Glass ceiling
Executive positions, salaries often out of reach in business
An article writen by former State Department official AnneMarie Slaughter turns spotlight on challenges facing female executives.
NEW YORK — Rosalie Wolf, an investment adviser, asked the maleonly partners of a Los Angeles money management firm, all in their early 40s or younger, why they didn’t have any female colleagues.
“They said maybe they’d look for a woman intern,” said Wolf, managing partner of Botanica Capital Partners, which advises clients including institutional investors and foundations.
Twenty-seven years after Wolf and other women first complained in 1986 about bumping against an invisible barrier — dubbed the glass ceiling — when they aimed for top jobs, just 21 are chief executive officers of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Now, a rash of books, from Facebook chief operating off icer Sheryl Sandberg to former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter, are soon to be published, seeking to empower women.
Wolf, the one-time treasurer at International Paper Co., quit in 1986, figuring she’d almost hit the ceiling, and subsequently worked at Bankers Trust in private equity and then at the Rockefeller Foundation as chief investment officer.
“Women are fed up,” said Julie Daum, who heads executive recruiter Spencer Stuart’s search practice for corporate directors in North America. “They’ve worked hard and played by the rules for years, and that hasn’t gotten them anywhere near parity in leadership positions.”
Work and parenting have both become more demanding in recent decades, increasing pressure on women who still do the bulk of child care, female executives say.
Increasing numbers of women and men in managerial and professional jobs, including 32 percent of single mothers in this group, work 50 hours a week or more, according to the Center for American Progress.
Everyone’s putting in more time at the office and then in the evenings and weekends, they’re expected to answer emails, which interrupts family time, said Stephanie Coontz, who teaches family history at Ever- green State College in Olympia, Wash., and has written about men and women’s changing roles. At the same time, working mothers now put in more parenting hours than stay-at-home mothers did as late as 1965, “doing all sorts of enrichment activities,” she said.
Men who grew up in recent decades playing sports with girls or were outperformed by them in school still don’t necessarily want to share power with women, said Adam Quinton, a former managing director at Bank of America Corp. and now an early-stage investor in startups.
“Never underestimate the power of ingrained traditions and networks,” said Quinton, adding he has observed women failing to get the promotions or recognition they deserve because they’re perceived as outsiders. “If men are on the inside and it’s men they’ve always seen being successful, that’s who they think they need alongside them.”
Lucie Salhany, t he former chairman of Fox Broadcasting Co. and a former director at Compaq Computer Corp. and subsequently HewlettPackard Co., has often been the sole woman in the room at business meetings. She said she thinks the main reason so few women have ascended to the C-suite and boardrooms is because a lot of men prefer other men they know or admire — no matter how many times they hear that diversity leads to better decisionmaking or that women could help them reach female customers.
Early in her tenure as a director, Salhany was urged by another director to stop talking about the need for more women on the board and in executive ranks, she said.
Later at HewlettPackard, when she was a member of the board’s nominating committee, an outside recruiter gave the committee a binder divided into three sections — one listing CEOs who were potential director candidates, one of chief financial officers and one of women. Salhany said she questioned the segregation of women, including those who were CEOs.
No wonder top women see a market advising female colleagues how to succeed. Women comprise just 15 percent of senior executives at companies in the S&P 500 index and only 16 percent of corporate directors. They fill 51.4 percent of managerial and professional positions, yet still earn 23 percent less than men on average, according to U.S. Census data.