The Female CEO ca. 2002

Memo
To: All You Businessmen
From: Margaret Heffernan
Re: Can't We Just Work Together?
CC: All Us Businesswomen

Hey, guys! What's the deal with you? You know how important women are -- to your businesses as coworkers and as customers and to your lives as, well, fellow human beings -- and yet you still can't figure out a reasonable way to work and live with the more than 50% of the world that happens to be us. Well, I think I can help -- just by telling you five naked truths about why women still get screwed in the world of business.

But first, I want to tell you a story -- and it happens to be a true one.

I was riding on the elevator at work when the doors opened and a young woman got on. After a few seconds of the usual silence, she looked at me and said, "Excuse me. Are you Margaret?"

"Yes," I answered, not knowing what to expect next.

"I just wanted to meet you and shake your hand," she said. "I've never seen a female CEO before."

It's a true story, and it doesn't date from the Middle Ages -- or even from last millennium. It happened in Boston in the year 2000 in the offices of CMGI. And what made it remarkable was that it wasn't unusual: Most men and women in business have never seen a female CEO -- much less worked with one.

And it looked like we were doing so well! (Or at least that's what we told one another.) More women than ever before hold senior executive positions and sit on corporate boards. Legislation protects pay, maternity leave, and employment rights. The top financial-services firms are busy developing new products and services for a generation of professional women who manage substantial portfolios, who use their tremendous buying power with sharp business acumen, and who will outlive their husbands by a good number of years.

Every one out of four women earns more than her husband. Women control about 80% of household spending and, using their own resources, make up 47% of investors. Women buy 81% of all products and services, buy 75% of all over-the-counter medications, make 81% of retail purchases, and buy 82% of groceries. Women account for 80% of household spending. Eighty percent of the checks written in the United States are signed by women. Forty percent of all business travelers are women. They are responsible for 51% of all travel and consumer-electronics purchases. Women influence 85% of all automobile purchases. They also head 40% of all U.S. households with incomes over $600,000 and own roughly 66% of all home-based businesses. Women have been the majority of voters in this country since 1964.

Small wonder, then, that car companies and electronics companies are honing their products' designs with women in mind. It makes sense for Fortune magazine to convene an annual conference of powerful women and then to feature Oprah on its cover. Then there's Meg and Carly, Pat and Anne -- exhibits A through D to make the case that it's only a matter of time before women reach a state of total equality. And you don't hear women whining anymore, do you?

Well, it all depends on who you talk to. I've spent the past year talking to women, hearing funny, sad, outrageous stories. Those women aren't whining. They're not even complaining. But they do tell a different story than the one that we'd all like to believe.

For example: The wage gap between male and female managers actually widened in the prosperous years between 1995 and 2000. In the communications industry, for instance, a woman earns 73 cents for every $1 a man takes home. Five years earlier, she made 86 cents. The widest pay gap, of course, is between parents. Fathers simply make a lot more than mothers do. Only 4% of the top earners at Fortune 500 companies are women. Women fill only 7.3% of the total line positions held by corporate officers. Where women do hold executive positions, they are more often in management jobs that have relatively lower status -- and hence less power. In the past 10 years, the percentage of business-school applicants who are women has not risen at all. It has remained stuck at around 38%. Meanwhile, women are leaving corporate America in droves. And by the way: Between 1992 and 2000, the number of sexual-harassment claims increased by 50%.

What's going on?

During the past 10 years, I have run five businesses, including old-economy and new-economy businesses in both the United States and the United Kingdom. I've hired, fired, and managed hundreds of women (and men) in every discipline and at every level. During the past year, I've interviewed many more women about their careers and their lives -- and about the connections or gulfs between the two. What I've learned is just how wrong the conventional wisdom is. Here's the naked truth about women in business today.

1. Toxic bosses still create unfriendly work environments.