Business Exposed86
Women on top
Let me end this chapter with another speculative thought, one
based on my own personal observations, about female CEOs.
In general, CEOs seem just like normal people. Some of them are
nice, some of them unpleasant; some of them are modest, others
are nauseatingly self-obsessed; some of them are bright, others
more mentally challenged; some of them are helpful, others are
cynically egotistic (and I could give you examples of each of
these). Most of them are quite rich though . . . And most of them
are men.
Yet, over the years, I have also interviewed quite a few female
CEOs: Barbara Cassani when she, way back when, was the CEO
of Go Airlines (later acquired by easyJet), Sly Bailey, when she
was still CEO of IPC Media (she is now the CEO of the newspaper
group Trinity Mirror), Gail Rebuck, CEO of the book publisher
Random House (who conrmed the famous rumor that she
signed a big contract when she was in hospital giving birth)
and, recently, Stevie Spring, CEO of magazine publisher Future,
and Ruby McGregor-Smith, CEO of the large property services
company MITIE. And they are all so nice!
I mean, really. Not nice as in bringing me cookies and pinching
my cheek, but nice as in helpful, realistic, sympathetic, and
down-to-earth. And bright. I have never met a dumb female CEO.
And I wonder why that is. I mean, it’s just not normal.
My guess is the following: ascending to the position of CEO is
a bit of a Darwinian process; many people start at the bottom
of the corporate ladder, but very few reach the highest step.
Climbing the ladder, as a woman, you still need something extra
– especially when heading a public company, having to deal
with the City (London’s nancial district) – at every step. And I
guess that something extra is brains and tact (a fairly rare combi-
nation, also among professors by the way). Without brains or
tact (or both), men can apparently still navigate and survive the
corporate jungle. But women without brains or tact are “selected
874
n
Gods and villains
out” quite quickly. Therefore, when you see a woman step up,
she is bound to be good!
Don’t get me wrong, I have also met male CEOs who are “nice”,
as in helpful, realistic, sympathetic, and down-to-earth. And
pretty much all female CEOs whom I interviewed displayed the
attitude, “Stop whining about it being so difcult for women;
just get on with it”, but they also conrmed that they felt they
needed something extra at every step of the way. I am not
advocating that we should make it easier for women to reach
the top and become CEOs, because that would mean that we’d
get more CEOs who are unpleasant, nauseatingly self-obsessed,
mentally challenged, and cynically egotistic. It is just that,
perhaps, in corporate life, we should treat men more like we treat
women. Wouldn’t that be “nice”?
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