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Are Women CEOs Treated Differently

By Sara White posted 05-24-2015 09:34

  

Amy Bernstein in Why Are We So Hard on Female CEO’S (May 2015 HBR) offers the following insights.

  • Women currently hold just one-quarter of the executive senior leadership positions, not quite one-fifth of board seats, and only 23 corner offices (4.6%)
  • Scholars tell us we can’t easily explain away these numbers although some women may “opt out” to take care of their families not enough of them are doing so to account for the numbers
  • Studies have shown that women in power exhibit more symptoms of depression, while men in power exhibit fewer. Researchers say it is because female leaders are seen as abnormal and therefore face resistance. Assertive women are punished for being unfeminine while women who conform to stereotypes are deemed too meek for top jobs.
  • The unique challenges facing female leaders is made amply clear in a couple of recent books on Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and Mary Barra of GM who ascended within decidedly male-dominated industries taking the controls of companies in crisis thus reinforcing the belief that women leaders often face the “glass cliff”-they get to run the place only when it is about to fail.
  • Carlson in his book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo ticks off all her failings such as.  Wearing a $10,000 dress to meet her senior staff and her wedding being in Vogue even though she was selected without the kind of due diligence you would expect for a role of that stature; whether she really had the chops to take it on is a fair question.
    • Others however have noted recently that she may deserve a lot more respect than she has been given as she brought unprecedented transparency to Yahoo.
    • A lot of people think she was right to cut back on telecommuting as it was an organization going through a dramatic but necessary reset which requires more face to face time
    • The reality is that the businesses she’s built or acquired are making money and Yahoo appears to be back on track for growth this year.
  • The question is would a man have been subjected to the snarkiness that Carlson does in his book. The author of this article says I can’t get past a suspicion that the tone of this book is another inadvertent expression of discomfort with women in positions of power and where is the book about a male CEO barely two years into pulling his company out of a long-running death spiral?
  • Laura Colby in Road to Power: How GM’s Mary Barra Shattered the Glass Ceiling provides a much more respectful account. Laura describes how Mary started at Pontiac as an 18 year old student and worked her way through a series of increasing responsible positions that honed her skills, gave her invaluable exposure and ultimately led to her promotion to CEO.  While her early performance before a congressional committee was at best inadequate. She seems to have righted herself as a year into her tenure she has confronted the safety issues squarely and GM has performed pretty well.
    • Mary comes across as a smart, gutsy, magnetic, and down-to-earth leader
    • Her goal for GM is to “stop making crappy cars” which is hard to argue with.

Comments?

 



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