Slashdot Mirror
Sheryl Sandberg and Technology's Female Leaders
AlistairCharlton writes "While the rest of the world continues to see men dominating, the technology industry seems set to change that. I investigate how Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman and Joanna Shields are paving the way for the rest of the business community. From the article: 'A glance at the male/female split of world leaders (178/17), Fortune 500 CEOs (96 percent/four percent) and FTSE 100 board seats (85 percent/15 percent) reveals there is a huge imbalance between the sexes, but in technology change is underway - and Sandberg is at the very forefront of it. Along with Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer and Joanna Shields of HP, Yahoo and London's Tech City respectively, Sandberg represents a shift in what was not so long ago an all-male industry.'"
for being sociopathic, greedy CEOs and politicians, only then will we have equality.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Don't forget Carly Fiorina and her contributions to making HP and Compaq the successful companies they are today.
I'm betting Carly can't make a good sandwich ether.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Surprising that this article praises the disaster that is Meg Whitman, and completely omits Ginni Rometty the current CEO of IBM who has worked everywhere within the company over 30 years and has CS and EE degrees.
The rest of us just don't care about the gender of who successfully runs a company.
Only when they unsuccessfully run it does someone get their panties in a knot by playing some imaginary gender card.
The majority "Don't give a fuck." I don't see too many men (or women) complaining that only women can give birth.
Teaching is female dominated because male teachers are automatically assumed to be pedophiles.
Job such as teaching is female dominated = women's brains have evolved to be better at certain things.
Negative role such as being in prison is male dominated = men's brains are different.
Positive role such as winning sole custody of one's children is female dominated = women will always be better are certain things.
Job is male dominated = men and women are equals.
It's femilogical, and you're being sexist if you don't agree.
Exactly. What this article seems to be preaching is "equal outcome", as opposed to "equal opportunity". In the U.S. and other western countries, women have the same *opportunity* as men to dominate in these fields. Opportunity is different than outcome. We don't "need" to have a perfect 50% men/women split in industries. We "need" to have the same opportunity available for both sexes.
Each gender is typically going to trend towards certain professions, and that is perfectly fine. The genders may be equal, bu they are certainly not interchangeable, as much as the P.C. cops would like you to believe. Your example of the education industry is valid.
Female executives for a company that just happens to be in tech, doesn't count to women in tech, just women in business.
... which has had all female CEOs since 2001.
Xerox is not as exciting as HP, but its CEOs have not done large, showy reorganizations that destroyed once-proud solid engineering traditions, so there's that.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Just having female leaders is worthless if those leaders aren't any more responsible than the male leaders who preceded them. It's about responsible leadership not male to female ratios.
How about pat ourselves on the back when we feel there is equal opportunity and stop caring about ratios (outcome)? Equal opportunity != equal outcome.
It's not sexist to disagree with a poorly worded argument.
Crimey
Of "you can work 200 hour weeks if you sleep under your desk" (while at google) and more recently "no more telecommute" (at yahoo) fame?
Is that someone to be praised, regardless of gender?
I think she belongs on the "stay away form wherever she works" list.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
perhaps we could see what the females on slashdot think? *crickets*
"Misogynist"
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
A significant amount of the smart, talented women I know despise working for other women because female managers can be awful to women in a way that many men cannot even dream of treating female subordinates. Even in college, I saw some of this as one female professor was known to be utterly ruthless to female students who slacked off to a degree she almost never, ever dished out to her male students.
So I look forward to this trend with amusement because it very well may lay the foundation for an implosion of female involvement in our fields. And then the cycle will repeat itself...
What basis in reality do you have to support that claim? Female and male interests are not identically distributed so why would the outcomes be identical? Do you think that the ratio of men and women that buy/wear dresses will be the same as long as there is equal opportunity for men and women to buy dresses?
I would agree that an unequal ratio is sufficient reason to ask the question if there is actually equal opportunity but it doesn't mean there isn't equal opportunity.
This morning on Morning Edition NPR broadcast a talk with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. (Probably because Sandberg has a new book out on the subject.) I thought it was quite interesting.
Carol Barth did well running Autodesk. Not so well at Yahoo, but that was Yahoo's problem. Nobody else has been able to turn around Yahoo either.
You must be new here. :)
This morning on Morning Edition NPR broadcast a talk with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. (Probably because Sandberg has a new book out on the subject.) I thought it was quite interesting.
On the other hand this book also got Gloria Allred on the warpath to bash the book. Ms Allred's claim is that 'Lean In' (the title of Ms Sandberg's book) is a thinly veiled attempt to blame women for their own predicament. The basic premise of the book (I haven't read it yet), appears to be that women are not self-confident enough and that career choices for women are often about compromise, some of which are compromises that male colleagues do not have to make.
Instead, Ms Allred (in numerous radio interviews) appears to claim that the proper role of women who achieve in the workplace should be to encourage the enlistment of collective bargining (e.g., unions), to eliminate compromises and to help all women to achieve rather than to promote more self-confidence among women (since women are chided for being self-confident in the work place) and allow women make any career/family choices since they should be able to have it all.
An interesting spin on Ms Sandberg's book. One wonders if she meant that women should be submitting themselves to the male-dominated union power structure rather than promote their own accomplishments individually? I'm not sure if that's exactly how that's supposed to work out... Anyhoo... To each their own politics...
I missed the NPR broadcast today, nor have I seen Gloria Allred's accounts; but I saw Sheryl Sandberg as a keynote at the Grace Hopper conference in 2011, and she actually did a solid speech on a very similar topic. IIRC, she discussed the challenges and compromises that women make in technology or other male-dominated field; but she also discussed how that landscape can change, and how women can achieve success both with their family and in a career, similar to your summation of Ms Allred's points. I'm not sure if Allred was trying to make family/career balance come across as utopian, but I'd take what I heard during Sandberg's keynote more to heart because it is, in fact, not an easy balance to achieve... It goes so far beyond needing an unbiased employer; you also need your sig o's unwavering support, and be able to handle the possibility of living a less traditional (non-hallmark) kind of life. Forget social stigmas within the workplace when there is a giant elephant in the room regarding the roles/duties between husband and wife/mother and father.
because of feminists stereotyping them..
Criticism of feminism, or rather, accusing it of hypocrisy is not hatred of women. You are categorically and definitionally incorrect.
Statistics like. "85% of board seats are held by men, so clearly there's a long way to go" are highly misleading.
The underlying premise is that all things being equal, the seats should be 50% female. But that premise is silly.
If 75% of women elect to raise families and focus less on their careers (not a real statistic, just an example) then it would stand to reason that 25% would not hold equally senior positions to their male colleagues who pursued only career. And if women more frequently choose majors like psychiatry, French language, Art History and women's studies, then their lack of representation on boards of tech companies would also be justified.
This is the general problem with numerical male:female ratios: They discount the other options which draw women of their own free will, and misrepresent the existing ratio as "repression" of some kind.
The goal is NOT equal representation. It is equal OPPORTUNITY. If board seats were 50% women, that would likely represent male oppression as there are typically more men pursuing careers applicable to those seats than women. When women complain about unequal ratios they are demanding their cake while wanting to eat it too. They are actually demanding unequal favorable treatment for themselves at the expense of men.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
because:
1. men are required to thanks to feminist 'equality' legislation. Unfortunately it does little but encourage another layer of systemic discrimination to form on top of claimed systemic discrimination.
2. men are instinctively inclined to place women on pedestals anyway..
3. today's 20 and 30 something men were brought up into neo-chivalry, which basically demands they give women 'equal' rewards while, at the same time, prop them up when they don't measure up, often to the point of taking the fall for her.