What does it take?

Angela Braly, Patricia Woertz, Indra Nooyi, Brenda C. Barnes, Carol Meyrowitz, Mary F. Sammons, Anne Mulcahy, Patricia F. Russo, Andrea Jung, Susan M. Ivey, Paula Rosput Reynolds, Margaret C. Whitman and Christina A. Gold. All women. All CEOs of Fortune 500 companies!

The opening case ‘Foreign Assignment’ in Chapter 10 (Diversity) throws light on a young, ambitious and professional woman, Sara Strong, who faces a career glitch purely because of her gender. For the sake of her “fast track” career, she takes the Mexico job but her willingness to perform in a place where women are expected only to look “cute” and “feminine” becomes her greatest obstacle and ends in a bad rating.

During my very short work experience, I have personally come across situations where the firm’s clients preferred a male representative. In some countries, many times there are some forms of socializing involved in certain careers which may not be considered appropriate for females as per the social norms. I think that a social system imposes such constraints to working women due to the inability of these societies to advance at a pace relative to that of the advancement of women in the same societies.

In the article ‘White Privilege and Male Privilege’ by Peggy McIntosh, she talks about the unearned advantage a male has over his female counterpart in the workplace which got me thinking about all these women CEOs who have achieved such prestigious positions and earned their way up to the top of the career ladder. Most of them faced challenges as big as any of their male counterparts (the male CEOs), who outnumber them in spite of the fact that America’s workforce comprises almost 50% women (in 2006). This may be due to the fact that mostly when there is a domestic need, women are the ones who have to sacrifice their careers- even one of these women CEOs, Brenda C. Barnes of Sara Lee, took a six-year leave to raise her kids. Also, Peggy McIntosh in the same article mentions about the same sort of unearned advantage of the whites over the colored people. And hence, I wonder how much talent and perseverance it takes for someone like Indra Nooyi, a woman of Indian-origin, to be where she is!

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0704/gallery.F500_womenCEOs.fortune/index.html
http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=8oIDLSOyGoF&b=401287
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenceo1.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104673.html