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.'"

Comments

When women can be despised...

[Kenja]

for being sociopathic, greedy CEOs and politicians, only then will we have equality.

Re:When women can be despised...

[Hatta]

They already are? Who is more hated than Nancy Pelosi? Who is more dangerous than Janet Napolitano? Who has fucked up more than Carly Fiorina?

Carly

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Carly Fiorina and her contributions to making HP and Compaq the successful companies they are today.

Re:Carly

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Carly wasn't bad because she's a woman, or because she's a self-absorbed sociopath who only saw HP as a big money pot from which she could extract a personal fortune (regardless of the costs to the company or its employees), she was actively incompetent at running a technology company due to a lack of experience with, or any interest in, high technology. Her education was in liberal arts, and then several extended business degrees. That's pretty much a formula for failure in almost any industry, but particularly so in the tech industry. She was just a female version of John Scully's disastrous run at Apple without Scully's good luck at joining at the right time.

Re:I don't consider the HP example a good one.

[HornWumpus]

I'm betting Carly can't make a good sandwich ether.

flimsy article thrown together

[EjectButton]

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.

Re:flimsy article thrown together

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Maybe because she spends her time running the company, instead of grandstanding about herself in the media . . . ?

Re:flimsy article thrown together

[Hal_Porter]

I think there are two types of CEO and it's not really about gender.

One of them knows a lot about the business because they worked their way up in the company and will follow an evolutionary path. Maybe their skills are a bit out of date by the time they get to the top, but at least they had skills once.

The other is someone who has worked in management jobs in a lot of companies doing a lot of different stuff, getting to be CEO via a series of jumped ships - each one higher than the last but each one was in a completely different business area. They'll follow a completely unpredictable and revolutionary path with a high chance of failure because they don't really know anything about the concrete business area - they've only really worked in it as CEO and if you're CEO you're right axiomatically when you say anything. They do however know a lot about business in the abstract - megatrends like outsourcing vs insourcing for example. They are probably very, very intelligent and persuasive too - you need to be if you can talk people into giving you the keys to their billion dollar company.

I think there's a need for both types of people in an organisation but you're kidding yourself if you think hiring someone who knows nothing about the business as CEO means they will beat the odds - i.e. outperform the evolutionary alternative.

It has happened of course, but I think people overestimate the probability of it. But then again most share holders are terrible gamblers who always think they can beat the odds. So it's not that surprising that boards made up of shareholders hire type II CEOs and screw the company. Then again maybe they knew that the evolutionary approach wasn't good enough to keep the company going too. That's probably true of most household name companies - an evolutionary approach means they will fade away in a couple of decades.

These are not Women In Tech

[databeast]

Female executives for a company that just happens to be in tech, doesn't count to women in tech, just women in business.

Also Xerox

[alispguru]

... 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.

Re:Also Xerox

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Um, what? You really don't know what you're talking about do you... Ursula Burns took over Xerox and then took a wreaking ball straight to engineering.

Ursula Burns sold off large portions of engineering based in the USA to HCL, an Indian outsourcing company, then proceeded to dismantle or outsource everything related to product engineering.

But hey, at least she's hiring call center employees to replace the engineering positions that have been moved to India.

Ursula Burns is the number one most hated CEO in the tech industry. I wonder why?

Re:Feminism

[Crimey McBiggles]

It's not sexist to disagree with a poorly worded argument.

Re:Feminism

[epyT-R]

Criticism of feminism, or rather, accusing it of hypocrisy is not hatred of women. You are categorically and definitionally incorrect.

Totally misleading statistics and premise

[popo]

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.