With yesterday’s ouster of Sallie Krawcheck from Citi, the prostration of Wall Street’s triad of powerful women was a mission completed. The announcement, amid a week of devastating shake-ups in the financial sector, hit a particular nerve: Krawcheck had asked that clients be paid back for Citi’s defective investments – an ethical response to the market’s downward spiral that was appreciated less by higher-ups than it was by clients. Though the details of Krawcheck’s departure are up for speculation, her story echoes the growing cultural narrative concerning our trust of women as leaders versus the support we give them – via the voting booth and board rooms – to lead us from the helm.
According to a Pew study released this August, Americans believe that women far surpass their male counterparts in the quality of their character as leaders. When it comes to honesty, intelligence, compassion, and creativity, Americans contend that women have “the right stuff.” Yet the study also reveals a disjuncture between the public’s trust of women as leaders, and their overall feeling of who makes a better leader. A mere six percent said women made better leaders, while one-fifth of respondents cited men as better leaders overall. As the study says, “Women emerge from this survey a bit like a sports team that racks up better statistics but still loses the game.”
A report to be released this fall by The White House Project’s Corporate Council resonates this finding. Across ten sectors – from business and politics to journalism and film – the report illustrates the persistent disparity between Americans’ high level of trust for women as leaders, and the dismal percentage of women who have been supported in those arenas in their leadership.
Yet the characteristics that Americans attribute to women leaders are the very traits that many would say is sorely lacking – from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. With a proposed $700 billion rescue plan that would make already-suffering American taxpayers foot the bill for corporate capriciousness, it’s near impossible to look at what has happened in the financial sector and not ask whether we would be having such devastation if more women were at the economic steering wheel.
Perhaps none had put it better than Sara Vines, in her humorous take for the The Times of London this week: “No sensible woman I know would have encouraged the selling of 120 percent mortgages to people who could barely afford their grocery bills. Such a think would be laughable, a bit like carrying of XXL condoms around in your pocket.”
Krawcheck, and the rest of her female cohort on Wall Street, seem to be paying the price for what Vines says that women innately do – “stop for a tiny moment to consider the human cost of all this.” In a country where nearly half of retirees expect to outlive their savings, where homeless shelters are brimming with families recently put out by foreclosures, and parents can’t afford to send their children to college – let alone insure their health – the human cost is exactly what we need to be considering.
The difference between public trust in women as leaders versus the ample support of women to take on that leadership is faulty policy, any way you dice it. It’s bad for our bottom line: as investors, business owners, customers, and as taxpayers.
In terms of the current economic meltdown, we would have been wise to take a hint from Sally Helgesen’s book The Female Advantage. Though both genders are oriented toward the big picture, women “relate decisions to their larger effect upon the role of the family, the American education system, the environment, even world peace.” In other words, women would have done the big-picture forecasting that might have saved Wall Street, and the rest of us, from this deepening downward spiral.
I am not an essentialist. I do not think that women, by nature, are endowed with traits that make them more compassionate, more honest, or more apt to think outside of the box. What I do know is that these traits have been largely gleaned by women through their life experiences, leading from the foot of the table. And it is exactly these foot-of-the-table characteristics that we need right now, and have for some time.
The same stale, insular, old-boys-club way of thinking is what got the rest of us into this mess. What we need now are fresh ideas and new perspectives, guided by ethical imperatives and a broader view of what prosperity, responsibility, and accountability really mean for our finances and our politics. Trusting in our nation’s women – and supporting them in their leadership – is the one solution we have yet to try.
Marie, I saw your great post over on Huffington. The title caught my eye for obvious reasons.
While you’re raising issues from the top of the corporate pyramid, I believe that the drive from the bottom of the pyramid is having a faster affect via leveraging capitalism.
I’m 56 years old and only now, decades after I had a college degree, are women starting to take the management jobs. Conversely, only three years ago, the marketing-to-women-consumers light went on and today you can’t swing a purse without hitting a consumer marketing program in play.
Let’s connect the dots and follow the money.
Consumer goods and services make up 2/3rds of the GDP. Over 80% of those goods and services are determined by the consumer in charge, which would be women. Corporations are falling all over themselves to relate to this decision making gender, better. In a it-takes-one-to-know-one way, they are hiring women to help them relate to women consumers better. Often times they are outside women consultants or women in ad agencies. In that case, who cares who is in the top management seats, they are deferring to the women’s voice telling them what to do.
Best Buy found out that the more women sales people they had on the floor, the higher sales they received. It was a direct link – more women/more sales. The training wasn’t any different for women or men, the only difference was the base gender. When people argue that gender doesn’t play a role, show them Best Buy’s bottom line. Consequently, Best Buy is doing it’s best to bring more women into the business and nuture them along to management positions. That’s what the WoLF program is all about.
Let’s take it a step further – if women consumers are driving corporations to change their ways, i.e. softer, inclusive, respectful manners means more money in the register, at some point (such as this year) that’s also registering with Washington.
Money makes the world go around. These last few years have been about women consumers, the next few years will be about sustainable business policies. Both have women in the bottom line driver’s seat. You many not believe that women are endowed with more compassion or honesty, but in this scenario in a woman’s heart we better trust.
Yes, my sister works for Best Buy and she made managment position fairly quickly.
As a male I certainly prefer female bosses at work, I find them much easier to talk to and I prefer going to them whenever I have problems I need to deal with.
Hopefully things will change soon and we’ll see an increase in support by women and men for more female leadership.