her job there should never be a rule that she has to be replaced by a woman. If she HAS TO BE then it won't be about her qualification anymore.
Did you also take a close look at these women you are talking about? The female CEOs (like most men) are middle-aged because it takes time and experience to get this far. I'm not arguing women always had equal chance of opportunity. But they have now. The next generation of female CEOs is on it's way and we will laugh about this article soon. There just can't be an instantanous change in ranks of these sorts, no woman can make it this fast - no man either, by the way.
This doesn't show, that women have it harder trying to become the very top percentile of successful people in the world. Don't get me wrong, it also doesn't prove the opposite. But denying that more men aspire these kinds of hardcore positions won't do any good for yourself in the long term.
3
If that were a stock chart, I’d be buying calls.
How many women are getting together to start their own companies instead? Just compete. Most male companies run by men were created by them.
3
An single mother could beat any male CEO hands down when it comes to number of hours worked, number of crises dealt with, number of problems solved, and the amount of real value contributed to society.
4
I think most would agree with you. Your statement is completely unrelated to the content of the article however.
No wonder they can't find the time or energy to accept a demotion to CEO.
In the current climate of heightened political rhetoric, political propaganda, social media, political bias of news organization and "fake news, the thoughtful reader needs facts.
This article uses the following phrases to establish the validity of its statements.
1. "Experts say"
2. "Evidence shows"
3. "Some experts say"
4. "Researchers have suggested"
5. "Researchers and recruiters say"
These statements,superficially sound good, but are unsupported by any citations and facts.
1
Amen!
My pet peeve.
There is a lot of fake social science out there that is little more than advocacy or the glossy brochures put out by consulting firms that want to "diversify" your firm for $$$$$$. That's "beaucoup" in French.
Alice Eagly of Northwestern University has reviewed research on women on boards and performance ("When Passionate Advocates Meet Research on Diversity,...? (J. Soc. Issues, 2016). She specifically criticized two much-cited reports -- by McKinsey & Catalyst. "Does it matter that the studies are academically substandard?," Eagly asks.
Her answer: "The answer to this question is an emphatic yes."Correlation is not causation, and the evidence is even mixed on correlation. Still, "the 'business case'—that is, the boldly causal claim that [women on boards improve] financial outcomes, lives on in communications directed to the public and business community ..., most often supported by citations of the least informative studies ..."
1
I am not at all surprised by this article. So many people, men and women included are completely unaware of their unconscious bias. Even people who label themselves as left wing liberals are. I try to be aware of mine, and acknowledge I am not always successful.
Yesterday I had a Facebook conversation with my husband's Harvard roommate. Him: "Tam went to see Iceman Cometh last night, but she left before the last act. Ask Arthur whether it (missing act 4) counts a lot." Arthur is my husband.
Uhh...since I'm well-read and go to the theater a lot, why didn't this man, who's now known me for a decade, just ask me what I though? Or just call Arthur himself. I don't begrudge my friend for not understanding how offensive he was. But it is--offensive. I responded to the question myself and left him know that Tam missed out on the play's high points and why.
When I was just getting to know this same circle of friends, I was also asked, on the first several get-togethers, whether I was "still working." I was 47 years old at the time, and my soon-to-be husband, still working, was 64. He earns a nice living. Funny, even though he could have retired no one asked him if he was "still working."
2
In my experience and profession, the people who get to the tippy top get there not just on ability and hard work, but usually by being incredibly aggressive and self-promotiung (qualities that are not socially acceptable in women) and worse - often by being borderline or even outright unethical. Getting to the top is what matters to them - not HOW you get there. The world would be a much better place if people with a different set of traits rose to the top: Brilliant, hard-working,and driven - yes, but also ethical and humane. Rather than respect men who get to the top, I now view them with a healthy dose of skepticism so I can be pleasantly surprised if they turn out to be half way decent people deserving of respect.
3
You also just described our current political system. The worst rise to the top again and again because the system rewards that behavior. I'm only half-joking when I say that women should actually be proud that they don't hold as many positions of "power" in business or politics for exactly this reason. They just seem to be less sociopathic so they are less successful in a sociopathic system.
1
"The typical chief executive is six feet tall with a deep voice — a typical woman doesn’t match the image."
This sums it up pretty well.
But what does it mean?
That our culture came to implicitly associate leadership with being physically dominant. That, of course, includes the idea of using "power/violence" to impose your view on your employees.
But when you look at the research about what the most effective and successful leadership style looks like, you find something very different: even studies analyzing the best commanders in the military conclude that they're not the "hardest", but actually those who are simultaneously principled, open about emotions and ... compassionate.
So our cultural "common sense" idea about leadership turns out to be seriously flawed, and doesn't correspond to what is scientifically known to be the best leader.
That implies that the only way to get more women at the top, is to profoundly change (management) culture and finally adapt it to the 21th century - not only to treat women more fairly, but also to make our businesses more productive, whether they're led by a woman or a man.
The good news here is that compassion isn't innate, but a highly trainable skill, and that those trainings already exist.
A perfect example is the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, founded by Google engineer Chade Meng Tan.
The future will be ours ... IF we can start basing our management techniques much more on science than we did until now.
1
It's not just in the corporate arena.
I work with a number of major non-profit institutions and recently noted a similar disproportion. With only a couple of exceptions, most of these institutions are fronted by male directors, while ironically women make up the vast majority of the administrative and support staff.
And this is in Seattle, seemingly a liberal bastion. I suppose, to our credit, we just elected the second female mayor in the city's history, but it seems pretty late in the game for these sexist shenanigans on an institutional level.
1
Maybe women don't have what it takes to compete at the highest levels in the rough and tumble world of large corporations. Did you ever think of that, or is admitting that possibility too politically incorrect and sexist for women to accept?
2
Women; The number one requirement for a top job >should be your past experience and ability to do the job.
The best example: Mary Barra,General Motors. Grew up working on cars and fixing mechanical stuff with her dad in the garage at home. Hands on skills set.
Learned real quick (drove a Chevette) what is bad and good mechanics, design.
She is also better equipped to deal with the macho men under her. She knows as much as they do about what they are working on. Respect both ways.
2
I have to laugh when I hear men try to defend these obviously indefensible positions. As I write this I am reminded in retirement of the most qualified people I ever worked with or for.
As a Telecom technician, our most qualified technician was a woman, and she was, by a mile, the most qualified and talented of us all. One of my very best and smartest managers ever, was a woman.
As a recently retired engineer from a major utility holding company, our recently retired CEO brought our company from near bankruptcy after several terrible business decisions and attempted mergers (made by a man), to a company on the way up to never before seen values.
So, guys, lighten-up. After 45 years in mostly male dominated industries I have learned, we are not always the best or the brightest thing to happen to a corporation.
6
There are so few women at the top of major companies, that if just a handful leave, the percentage of change is huge.
I'm now retired, but spent a working lifetime reading articles instructing me to change in various ways, if I wanted to break the glass wall/glass ceiling problem in my profession.
It's time the focus turned more to the men, who usually control who gets hired and promoted. Why aren't more men willing to work with women as equals, and not just as inferiors ? Why are men so persistently hiring and promoting male colleagues over female ones ? How about more articles focused on that ?
7
"It's time the focus turned more to the men, who usually control who gets hired and promoted..."
But aren't most HR/Recruiting departments/teams mainly comprised of women? It's been like that everywhere I've worked.
2
HR positions usually do the setting up for job interviews and ensure that things go according to existing policies. They generally have little influence over the decision of who gets the job. Their main job is to see that the company can't be charged with violating any human rights codes or laws.
1
Well, based on your description, HR is the first and largest filter of job applicants. 1,000 résumés have to be whittled down to 10 candidates to be interviewed, and that's HR's job. So I'm still puzzled...
Basic math and science literacy should be required in serious journalism. When I look at the graph, I see a general trend up with minor fluctuations. Similarly, one cannot say much about climate change by looking at a few weather data points.
20
I couldn't agree more. A basic understanding of trend analysis would have indicated that there could be large change from two consecutive years due to timing. But the author chooses to grab attention by stating an unsubstantiated headline. This is the kind of faux journalism that political pundits and Trump use to validate fake news.
2
@JKL,
I read the same article and saw that the number of women CEOs dropped dramatically by 25%.
Now there are a mere 24 women as the head of 500 companies.
I look at the same graph, see the numbers going up, and then see a dramatic drop in the number of women CEOs running 500 companies.
Yet, somehow you think this is not a gender thing, how?
My sister and I have both experienced the phenomenon of being the only woman in a room full of men at work where the men literally don't hear what we're saying, even though we're talking.
In fact, my sister was the only woman on a biotech board for 5 years where she was barely even acknowledged by the men. She finally got them to diversify and bring on 2 more women onto the board this year.
For the first time in 5 years, she was acknowledged in a board meeting last week and told, "That's a good idea" by the men on the board.
The first time in 5 years.
She said it was wild how the dynamic changed in one meeting, because there were 2 more women in the meeting.
I've been told, by a room full of men, "There's no audience for that," with me sputtering in response, "I'm the audience and all my female friends."
Women are 51% of the population in the US, yet across the spectrum of the boardroom, the head of companies, Congress, the Senate, the presidency, film, women are underrepresented.
It is a gender thing.
47
That's right up there with my experience of being the only woman at a board room table and introducing an idea that goes nowhere only to later see the exact same idea suggested by a man and have it hailed as brilliant. If you speak up you are regarded as petty and not a team player. I learned to cultivate male friends who will be in the meeting and ask them before hand to speak up in support of my idea. It worked every time. It's enough to make one cynical if not bitter. It's such a waste of time to have "game" an idea instead of just presenting it.
4
The ethos of patriarchal capitalism goes against women’s nature. Men create hierarchical organizations that seek to exploit opportunities for short term gain, while women create ones that have a longer term view and result in win-wins. For women’s leadership to increase capitalism has to evolve.
28
Neanderthal capitalism: short-term planning and profits, and cutthroat competition, resulting in massive income redistribution to one percent of the country's population, leading to economic (and now political) inequality, with three-quarters of the population experiencing economic decline, poor health, and limited access to education.
Evolved capitalism: long-term planning for the good of the entire country, fair taxation laws that assist fair income redistribution throughout the entire population, and equal political power across the spectrum, leading to a healthier, better educated, and more prosperous nation as a whole.
No wonder the one percent rails about social democracy. It would deprive them of their power to rob the rest of us of everything we have.
2
Since the rise of the "cult of the CEO" in the early 1980s during which the idea that CEOs were fountains of wisdom for everything in life and society (think Jack Welch, "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, and other "saviors of capitalism"), the idea of macho-man CEOs seemed to become more the norm. No matter the many failures and frauds by (primarily male) CEOs, they still retain enormous power and outsize publicity.
Then there is Mary Barra at GM who seems to do her job very competently and actually admitted that GM had responsibility for its ignition switch design horrors.
Can capitalism really evolve into something that thinks ahead, that values ideas and thought - something that one could easily argue it used to be (alas, with many flaws)? Or is what we see now the evolutionary route of US capitalism - a decay towards short term gain, lies about profits and income (Sunbeam, MCI, Nitec, Enron, Columbia HCA, Wells Fargo, Adelphia, etc.), CEOs who end up using corporate accounts for personal expenses without even seeing their ethical failures?
What person who values win-win and longer term views could have a future in such an environment? Perhaps the lack of female leadership in US capitalist organizations is a sign of the seriousness of the decay of US capitalism. I hope I live to see the day when a rise in female leadership comes about as we move from US capitalism to something which places greater value on people, the environment, long term gains for all, and continued innovation.
1
The valid points notwithstanding, the author never truly addresses the question raised at the outset, are we really backsliding or was last year a random variation on an improving situation? In the absence of additional information, my inclination is to believe last year was statistical variation on top of small numbers. While there’s no question we can do much more to encourage female representation in corporate leadership, it’s disappointing that the author didn’t explore this important question more deeply.
9
I don’t know why I am surprised by the biased comments here. I’m a female academic and have not only studied bias against females in power, but have also lived it. A change from the past is that now, bias is enacted by silence, by ignoring women of talent. Evidence is hard to provide in this setting, so how does one combat it? I suggest anyone with interest complete one of the many implicit bias tests developed by Harvard. I suspect most people will be surprised by their results: implicit.harvard.edu.
35
"Bias is enacted by silence, by ignoring women of talent."
Bull's eye. Passive - aggressive discrimination is the common language of business at higher levels. It is relentless and also obvious among the retained executive recruiters that are responsible for vetting candidates.
1
Women start out equal in terms of jobs and pay? This is an assumption which needs to be supported with data in order to understand how bias rises to the top. This is a new world, and it is not labor friendly. Contract work, jobs with pay based on "productivity" and a robust anti-labor bias in government reduce options for promotion. Hiring mid level managers by "recruitment" or after "internship" limits opportunity, especially for women who must work for in order to live. Internet job sites advertise executive positions are technically "open" but not being filled. The huge salaries paid to CEO's may also lead to bias. If CEO's were paid less, than companies might be more willing to take a chance on an excellent women candidate, or even (gasp!) a person of color.
11
Yes, and men are underrepresented among stay-at-home parents, elementary school teachers, nurses and college undergraduates. Because gender differences are real, and they affect the career decisions of men and women.
You have to wonder how long the Left can continue to ignore evolutionary biology.
23
Evolutionary biology is just that...we evolve. Humans weren't designed to fly, but we figured out how to do it anyway. Likewise, we have evolved so most women AND men who are parents also want careers outside the home, as well as real time to be there for their kids. The problem is not that gender differences exist (informed both by biology and environment) but that our society values one gender so highly over the other. Men are underrepresented in early childhood education mainly because it is not a well-paying or societally valued job option. Gender differences exist but we are more alike than different, and valuing one gender more highly than another is a societal decision, not biology.
9
I'm sorry, but there's NOTHING in evolutionary biology that supports your point of view.
Science is science, cultural prejudice is cultural prejudice.
The only way to thrive, as a society and economically, is to have the courage to change our culture when science demonstrates that it's based on utterly false and debunked myths such as the one you're taking over here.
2
This is not a biology article. The author is making the point that men and women are not being allowed to progress in a fair way. Also, the biology point is a joke. Most computer coders used to be women - they were deemed appropriate to code because it included typing, which was for secretaries - until more men got involved and pushed many women out. Pay teachers 100k a year and watch what happens... this is why fair pay is crucial.
3
Completely agree with the sentiment and issue here but the number of women who were CEOs fell 25% between 2009-2011 and then sharply and steadily increased since then.
As someone pointed out, a single data point a trend does not make- odd this would therefore be in the Upshot section with such weak data.
11
Hullo !!!!
First, one data point is not a trend.
Second, men don't suffer from having families because their wives step up on the family front. If women CEOs are choosing to leave their position or not go after it in the first place because they feel their husbands won't step up, that's a whole other issue. I think it's ridiculous to say that women CEOs should be given more flexible work hours and considerations for having a family because that implies that even if they are the CEO, they are still or should be primarily responsible for the child caring in her family while we don't assume that of men. If women are really not taking jobs as CEOs or any higher up position because they feel that no one would step up in their family, then they need to talk to their husbands--that is not a societal issue, that's a family one.
18
Even if we remedied the presumed handicap of domestic responsibilities weighing on the careers of many women my guess is the gap between numbers of male vs. female CEOs would narrow only marginally. The reason is that too many men in senior roles cannot abide the notion of capable women in positions of authority.
There is abundant independent research describing weaker callback rates for female CVs that are otherwise identical to male CVs for the same position. Moreover, senior women candidates with ambiguous-sounding first names will report similar experiences with senior hiring managers. The managers who are surprised (about 80%) never regain their composure and will decline to discuss any evidence of candidate performance. When hiring standards are then lowered to accommodate the nearest male candidate, which is the almost universal result, we need to ask whose agenda is being served here. Certainly not shareholders, and not even the personal agenda of the senior managers who just surrendered some portion of the corporate profits that fund their bonuses.
The un-PC reality is that it wouldn't take another generation to close the opportunity gap if corporations were even remotely a meritocracy. That any C-level managers are OK with this is a testament to how deep the problems are.
30
This is the same logic as is used to deny climate change. Temperatures drop for a year, therefore it is not happening.
7
If acceptance of climate change actually led to different behavior, it might matter. But every environmentalist I know drives a car, has multiple electronic devices and flies internationally on a regular basis. They live no differently than climate change deniers...they just feel more virtuous about themselves.
12
@ Helvetico
The US has the highest carbon footprint per capita in the world, and maybe 1% of the American people are environmentalists.
Apart from the fact that many environmentalists do integrate their principles into their own daily lives, THE culprit here is the way our laws incite people to consume tons of CO2 all while punishing those who don't.
At least environmentalists had the guts to read and accept the science and start engaging in order to convince other people what we urgently need to change our laws. THAT is a already huge in itself. If everyone would copy their behavior, we'd end global warming in a couple of decades already.
Unfortunately, today too many people tend to prefer standing at the sidelines criticizing others who at least do SOMETHING, rather than having the courage to start informing themselves and then vote accordingly ....
Thanks for noticing and verbalizing that! So true. Do as I say,not as I do!
No matter how much we try to equate men & women, certain cognitive aspects between the two sexes do differ greatly.
One of them is leadership, in which men have an inherent advantage. So there will always be more male natural leaders than female leaders. This doesn't mean women ought to be discriminated against. Nor does it mean when qualified & competent women come along they should be discounted. You can't have "proportional" female chief executives.
Women are supremely suited to be teachers & nurses where men have a natural disadvantage just for being male. And they (women) should be paid a lot higher. Their remunerations are low because they're women. That's where we should attack prejudice, not to make sure there are equal number of male & female chief executives. Women, however, do very well as mid-level managers. They are more thorough and diligent and hardworking.
13
From where do you come up with these "natural abilities"? I think you are talking about stereotypes, not facts.
Because women and men have been traditionally in the roles you list does not mean it is because of actual suitability. It is more likely because of opportunity, and societal grooming- girls being told, sometimes not so subtly that they can't be the boss, and better to clip those wings "honey".
26
Women have been stepping up to lead for a long time - from Joan of Arc to Harriet Tubman (she also led combat missions)... Rosa Parks had more leadership abilities in her pinkie than many leaders today. Our society’s have more than enough examples of strong, capable female leaders but we push these stories under the rug. Time for women to start talking about our successes and also ensuring there is visualization. In the UK, a campaign led to the recent creation of a suffragette statue in parliament square. Maybe this is an opportunity for the US, especially in places in the south where they are pulling down statues of traitors from the civil war? In the end, men today are better and less afraid of women.
1
This is the gender version of the "natural differences" between black people and white people that ruled in the south for a very long time. Different natural abilities, that's all. Evolution of Europeans and Africans, that's what. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the white males were again obviously those best suited for high-paying, well rewarded work, and black men and women were much better suited for service roles. I have a strong feeling that this kind of "equal but not really" argument will favor white males for just as long as white males are the ones making arguments at all. And that really is obvious, unfortunately for everyone else.
2
Carly Fiorina and failed executives like her might be part of the problem. She was a dumpster fire at H-P.
Sara Palin as the (Government Executive) Governor of Alaska did not even make it through one term.
IBM is slowly circling the toilet under Ginni Rometty. How about Yahoo under Marissa Mayer? Ellen Kullman at DuPont. Ursula Burns at Xerox.
Maybe the at best marginal to disastrous performance of these high profile individuals has something to do with it. Not one of these companies was in better shape after their tenure.
With the exception of Sherry Lansing and few others, the performance of woman in the top job is not that special.
We should also note that Hillary Clinton managed to spend a Billion Dollars with the blatant support of most media and most of the party insiders and still managed to lose to the Grifter Donald J Trump. Bernie would have won, Hillary People.
15
It can be argued that the companies mentioned in your comment were circling the drain - or getting close enough to it - when these women were handed the opportunity to run them. The big question is if there were more experienced or better skilled male C-level candidates for those positions? How were the decisions made to hand over leadership to these women? Could they have been set up with the proverbial golden chalice?
I don't deny the results, but could a magician have corrected those companies?
12
Imagine everything you just wrote with men's names instead of women's. "Donald Trump drove his companies into the ground, so men just aren't that good at the top job." It would sound ridiculous to speculate about the abilities of an entire gender based on the performance of a handful of individuals. Yet that's what you've just done to women in this comment--presumed that the performance of an (exceedingly small) handful stands in for all of womankind. It happens in government (as you know, having just used Hillary Clinton as a stand-in for all women) and entertainment, too. When will women be allowed to succeed or fail as, you know, individual people, and not representatives of a billion+ other women?
Men run companies into the ground all of the time but no one stops hiring men...
1
Are they rebelling about the 'man's world' they are acting in. Gender equality was central in early Israeli kibbutzim but it was the women who rebelled. They wanted to be women and dress more attractively, and have time with their children.
Women are different, with different roles. While they can succeed in a man's world (as Thatcher and Clinton have demonstrated) if they have a choice they will play in their own. Iroquois grandmothers could impeach their chiefs. That's womens' power and the women's movement will, hopefully, lead there.
6
“Female business school students who were single reported that they wanted lower salaries and shorter work hours when they expected classmates, particularly single men, to see their answers, according to a study last fall in the American Economic Review.
These biases against ambitious women affect how managers treat women at work.”
So, the perceived bias of men, spurred on by biased pieces like this, causes a bias within women towards placating the biases of men to increase their chances of getting a date?
The only thing intractable from all that seems to be the base desire to find the most desirable mate possible, however bizarre the tactics (give me the woman who works one hour and makes $1M for it). The assortative mating that happens at business schools or shortly thereafter ensures that the most capable women are also the ones least likely to need to continue working, particularly at a rate of 80 hrs/wk.
5
Nothing is more important than easing the suffering of CEO-Americans.
18
They have an entire government working towards that very goal.
9
Last year's 25% fall followed a 52% RISE the year before (from 21 to 32), but the one-year drop is a "reversal" that indicates the number "is falling" and requires new explanations? Try the most modest of smoothing and look at change over two years: for 19 of the past 20 years (including this year), the number of female CEOs was higher than two years earlier. The single instance of a decline (between 2009 and 2011) was followed by three consecutive years of fresh record highs. What an appalling use of data to mislead readers. This is The Upshot?
16
Part of me thinks, “This is terrible,” and part of me thinks, “These companies probably shouldn’t exist in the first place.” Certainly, the world would be better off without all the bad soup Campbell’s Soup has churned out over the years. Sugar in tomato soup, yuck.
2
I have to say I really like Campbell’s soup, and I still cook with it. It’s a convenience product, sure, but it beats buying a chicken, strangling it, plucking it, and cooking it every time I want chicken stock (which is what my husband’s grandmother did, even in his childhood in the ‘70s).
6
Go see "The Notorious RBG" if you want to know what being a brilliant working woman is about. Some of her best quotes:
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” and
“The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage.”
She worked harder, was smarter and ended up in a low paying demanding job. Go figure.
20
These things that are embedded in a culture don't move in a straight line, so the decline isn't the start of a trend by any means. (I guess that's a mathematical pun.) These positions, and millions of others, have to be won on merit, fitness for the position, intangibles, etc. (usually). It's past time that women are judged on the same criteria. But, as I have just recently noticed, women *are* different from men. That argues for more inclusion to reap the benefit of different perspectives. But it also *may* mean that there are more women than men who aspire to these kinds of jobs and everyone must respect that. It's also possible that, if true, it will reverse at some point. But men and women who do aspire to this or other jobs must have a shot at them unbiased by gender.
I know that I have been passed over for jobs I was eminently qualified for in favour of women. I know that. I have some resentment about it - who wouldn't? - but I also see the larger picture of achieving a more equitable and decent society. It will work out in the end. At least I hope so.
2
The CEO jobs will continue to go to executives who work 24 hours a day, will do anything for their company, and don't care at all about their family, their friends, or society. Who wants to be that person? A few men, and practically no women.
42
This is why capitalism needs to evolve to be human-friendly. If these structures aren't human healthy our society at large pays the price - in violence, income inequity, sprawl and the devaluing of human qualities.
1
Great so let’s get some women at the top who can vouch for better policies. The reality is that the spoils often go to the men who can do this i.e. a man who generally marries a servant wife/husband. Most people are in dual-working families - let’s start advocating for policies that help working families...it might start with giving a women who knows the struggle a real shot rather than the guy faking the 80 hour work week or using his partner as a glorified assistant.
1
The article doesn’t particularly address this year’s 25% decline. These are women who made it to the top.
4
Don’t you think it is a little early to crying wolf? Last year saw a record growth in the of female chief executives. This year saw a drop. It is small numbers problem not a trend.
26
Agree entirely. Look at the (positive) trend on the graph and stop focusing on what's likely statistical noise from year to year.
10
It should be closer to 50/50 is we hired based on talent. That is the real issue. Diversity has shown to create more value and shareholders want value, new opinions and new ideas.
I find the comments here overall to be very indicative of the very problem the article is lamenting exists.
The people posting here are declaring top CEO jobs to be a bad fit for women (requires a warrior mindset, being ruthless) and that perhaps women just don't want these jobs (and are not willing to put the hours in).
No question at all that top CEO jobs are not what we're all looking for in our careers. Also no question at all that getting there requires a certain type of drive, ambition, and focus.
What is astonishing that the go-to comment seems to, at its core, be that this just doesn't fit what you see women as being all about. No wonder women aren't in these positions - people with these types of beliefs are making judgments about who gets to advance up the ladders of corporate america and in other places as well. If they default to assuming women won't WANT or have the NATURAL APTITUDE for the top positions, then why would they mentor, train, promote and otherwise invest in women who might someday be ready for those positions.
Thanks everyone for proving the article to be right - it is not about individual choices by women, but rather systemic problems.
65
@ J Lynn, what women are like on average ends up affecting the numbers. I was one of those lucky girls who had every opportunity. I was good at my job and my father was a well placed executive at the company who could mentor (and protect) me. One of my bosses was a woman who had struggled against sexism. She tried to mentor me and I think she was heartbroken when I had a baby and left.
Maybe a lot of women never get the right opportunities, or are judged by management unfairly, or are hazed out by sexual harassment. But many women when given every chance will still want to do something else with our lives.
I know that every “opting out” woman does in a sense perpetrate certain stereotypes. Every time a woman leaves the pipeline, it makes the top level that much more male, potentially that much more of a “boys” club. But freedom means that all of us get to try to get the lives we want.
Is it surprising that on average more women want stereotypically female things? In my case I was raised by such modern parents that I don’t think any of this was about “evil” gender stereotyping absorbed by osmosis. I wasn’t allowed to play with Barbie. I had blocks AND dolls. But I still wanted to be a mom more than anything.
19
Which feminism fought for you to do: decide what you wanted to do rather than FORCING you to have children and be a mom; your choice. The point of this article, though, is that these woman DON'T want that. They WANT these jobs and are being blocked, usually more subconsciously than maliciously, from having them. That your response was to defend your own choices to go a different way likely reflects the fact that woman feel judged no matter which route they take...and whihc is part of the problem. You also assume that all those who left the pipeline did it as willingly and happily as you...rather than leaving because they just couldn't handle being ground down any more. There is a difference.
5
“There are larger forces at work, experts say, rooted in biases against women in power, mothers who work or leaders who don’t fit the mold of the people who led before them.”
Yes, the above is the point of the article but I disagree with that statement. I think many women are leaving for the same reasons I left (because we prefer other lifestyles and careers), as upper management is often drawn from people with prestige degrees and people with family and friends already in management — precisely the kind of person I was in my twenties.
Last week there was an article about bias against mothers. I think there is no bias only generalizations. Similarly maybe there isn’t a bias against women in power but just generalizations about women that are rooted in real average behaviour. Jordan Peterson talks about how men are more disagreeable than women (on average). I had never thought about that but it’s true. And executives need to be disagreeable in order to steer the company effectively.
Leaders should be ethical. I don’t think they should be paying themselves so much money. But would female CEOs fix any of this? I don’t believe that.
Women of course should have opportunities and should never be sexually harassed but maybe this terrible harassment problem could be solved some other way than getting more female executives. Because if the solution depends on that I think we’ll be waiting a very long time.
Wow, the comments so far almost all turn the issue right back to women: they don't really want to be CEOs, they don't start in the right fields, they don't find the corporate world a very pleasant place, they are not 50% of front line combatants (!). There is so much denial still about the reality and source of discrimination. What a catch 22 - when more women are at the top they will hire more women - how does that work, exactly? Women are doing better in some of the other countries - maybe we should study the family support services available in the Nordic countries for starters and help both women and men break free of our rigid gender roles.
30
Some of the Nordic countries have much higher income tax rates and strict gender quotas on hiring in public and private sector positions. In the US the first is unpopular while the second is usually illegal.
Yes, the obvious discrimination and home/work issues are awful, but consider this: Women are too smart and principled to want to be CEOs of big corporations. I would not! There are far more interesting and rewarding ways to make a living, even at lower pay. Maybe you'd PREFER to spend time with your kids, or women friends, than with "the boys" obsessing about sports and money.
3
Nope. They're not a special class that needs special rules. If they can't cut it, try a different occupation.
Bottom line, as it has always been: ambition, competence, imagination, and intelligence.
They don't have all four working together persistently with determination and focus, ain't gonna happen.
5
Changing bias would not be very hard, if the level of education that employees have on their Resumes, increases. Hire employees who are more intelligent. People with Brilliant IQs, the top score, don't do "pants vs skirt" pre-school mentality. That is why their businesses are at a higher level than the Fortune 500. That is why they are wealthier. And actually, the #1 person on that Top Level, is a female.
Those in academia and physicians have shown similar leadership and discrimination issues. IQ does not 100% protect from internalizing cultural norms
6
Erin-- There are several "levels" in academia as well as in medicine. To rise in the hierarchical levels, professionalism is a must. Although only a small percentage achieve the Brilliant IQ Score, I wanted to let people know that through higher education, people improve their reasoning skills, thus the bias that this article discusses, is eliminated.
In case you don't know, to get the Top Score of Brilliant IQ, a person must have the Ph.D degree, and the Post Doctorate degree. ---- The main problem is that these corporations hire people who are not "polished" yet, they receive MBAs that don't require what they should require, and then the corporations don't require what they should require. I do not own any stock in the Fortune 500.
An article heavy on hearsay and much too light on evidence. The NYT editors should set themselves higher standards.
6
Agreed. Eyeballing the values from that graph and converting to log-odds, this year's change in female CEOs was 1.76 sd below the mean. That's a sizable drop, but not definitively distinguishable from random noise. Even if there is a real trend here, it may simply be that the large cohort of women who became CEOs in 2012-14 had their RSUs vest and decided to retire. Or something equally benign.
That's not to say that women don't face particular challenges in rising to these positions, but what scant evidence is presented here seems to indicate that things are rapidly improving.
9
So there are cultural biases, I bet they work against say some Jewish people, and for some say orientals in some businesses. Some of this says men are better at dealing with the issues. If women were better at making money for the corporation they would make whatever accommodations they needed to. I don't see any evidence that females in general make more money for the owners.
1
Plenty of men decline moving up for a higher quality of life but they are considered less ambitious than other men. Women may not be as harshly judged for making a common sense decision. Women seem to be better at judging their needs. Men plod along until they drop.
6
I believe skills are equal. In some areas, I think women may have a slight edge, overall. But is the specific ambition to be a CEO found equally in young women and men?
This seems to be a big piece left out of this discussion. Nothing difficult is achieved without a relentless drive. I'm not guessing...I have no idea and would like to know.
6
This is not an unreasonable question to pose. Any answer, though, would also have to take into account can you aspire to be something when you have not seen a person that looks like you in that role? If it is considered normal for men to aspire to CEOs but particularly daring for a girl...then fewer girls will aspire to be CEOs regardless of anything else. It is why advocates for fair representation in art, television, etc fight so passionately: this belief that you have to see someone else like you in a position to truly internalize the message you can do it too.
1
In terms of women’s quality of life and interests, is asking about parity between the sexes in executive positions the right question? Why does it even matter?
Traits that make superb leaders probably include being disagreeable and needing to work to attract a mate. This alone favours men.
I disagree that men need to take care of their kids, too, and that childcare could (and should) be shared equally in couples. One person specializing for longer hours can learn more and out compete others at work. And then motherhood is also basically like deploying to war: you start out getting injured (I broke my tailbone and had multiple stitches) and then you start learning a new complicated job (breastfeeding, dealing with a screaming infant). Breastfeeding also benefits the child and is best done when the mother has proximity. After this, why shouldn’t the mother, who has now bonded with her child, continue to specialize and focus on her family? It’s what many women want.
I don’t see men “popping” out of the office and not telling anyone the way mothers often need to. Sure, in summer my husband might work from home and take lunch with the kids, but he once worked through pneumonia. As a mother your children need you at times and you can’t just push through.
Having said that, there are plenty of jobs where employers put up with what mothers need because the mom is a good employee. It can work out great — but those jobs aren’t usually C-suite ones.
1
I often wonder how much perception of age affects me as a professional woman compared to my male peers. Despite being in my mid-30s and despite a resume that shows 12+ years of experience, it seems like many (older) male leaders see me as young and in my 20s, which to them equates to lack of experience and readiness to move into a higher leadership role. My male peers are not viewed as being young despite sometimes being 3-4 years younger than me.
7
I bet you are a fairly attractive female, that has positives and negatives. Now smart leaders use objective criteria and recognize their bias and avoid them.
1
Omg are you me? I’ve also experienced male interviewers surprise that I’m “actually smart” too...
That is a cruel trap. Overall, women are encouraged to seem as young as possible.
3
Should it be "22 percent of senior vice presidents are women, according to the annual Women in the Workplace...." I'd be deeply surprised if 22% of women were SVPs
6
This type of article usually centers on upper management, CEO careers. Not all that many of us (any gender) achieve this. Has anyone ever studied men and women who spend their working lives at a professional level, actually producing something - like an engineer or programmer or author or even teacher? I ask because my husband and I have both worked with pride at good paying jobs actually making things, not just "managing" - and taking our pride and satisfaction from just that. We both felt that going into that "management" slot would have provided more income, but also separated us from creatively producing our chosen "product" - he, machine tools, me, programs, systems or networks - in a way that would have been unsatisfying. Now, long retired, we run a niche business that is backed by skills learned long ago in the workplace and have no regrets about not pushing harder to achieve that "managerial" status.
The drop in female corporate heads is worth studying, but perhaps, the emphasis that only upper management is worth striving for, is a bit overblown. At least in our marriage, neither of us ever tried to go there.
39
The pipeline is flawed and we all know it. Most CEO's come up via engineering or business finance - both university specialities that women avoid like the plague - Mary Barra is a classic exception.
Just in passing - that old canard how businesses outperform with female leaders and board members - false - a massive study on Europe's 10-year example of compulsory board membership shows no difference in performance nor in female mobility at the lower levels.
So - the answer is women need to pursue a technical education, need no quotas and work as long and hard as men - there are no shortcuts and bad decisions can be made early in life.
10
A technical education pits women against cheaper, younger H1b visa holders in the workplace. And provides an increasing level of discrimination based on gender, race and country of origin over time as the foreign co-workers receive green cards and promote their own.
4
Statistics are wrong.
Not demonstrably less unless dip continues. Not a trend.
Trend since 2000 is very much the other way.
More than in 2013 and 2016. Many many more than in 2000.
Without any real basis in statistics this article is what?
Top companies are a prize in a corporate war. To win you need to be good at war. Or eliminate war. Good luck with that.
14
Exactly Ville-marle, or putting it another way, when 50% of all military front line fighters are women, that is the day when 50% of all CEOs will be women.
8
Having worked with many female senior executives, while I was with a fortune 500 US multinational, I found very often, ladies discovered the corporate world isn't a very pleasant place to devout so much of your time and energy. Men of course have fewer choices. Men must work. The % who's female spouse can support a family is very very small. Females figure out much faster than their male counterparts the old saying, " No one is going to lean over your death bed and remark, "you did a good job."
17
You're a little out of date in your perceptions. Accordingly to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2015, 38% of women make more money than their spouses. That doesn't qualify as a "very very small" percent in anyone's book.
Alongside all the women making more are women whose financial contributions are just as needed for the family to maintain its desired lifestyle.
7
Kind of. The 38% figure is based on couples where the wife is earning an income. The percentage is considerably lower if you include couples where the wife has no income.
Dan Green, that is deeply offensive.
Single women must work. Both adults in any family with low incomes must work. As for the corporate world not being a pleasant place what makes you think that being any lower in the food change is any more "pleasant"?
I spent a career in IT and there is nothing finer than being ostracized, harassed, patronized, and discriminated against - all while working fulltime plus overtime plus oncall hours.
7
Bottom line, if a woman can clearly show under law that she has been discriminated against re getting a CEO job, she should sue, otherwise don't social engineer.
There will always be jobs where women will fall far short of 50% of the total simply because of strength like firemen, heavy construction jobs, furniture movers etc. etc.
A CEO is the white collar equivalent of it. It requires ruthless ambition, take no prisoners, cut throat competition, everything in life comes second.
Some women can do it, many can't.
6
Or it requires leadership. working 80 hour weeks, and being a great communicator and organizer. It does not require those attributes you indicate except in some companies.
2
"Can't" or would rather die than behave like that??
Thank God we don't all want to kill, take no prisoners, and cut throats.
Looked at the violent crime stats lately?
Women, don't let them sucker you into selling your soul.
Be lawyers and sue corporations for their awful behavior.
Be legislators and make laws to control their killer instincts.
2
Thank you for your reply vulcanalex. Women can be great communicators and organizer too but generally speaking not the points I made.
If your statement was true, 50% of all CEOs would be female.
1
One of the things that has always bothered me about this problem is the idea that one should want to be a CEO. Why? Being a CEO is really naked capitalism--it's not about nurturing, or being a good human, or providing a service--it's mostly about raising money and firing people.
I'm a bit tired of hearing about this problem, but let's say it's an important problem. Then why not approach it through enforced equality--in essence, reduce CEO pay. When being a CEO is less appealing for men (who thrive on hierarchy) it will become a more morally appealing job overall for women.
We keep looking at our gender biases for the answer, but perhaps this is an inequality problem.
20
Your idea of what a CEO does might be correct, but if he only does that he is basically worthless. The CEO should be setting policies, improving processes, and yes developing leaders. Sort of what a general does in the military, in addition to dealing with the commercial things you indicate.
2
It is a good thing that women who don't perform well have been fired, as I note in my column: http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/388775-appointing-women-to-run-compan...
Women are being promoted like crazy, in part because of #MeToo; they are a safer bet. Progress could be undermined if Boards and officials think they can't treat women like men; if their results don't measure up- they should be let go.
1
So...female Fortune 500 CEs fell by 25% this year?
And from the graph provided, it appears the number of female CEs rose by almost 55% in 2017 (22 to 34?).
And the graph also clearly shows the upward trend over the past 20 years.
But today, like everyday in the NYT, we will be fed our daily regimen of gender articles. And always with the same bias.
52
When I started to develop mentor relationships, the men around me started whisper campaigns and put pressure on the men doing the mentoring to back off. There were only about 4-6 women out of a couple hundred in IT and I was the only supervisor. Most of the women were in non-technical support roles.
How did I know this? I was told about what was being said behind my back. The only way women advanced was when they had familial ties to men in upper-level management.
24
So your company was corrupt and did not do what was best for it. Top management should have identified this and fired or fixed it.
2
This is the elephant in the room. Look at the recent "reveal" at Nike, where an entrenched, elite "boys club" earned most of the spoils and conspired to maintain a secret but highly effective human barrier preventing women from succeeding at mid-management levels. When you don't get invited to the meeting (or the late night cocktails) or you are the only woman in the meeting ("Could you run for coffee, Jennifer?") the odds are stacked against you.
7
"Top management should have identified this and fired or fixed it."
Unfortunately, top management too often seems to be unable to do such things. Of course, it often seems quite capable of firing someone who starts a union campaign, fights for safety, fights for better working conditions, tries to stop sexism and discrimination.