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DescriptionSurprising secrets of success from some of America's women leaders; all the things a mentor would tell you are revealed in this mentor-in-a-book. Sheila Wellington, the president of Catalyst, draws on Catalyst research, contacts, and know-how to tell you how to understand the unspoken rules in the real world of work today and how to get ahead. If you like this title, you might also like…
ExcerptsChapter 1... Wise Up
JUST THE FACTS: 12.5% of corporate officers are women. 4.1% of top earners are women. 6.2% of top managers are women (chairman, vice chairman, CEO, president, chief operating officer, senior executive vice president, executive vice president); 154 women versus 2,488 men. 7.3% of "line"-revenue-generating-positions are held by women. York: Catalyst, 2000). I'd like to be able to tell you that the glass ceiling has cracked and fallen in shards on the floors of executive suites everywhere. Like you, I've noted in the national media something of a "been there, done that" attitude about women's advancement in business, government, the professions, and academia. Every time one woman makes it, whenever there's any good news on the gender front, there are those who rush to believe the problem's solved. A 1999 lead editorial in The New York Times noted, "There is still institutional resistance to women at some companies. Until recently, few companies have had women in senior posts who could serve as role models and mentors for younger women."1 If you look even closer at Fortune 500 companies, you find that women hold slightly more than 6 percent of the most senior executive positions (chair, vice chair, CEO, president, COO, SEVP, EVP) and occupy slightly over 11 percent of Fortune 500 corporate board seats; 1.9 percent of board directors and 1.4 percent of corporate officers are women of color. Check the masthead on the stationery at most law firms, management consulting firms, or securities firms, and you'll note few women partners. A small number of women have reached positions of real authority in their organizations. These pioneers serve as role models, as heroes for striving executive women. I'm encouraged by the giant strides some women have made, but primogeniture prevails in business. Mostly, men in the top jobs continue to choose other men to succeed them. The invisible biases that keep women out of the top jobs-first dubbed the "glass ceiling" by The Wall Street Journal in 1987-are present in all areas of the work world. Yes, increasingly, there are panes that show a crack where women have slipped through. But in all too many organizations, the broken glass is replaced pronto. We need more deferred maintenance in the glass ceiling department. Women in our groundbreaking survey Women in Corporate Leadership reached senior management positions in several areas-human resources, public relations, finance, information management-yet the majority told Catalyst they often felt like outsiders, subject to stereotypes and excluded from the informal networks that operate in corporations. As they were coming up in the corporation, they couldn't do business over lunch or dinner at the clubs that remained male bastions throughout the sixties and seventies. Nor could they swing a club at 8 a.m. on the golf links with the COO, who might pass along a golf buddy's name to the CEO as candidate for managing an overseas operation (women weren't allowed to tee off until after noon at most country clubs where senior executives played golf). Things are getting better, but if we aren't at TGIF with the guys, we miss both the grape and the grapevine about the exciting opening in marketing. And we sure miss what's going down in the men's room. Worse, sometimes we don't know what we're missing or even that we are missing anything at all. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WORKPLACE As your mentor, I want to give the... About the Author
Sheila Wellington has been president of Catalyst since 1993. Prior to joining Catalyst, she was the first woman Secretary of Yale University. Catalyst, a nonprofit research and advisory organization, works to advance women in business. Called groundbreaking, by The Wall Street Journal, Catalyst is the leading source of information on women in business, and for the past four decades has had the knowledge and tools to help women and companies maximize their potential.
Betty Spence, Ph.D., is a freelance writer and journalist and former vice president of communications at Catalyst. Digital Rights Information
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