The Library

Hot Topics: Women Executives and Career Tracks

Selected articles

Due to contractual arrangements, access to some articles may be restricted to the Stanford community, and subscribers of the "Library Databases" offered through the GSB Alumni's Lifelong Learning Program. Inclusion below does not imply University endorsement of the ideas expressed.

The Image Officer With a Lot to Fix. New York Times, 1/14/12
Anne M. Finucane is Bank of America's global strategy and marketing officer, but the title only hints at her influence within the bank, on Wall Street and beyond.
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Women break through glass ceiling, strive for top spot. Tri-County Business Journal 12/2011-1/2012
A recent survey conducted by CareerCurve Workforce Solutions has revealed that while there may still be a "glass ceiling" for women in the workplace, it is not the barrier it used to be.
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Where Are the Women Executives in Silicon Valley? New York Times, 12/9/11
Though it won’t be news to anyone who has worked in Silicon Valley, a new study confirms that tech companies are woefully behind in including women among their board members and highest-paid executives — not to mention the engineering ranks.
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I.B.M. Names Virginia Rometty as New Chief Executive. New York Times, 10/25/11
The selection of Ms. Rometty for the top job at I.B.M. will make her one of the most prominent women executives in corporate America, joining a small group of chiefs that includes Ursula Burns of Xerox, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ellen J. Kullman of DuPont and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard.
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What Drives Mary Barra. Stanford Magazine, Sept/Oct 2011
The world's highest-ranking woman carmaker wants to build vehicles that skimp on fuel—while they surge with style.
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A Woman’s Place. The New Yorker, 7/11/11
Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?
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Female executives in Fortune 500 firms. Emerald, 5/11
Although women remain substantially under-represented in the top echelons of large corporations, a non-trivial presence of female executives has emerged in recent years. Here, we focus on the firm characteristics that predict the sex of the executive office holder, classifying the plausible firm characteristics that could explain the presence of female executives into four explanations: sector, size, stability, and scandal.
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Where are all the senior-level women? WSJ, 4/12/11
What is holding women back in the workplace? And how can those restraints be broken? Vikram Malhotra, chairman of the Americas at McKinsey & Co., told the Women in the Economy conference what insights into those questions his company discovered in its latest research.
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From Soup to Negligee: Success According to Victoria's Secret's Lori Greeley and Campbell Soup's Denise Morrison. Knowledge@Wharton, 3/2/11
This is a tale of two women in business, and how each found her way to the top. One became the head of a national lingerie chain by following her passion. The other wrote a recipe for success, and served it with soup.
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Women: it’s not diversity, it’s the future. Forbes, 3/2/11
The White House released a report entitled Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being, a statistical portrait showing how women are faring in the United States today and how their lives have changed over time.
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Merkel slams dearth of female executives. The Local, 2/8/11
Chancellor Angela Merkel called the dearth of women executives at German companies a “scandal” on Tuesday, as she oversaw the signing of a charter aimed at improving “family-friendly” working conditions.
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The Sponsor Effect: Why Qualified Women Don't Make it to The Corner Office. Vault, 1/25/11
Every job must begin with a sponsor because having an active advocate completely changes your career," said Kerrie Peraino, Vice President for Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer with American Express.
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Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg: Why Few Women at Top. WSJ, 1/4/11
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on why we have too few women leaders.
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M.B.A.’s Have Biggest ‘Mommy Penalty,’ Doctors the Smallest. New York Times, 12/6/10
Among highly educated women who take time off from their careers to raise their children, women with M.B.A.’s suffer the largest percentage “mommy penalty,” while those with medical degrees suffer the lowest proportionate loss, with female Ph.D.’s and lawyers falling somewhere in between.
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The Immeasurable Value of Retaining Women in the Workplace. Forbes, 12/2/10
According to Off-Ramps and On-Ramps, a Harvard Business Review article by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, large numbers of highly qualified women are dropping out of mainstream careers. According to Hewlett and Luce, a survey of the class of 1981 at Stanford University shows that 57% of women graduates leave the workforce.
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Ranks of Women on Wall Street Thin. WSJ, 9/20/10
In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, or 2.6% of female workers in finance, left the industry. The ranks of men grew by 389,000 in that period, or 9.6%, according to a review of data.
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Women and the Uneasy Embrace of Power. Harvard Business Review, 8/4/10
Stanford Graduate School of Business professor JeffreyPfeffer argues that to rise to leadership positions in more equal numbers to men, women must make more trade-offs and must, as he puts it, "get tougher."
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Successful women are a study in flexibility. The Age, 7/11/10
A 20-year study by the University of Melbourne suggests that while many Gen X women had ambitions for full-time careers after uni, most are now working part-time or not at all.
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Kid from the hood now heads Presidio Trust. San Francisco Chronicle, 4/18/10
Fifty years of volunteer service to nonprofits has elevated the 5-foot-2 Bechtle into a position to please no one. She has been elected chairwoman of the board.
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Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley. New York Times, 4/16/10
When Candace Fleming was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”
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Voice of Experience: Michelle McCarthy. The Glasshammer, 3/8/10
Profile of Michelle McCarthy, Chief Risk Officer of Russell Investments. While she attributes much of her success to luck, it’s clear that her moxie is really what’s allowed her rise to the top of her profession.
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Women in Management: Delusions of Progress. Harvard Business Review, 3/1/10
New research by our firm, Catalyst, shows that among graduates of elite MBA programs around the world, women continue to lag men at every single career stage, right from their first professional jobs.
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Where Are the Women on Wall Street? New York Times, 1/27/10
Ms. Krawcheck had been forced out as head of a comparable unit at Citigroup in August 2008, a highly publicized departure. Hers has been the only comeback among the three highest-ranking Wall Street women removed during the financial crisis.
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New 'Right-hand Men': The Growing Role of Women in Indian Family Business. India Knowledge@Wharton, 11/5/09
Women have always been powerful forces in Indian politics. Indira Gandhi was probably the most dominating prime minister the country has ever had.
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Sony’s Version of Tracy and Hepburn. New York Times, 10/24/09
Michael M. Lynton and Amy Pascal are co-chiefs of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a pair who are putting on a leadership display that is rare in any industry, outside of family-run businesses: a man and woman, equal partners, at the helm, and operating in sync.
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Cultural challenges and the woman CEO: An interview with Nigeria’s Cecilia Ibru. McKinsey Quarterly, 8/2009
The CEO of Oceanic Bank discusses the challenge of navigating gender norms as a woman leader.
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Terminated: Why the Women of Wall Street Are Disappearing. Forbes, 3/16/09
After the scandals of the 1990s, didn't investment banks put sexist employment practices behind them? Evidently not.
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Women and the Vision Thing. Harvard Business Review, January 2009
Are women rated lower than men in evaluations of their leadership capabilities because of lingering gender bias? No, according to an analysis of thousands of 360-degree assessments collected by Insead's executive education program.
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Centered leadership: how talented women thrive. McKinsey Quarterly, 2008
This article discusses a long term research project in the development of executive ability and leadership skills among women in business.
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Women Executives on Work/Life Balance: Flexibility, Networks, Outside Interests. Knowlwdge@Wharton, 11/12/08
The oft-used term "work/life balance" can mean different things to different people -- and different things to the same person at various points in her career, according to a panel of Wall Street executives at the recent Wharton Women in Business Conference.
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With Smartphones, Cher Wang Made Her Own Fortune. New York Times, 10/26/08
Ms. Wang is one of the most powerful female executives in technology whom you have never heard of.
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Women in Leadership: The 20% Rule. BusinessWeek, 10/8/08
Look around your workplace, and calculate the percentage of women. Now look at top management. How many of those corner offices are occupied by women?
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Will 50 Percent of Indian CEOs be Women by 2020? Siliconindia, 8/08
Information on the Connected Women Leadership Forum launched by the Cisco Women Action Network (WAN) that was held on July 17, 2008 in India is presented.
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Career women are their own worst enemies: study. Reuters, 8/20/08
Women are their own workplace enemies when it comes to cracking the glass ceiling, with an international study finding they are less likely to promote themselves and network than their male counterparts.
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Would You Hire Your Husband? New York Times, 6/29/08
Laura Udall founded her own company in 2003 and hired an industrial design firm. But after growing frustrated with a lack of progress, she turned to her husband, Nick.
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Jobs for the girls. Economist, 5/3/08
Only 4 percent of the board members of Spain's corporations are women, one of the lowest representations in Europe.
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All girls together: women in business networks. Personnel Today, 3/3/08
In the ongoing struggle to reach the top in the male-centric workplace, women's networks are helping them break new ground.
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Why women in business became the solution, not the problem. The Guardian, 2/5/08
When companies look at attracting more women to top positions, the focus is often on how women should change and emulate their male bosses.
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Comeback moms. Working Mother, 1/8/08
As companies offer lavish leave options, would-be opt-out moms are being lured back to work. With up to five years of time off, is it any wonder these employers are winning our loyalty?
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Five years: The 25 most powerful women in banking. USBanker, October 2007
In its fifth-annual ranking of "The 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking," this publication pays tribute to the professional achievements and personal tenacity of top-performing industry executives.
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How an M.B.A. Mom Can Return to Work Force. Wall Street Journal, 9/11/07
Networking contacts are likely the key to finding the best opportunities, especially if you want to switch to a new field, says Helene Cruz, assistant director for M.B.A. programs and services at Pace University in New York.
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Full-Time Work Losing Luster for Moms. Associated Press, 7/16/07
In a survey Pew Research Center released last week, reported that 60 percent of working mothers now say part-time work is their ideal rather than full-time, compared to 48 percent a decade ago.
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Work-life balance. FT.com, 5/22/07
Despite the fact that more than half of professional school graduates are female, women still represent only 8 per cent of top earners at Fortune 500 companies. According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the reason is that the career-track structure does not give women a chance.
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The Pause that Refreshes. U.S. News & World Report, 5/20/07
Please don't call Mary Minnick a chief marketing officer. She was often called that at Coca-Cola but is not a fan of the title, which she says shortchanged her final contributions to the soft-drink giant.
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This Time It's Mine. BusinessWeek Online, Winter 2007
Why high-powered women are leaving Corporate America to become entrepreneurs.
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The Chosen Few. CFO.com, Mar. 8, 2007
Although women have been pouring into finance for decades, only a small number ever make it to the top.
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Women Executives Say Gender is Still Biggest Hurdle to Career Advancement, Accenture Research Shows. WSJ Online, Mar. 8, 2007
Women say their gender still plays a key role in limiting their achievement in the workplace, according to a research report released today by Accenture (NYSE: ACN).
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Off-Ramp--or Dead End? Harvard Business Review, Feb. 2007
The article presents a fictional case dealing with common managerial dilemmas. Cheryl Jamis is a senior manager attempting to juggle the responsibilities of her job and the responsibilities of motherhood.
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Cultivating Female Leaders. HRMagazine, Feb. 2007
The article discusses the effort of Safeway, a Fortune 50 corporation, to address diversity in the workplace and promote high-potential women.
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Page updated by: Nora Richardson

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