Are Women Set Up to Fail?
I’m sure many of us read with interest the announcement of Carol Bartz as the new CEO of Yahoo! Carol lead a very successful growth and change effort at Autodesk and has now been brought into Yahoo! at a time when there is much needed strategic and leadership re-direction. Her track record certainly points to Carol being the right person for the job on both counts.
On the same day this news came out, there was a great article forwarded to me by Board of Advisor member Karen Appleton, VP of Bus Dev at box.net. The article, The Glass Cliff: Are Women Leaders Often Set Up to Fail? by Sylvia Ann Hewlett of Off-Ramps and On-Ramps
Related to women on boards, she references a recent work that disputes that when women are added to boards the financial performance of the company declines. Rather it appears that women are added to the boards when the share price is tumbling as a means of showing that something is being done. The women being last in are first to be blamed.
In the article, she references several studies including The Athena Factor
I’ve spoken with several women members of FWE&E who have specifically said they have seen this phenomenon of women not taking senior roles in organizations where they have seen the women before them fail. The general consensus was that for some reason the bar was higher for the women put in these positions and there was little mentorship and no room for error.
This is not to say, especially in these precarious economic times, that men don’t face the same hurdles. It just seems that when women are placed in these positions and fail, the cultural stereotypes come out about how women aren’t as effective leaders as men.
Have you had or seen similar situations? How do you feel about Carol’s chances of success at Yahoo?
January 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Completely fascinating subject, and no doubt we’ve come along way. Personally, I look forward to the day when men and women are valued on their talents and not their sex!
February 4th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I believe that this situation applies to all minorities not just woman. I have observed that individuals from a minority are always scrutinized much more thoroughly than non-minority individuals. This will be the case until woman and other minority individuals become the norm in executive leadership roles rather than the anomoly.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think many people are placed in various important positions to fail. Not only are they sometimes placed in that position by someone with a great power, but they don’t know how they were placed there. I don’t think it’s fair to say women are put in positions to fail because younger women in Canada get better positions based on looks only. Race and sex should never have anything to do with who gets the position.
The Tragically Hip-The Rules(It’s The Rules).
Problems arise when people only appear to fulfil there responsibilities.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Some people appear to be doing a good job, and are very responsive.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
In my personal experience, from back in the 1980’s, myself and several young ambitious women noted that our employer, a major silicon valley semiconductor company had one token in senior management, but she was in a staff position, not a line position. We noted that there was not a single line manager, above first level supervisor, who was female. I pointed this out to one of my male colleagues, who thought I was overly sensitive… and later gloated that I was dead wrong, as a woman was promoted to a line management position of a division of the company… only to be very chagrined when that entire division was axed within a month of her “promotion”.
The obivousness of the maneuver to place a woman in charge of a group that was already slated to be shut down and its employees layed-off, to save the man who had been moved out to make room for her, was enough to let me know that I would never have a future in that firm.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I thought I wasnt going to like this blog but more I read the more I liked it.