The Rise Of The Female CEO And The Folly Of Men Who Just Don't Get It
By Laura Yecies
11/15/2011 @ 2:19PM
On Monday last week I woke up a bit before my 5:45 alarm (yes, quite amazing how one can actually adjust to a new schedule) so had a few minutes to scan email and the online news before my hike and came across the headline “Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO.” Gene Marks, the author, is a Forbes contributor.
My first thought when I read that headline was how silly it was. After all, “Most anyone won’t be CEO.” You can put pretty name your group for the “anyone” place – most men won’t be CEO, most New Yorkers won’t be CEO, even most Harvard MBAs, though they hate to admit it, won’t be CEO.
Then I read on and was irked. And admittedly, while obviously very curious, I had to set the article aside for a few days to temper my reaction.
The article starts with a description of some negative teenage behavior (both boys and girls actually) and then a projection (without any evidence) that the silly “high school girl drama” exhibited by the author’s teenage daughters is typical of professional women.
After reading this, I should have just abandoned the article – “Reason #1” was enough to make this article not credible. But my curiosity got the best of me.
The next point is that men are incapable of taking women seriously in the office and are only focused on women’s appearance. I find this to be an insult to the many serious, professional men I have worked with over the last 23 years. Not that I am naïve to human nature and a bit of normal banter (and by the way women occasionally notice men’s hot or not-so-hot appearance) but I do believe we’ve been mostly past this for years. And to the extent it is present, we should treat this behavior as an unacceptable aberration not to be accepted.
The corollary to this point, which the author makes later, is that “men can also get away with more stupidity.” Note to any men reading this…NOT. Check in with several recently former Fortune 500 CEOs to verify.
Marks discusses the challenges that mothers have juggling working and parenting. And, yes, when in the midst of a big work project, it is hard to leave coworkers to take care of a sick child or go to your child’s sports game.
The modern reality, though, is that both genders are facing these challenges. And both men and women are facing these challenges the usual way – with a little less sleep. My observation is that parenting and home management is becoming more shared. To the extent it isn’t, then the lesson to our daughters is, if you want to maintain an active career, chose a husband who will be a partner with you. Even if the thesis is right that women are so much more instinctively bonded with their children that their juggle is harder, there are many cases where that juggling skill morphs into brilliant business multi-tasking.
Marks ends with an assertion that the women who can be CEO are the ones with the thickest skin. I think anyone who rises through the corporate ranks or the rough-and-tumble of business builds up some calluses. But for a truly effective CEO, they are calluses and not overall thick skin. Women CEOs lose as much sleep when they have to fire someone or face a tough decision. I certainly didn’t get to where I am by virtue of having thick skin.
If anything it’s the opposite. Yes, I’ve cried at work. My first year at Informix, while laying off a top employee who was a single mom; in the bathroom at the Check Point office in Israel 20 years later after my first Israeli-style “dressing down” of a proposal, and later that year in front of my staff when I got the call that one of my team member’s daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
I think parenting is one of the best experiences in the world for learning empathy and if that helps in being a CEO then women–and men–are benefiting from that experience even as they juggle.
The bottom line is that many if not most of the generalizations and barriers described in said article have changed or are changing. In the cases where they are not – if women are not being taken as seriously or aren’t bringing the right skills to the table—let’s figure out how to level the playing field so that we can get the best talent involved in starting and growing businesses.
Laura Yecies is the CEO of SugarSync, the world’s fastest growing cloud (digital files) storage, sync and collaboration tool. She is a consumer software and Internet services industry veteran with two decades of experience leading top consumer brands such as ZoneAlarm, Yahoo and Netscape. Yecies has been on staff as a lecturer for International Marketing at Santa Clara University, and serves on the board of several community non-profit organizations.
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