
I'm a woman CEO and it doesn't change anything - mathouc
http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/08/04/mathilde-collin-im-a-woman-ceo-and-it-doesnt-change-anything/
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leeoniya
IMO, to be a successful CEO, women have to give up as much personal life as
men do. if raising children is part of the equation, it just depends on how
much either sex is willing to give that up for a career. i believe i've read
that Elon's family is pretty hard-hit on the available-father standpoint
stemming from his ambitions.

also, depending on the size of the company, i think women CEOs need to take on
some atypically aggressive and assertive business characteristics that are
unbecoming of either sex but are typically more acceptable in society for men
to step into.

could a woman be the next Larry Ellison? certainly yes, but not without first
taking on his asshole qualities. the aggressive characteristics that make him
a great multi-$bn CEO also make him a pretty hated guy in many circles.
there's a difference between business-respect and personal-respect, some
people don't give a shit about the latter and will step on their partners'
throats to get ahead.

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bane
> i think women CEOs need to take on some atypically aggressive and assertive
> business characteristics that are unbecoming of either sex but are typically
> more acceptable in society for men to step into.

I agree. I'm going to come out and say it, it's difficult for a woman to step
into any kind of leadership position and do the tough things without being
perceived as a "bitch".

One thing I've observed in women who might be perceived as successful in those
roles is that they're able to find the right way of being in charge and
overcoming those perceptions. I think it's a subtle attitude or behavior
change, and it seems to be a fine line.

But I'll also say that for men, they risk being perceived as "an asshole" in
much the same way. And demonstrating assertiveness and leadership, being tough
when it's needed it also a similar skill. I just think that men have more
societal support and a few thousand years more practice and training to figure
it out.

Women have far fewer role models to pattern after.

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bryanlarsen
In many circles being an "asshole CEO" is seen as a good thing. c.f. Steve
Jobs.

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untog
But that's exactly the point. Men can be "asshole CEOs" and be respected. When
women are "asshole CEOs" they are considered to be "bitches".

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maxxxxx
Isn't "asshole" as negative as "bitch"? Woman or man, you probably won't be
loved by everybody.

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untog
Fine, throw out the word 'asshole' and replace it with 'unlikeable'. The point
is that men can be unlikable and still _command respect_. Women are much less
likely to be met with that reaction.

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seanflyon
> Women are much less likely to be met with that reaction.

This does not seem to be the case in my small sample of anecdotal experience.
Could you say a bit more on why you think it is the case in general?

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enraged_camel
>>Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you’re a
woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have
people listen to you...

The way my company's CEO, who is also female, put it: "when you're a woman,
people in business don't take you seriously _until_ you are successful."

I'm a guy, but I see this phenomenon everyday when observing the way my female
coworkers are treated by (male) managers. The good-looking ones have it worst,
in my opinion: while their looks may give them an advantage in certain
situations, they often have to work extra hard to get noticed, _and_ when they
do become successful, their success is attributed to their looks instead of
their intelligence and hard work.

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icelancer
You think Gabe Newell got a lot of credit for being a studly dude? He still
gets tons of crap for being overweight. This happens at far lower levels than
Gabe.

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judk
I think it is interesting that GabeN build a company that caters to a
demographic similar to himself, with a product that minimizes face to face
human interaction. It leans away from all the negative biases he would face in
business.

Also, Gabe is a founder. Most CEO types are MBA raiders who float from job to
job pillaging companies.

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microcolonel
“We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs instead of the
womanliness of successful CEOs.”

I cried male tears of joy, and when I showed this to my friend, she smiled as
well. I'd upvote more than once if I could.

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dominotw
>We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs

Why? I don't want to emphasize anything. Can these people leave us alone and
stop telling everyone what they should be doing. Who do they think they are, I
am so sick of this.

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microcolonel
If you crop the quote like that, you miss the point, which is that if you're
going to have a female-positive stance rather than an egalitarian one(I have
the latter), you should at least emphasize the success rather than the
womanliness.

This is so that you are talking about the potential for success regardless of
being a woman, rather than the womanliness despite being successful, the
latter construing it as though being a woman is incompatible with success.

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Mz
So her title says "it doesn't change a thing" and then in the body she admits
that there are some differences:

 _Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you’re a
woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have
people listen to you; it might be harder to recruit developers and make them
trust you; and you will end up going to a few sales meetings where the other
person is more interested in you than in your product.

There are also some pretty good advantages. It’s sometimes easier to get press
coverage, and sales can happen faster. People will usually be keener on
lending a hand. And I’m not even talking about all the help I got from fellow
female entrepreneurs, especially when I was trying to get things off the
ground._

I agree with her general sentiment that being a CEO is hard, regardless of
gender. I also agree with her agenda that women need more role models of what
it looks like to be a successful woman. But I don't think this kind of
dismissal of the issues women have is very helpful. Being a woman does change
some things. Understanding that "it has its good points and bad points" is a
much, much better message than saying "it isn't any different at all" which is
what the title says.

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lyndonh
She didn't emphasise it very strongly, in fact it was a very weak emphasis but
she was saying that everyone has a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
She might find it easier to get press attention as a woman but a guy could
easily have a strength that makes up for this.

> But I don't think this kind of dismissal of the issues women have is very
> helpful

I think she knows better than you, unless you are a female CEO.

She made the point that sometimes when a woman is doing sales the customer can
be more interested in her than the product. But historically, a lot of women
in sales have tried to use sexuality to get the sale.

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Mz
No, I am not a female CEO. I am female and have struggled a lot with the ways
in which being female throws up barriers to some of my goals.

The fact that it wasn't perceived by her as a big deal does not prove she
knows better than I do. Statistical outliers are not inherently more wise than
others about the problems that your "average" person has.

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lyndonh
> The fact that it wasn't perceived by her as a big deal does not prove she
> knows better than I do.

You've already said you don't agree with her on this point and yet again you
don't say why.

> Statistical outliers are not inherently more wise than others about the
> problems that your "average" person has.

I'm sure that formerly, she was not a CEO, she was an "average" person. So she
knows more about getting to CEO as a woman than you do. I'm not arguing that
she has had the same experiences as you but I think it's a given that she is
not implying that it is the same for all women.

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Mz
You weren't previously asking me _why_ I disagree with her.

If you are actually interested in a few of my thoughts on the subject, there
are relevant posts on my personal blog that can be read. You could look for
the tag "The Gray Zone" to get you started.

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lyndonh
> You weren't previously asking me why I disagree with her.

I think the onus was on you, the person posting a comment that you disagree
with the author of the article, to make your argument/point.

You can't join a discussion with "I disagree" and not say why.

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muglug
Sort of cleverly, she just used her gender as a means to tout her app in a
national newspaper, while mentioning that being female makes it easier to get
press.

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danieltillett
Yes like any smart person she will use all the tools at her command.

I wish we would speak more about the role of chance in success rather than how
many X chromosomes a person has.

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Mz
Chance is far more interesting when the discussion is about things like "how
to increase your luck surface area." Otherwise, it is kind of hand-wavy
dismissal of success as "welp, they got lucky."

~~~
danieltillett
Yes I agree - we need to discuss those things that allow you to influence your
probability of success. We don’t seem to discuss this as frequently as we
discuss gender.

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Mz
Well, I think for some folks, gender is one of the things influencing
probability of success. When I write about it, I try to write about how one
might get around the problems it creates. There is a low-ish level of interest
in that around here.

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cyphunk
We have the questions in the debate concerning demographic bias in business or
power completely wrong. These articles should disturb us because they aren't
about examining what demographic bias means but a rather they produce fluff
pieces meant to distract from the issue by saying "see look, a woman can run a
country/company and it's no different." The debate is framed in the context of
the glass ceiling, if it exists and if there are barriers to entry. What the
debate should be about is the glass floor and the group think that is the
result of in homogenic environments.

We have way too many articles by women describe how the ceiling works or is
broken and way too few from men that look at the problem of the glass floor
along the lines of "i'm a man working in a mostly male power structure and
here's how this structure creates adverse results." We are so used to
accepting the latter we can hardly imagine its effect. Until the entire power
structure of a institution mirrors that of the social demographic makeup there
is really no reason to take these articles seriously.

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marcamillion
Bravo. Love this.

This statement may come off polarizing, but the same applies to minorities.

As a black man, and a Jamaican, other black people and other Jamaicans don't
need "black CEOs" to look up to. They just need other CEOs who happen to be
black, and other successful entrepreneurs that also happen to be Jamaican.

It is for this reason that I don't support things like quotas. Make sure that
X% of your executive ranks are female, or black or asian or any other "under-
represented" minority. Quotas are bad policy.

The more people of minority origins that become successful is the more they
will inspire others to do the same.

There is a reason so many young black men want to become basketball stars, and
why so many Jamaicans are "running" (no pun intended) into athletics. It is
because they have realized that they can excel in those fields because of the
examples before them. Not that they are anyhow more advantaged in those
fields. It is just that the glass ceiling is no longer there.

So Kudos to Ms. Collin for writing this article. Well said!

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aviswanathan
We need more female entrepreneurs with attitudes like this. Although awareness
for equality issues is undoubtedly important, Collin hits the nail on the head
by re-focusing on the undeniable truth: running a company is just plain hard.
Sure, being female, minority, short, nontechnical, etc can all be drawbacks,
but I'd argue that they all pale in comparison to the difficulty that is
successfully running a sustainable company. Full disclosure: I am relatively
young (20) male hacker of minority descent, and I used to use some of these
factors as excuses but now I treat them as irrelevant. Those things simply
don't matter to me (in context of running a company or building a product)
because it's not really in my power (and not really my overarching mission) to
change the culture of the valley and the rest of the tech world. Just my
$0.02.

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jawns
I know this doesn't really touch on the meat of her column, but I was kind of
surprised that Mathilde uses "woman CEO" and "female CEO" interchangeably.
Usually people have a strong preference for one or the other. (Personally, I
prefer using adjectives as adjectives and nouns as nouns, and don't think
there's much of a need to turn "woman" into an adjective.)

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jonnathanson
Technically and linguistically speaking, "female" is an adjective, and "woman"
is a noun. You'd talk about a woman who _is_ a CEO, or a _female_ CEO. Some
professions and niches, often in the sciences, use female and male as nouns:
i.e., "the female of the species," or "the subject is a Caucasian male, 47."
This latter usage is becoming increasingly common, to the point where the
exclusively adjectival nature of "male" and "female" is being erased. Meanings
and usage are pretty fluid over time.

Of course, words like woman, man, female, and male also have connotations
above and beyond their technical parts of speech, such as the connotations
Mathilde talks about.

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philwelch
Traditionally, as in decades ago, it was actually considered somewhat vulgar
to use terms like "male" and "female" to refer to human beings. The term
"woman CEO" would have been preferred for that reason. Somehow I like the
aesthetic of "woman CEO" over "female CEO" for the same reason. It seems more
dignified and humanistic.

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sliverstorm
Right; "female" and "male" bring to mind animals and base biology. "Woman" and
"Man" distinctly separate us from the animal kingdom.

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cyorir
Hence why I tend to use "female" and "male." Mankind is not separate from the
animal kingdom. Although I suppose male human and female human are the least
ambiguous.

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Thrymr
> I suppose male human and female human are the least ambiguous.

And make you sound like an alien anthropologist, rather than, well, a human.

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philwelch
"A human"? "Human" is an adjective. The term is "human being".

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jrubinovitz
Isn't Front YCS14? I would love the author to revisit this another year into
the company.

