How to Read this Blog

To read and underatnd this blog you must start at the top and work your way down. Start with Case in Point: Oprah, then Famous Women Executives, the Glass Ceiling, Women and Men as Executives, Pink and Blue Leadership Styles, and finally the annotated bibliography. For some reason it wouldn't let me format the annotated bibliography properly, but there is a copy of the bibliogrpahy formatted the right way in my folder.

Case in Point: Oprah

At first before diving into and looking at women and corporations I think it would be helpful to look at some successful women executives and CEO’s. CEO stands  for “chief executive officer” and this person is the highest ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization (wikipedia.org). The main CEO’s or women executives that come to mind are usually Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. These women are usually that first one’s that come to mind because they are always in the public spotlight and in the latest entertainment news. For the last 25 years Oprah Winfrey has hosted one of the most successful talk shows and now owns two networks HARPO and OWN. Her network HARPO is responsible for such shows and brands like Dr. Phil and Rachel Ray, who both have their own talk shows as well. Not only does she have her own networks and television show, but her charitable work is very impressive. In 1998, Oprah created the Oprah’s Angel Network, a charity that supports charitable projects and provides grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $80,000,000 (wikipedia.org). She also invested $40 million and a lot of her time to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, Africa. Oprah is very successful because she appeals to everyone, all genders and races.I think it is important to take a look at a famous executive like Oprah Winfrey to recognize her efforts in entertainment and her various philanthropies.

Famous Women Executives

Companies and corporations such as Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Avon products, Xerox, and Yahoo all have women CEO’s and chairmen. People generally think of presidents and chairmen of such famous corporations to be middle- aged men, but I was surprised at looking at this list that a lot of women are in charge of these companies. The year 2010 brought a lot of change to the top Fortune 500 companies by bringing in a lot of women CEO’s and chairmen. Atop “Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women” Indra Nooyi the chairman and CEO of PepsiCo brought in revenues projected to be around $60 billion. Another powerful chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods, Irene Rosenfeld, topped the list with raking in $48 billion dollars in revenue (Fortune, 2010). Some of the most relevant CEO’s to me are the women who are presidents of beauty product or skin care companies. Andrea Jung is the CEO of Avon beauty products and sits on many different boards there. Another famous executive is Sherilyn McCoy who runs the pharmaceutical groups at Johnson and Johnson.  Women seen to be taking control of bigger companies that are becoming more and more relevant in today’s society. Judy McGrath is the chairman and CEO of MTV networks and she has been in charge of shows such as the Jersey Shore and the Video Music Awards. These shows are very appealing to people in the 14-24 age group and these women seem to know how to target these type of audiences. All of these women seem to be doing something right with their corporations and are influencing many other women to push the boundaries of the “glass ceiling”.

Personal Struggles With Balancing Work and Family- An Interview with Indra Nooyi

The Glass Ceiling

“Glass ceiling” is a term coined in the 1970’s in the United States to describe the invisible artificial barriers, created by attitudinal and organizational prejudices, which block women from senior executive positions (Wirth, 2001). This term is often used in economics to refer to the situations where the advancement of a qualified person within the hierarchy of an organization is stopped at a lower level because of some form of discrimination (wikipedia.org). Many of the prejudices held against women are based on the social roles and behaviors that are attached to women versus men. Women are seen to be emotional and impulsive where as men are seen as level headed and driven. When the average person thinks of the social roles between men and women it is thought that the woman will stay at home with the kids and look after the house while the men goes to work and supports the family. Now more than ever women are going managing a career and having a family. It seems that there has been a new era for women in terms of wanting to be career oriented. In the past women have strived to be the perfect housewives and it seems that now women are striving to have the perfect balance between career and family. The consequences of gender inequalities include women being “crowded” into a narrow range of occupations where there is less responsibility and lower pay, or having to work part time, where there are fewer opportunities for advancement (Wirth, 2001). A common misconception of women in the job market is that women only want to work part time based on their roles at home and their family lives. Many women are able to balance both a full- time job and raising a family without any problems. There is also a growing number of women who have opted out of staying home and raising a family and focusing more on getting their careers started. It seems that more people in Generation Y, in general, and not just women, are a lot more career oriented and are looking at starting families later in life after their careers take off. Women like Oprah Winfrey, Indra Nooyi, and Irene Rosenfeld have all broken through the glass ceiling to reach their goals of becoming successful CEO’s of successful companies. In a personal interview with Indra Nooyi she talks about her personal struggles with balancing her work and her family. She talks about the balance being all about the choices that you make and that no one is perfect at one aspect all the time but you learn from your mistakes and it takes years of practice.

 

Women and Men as Executives

Women and men tend to do things very different in general, from how to put together a piece of furniture to running a business or company. In many cases people feel more comfortable with men taking charge of major corporations or being President of the United States. The general conception is that women lead with their hearts while men lead with their heads. That women base their decisions on emotions to much while men weigh the logical differences to make the right decision. Interestingly, a recent research study showed that Fortune 500 corporations that have more women directors achieve, on average, stronger financial performance than corporations without such women leaders (Nowicki, 2009). Companies like PepsiCo, Avon, and Kraft Foods seem to have gotten this memo when recently hiring these powerful women to run their major corporations. In a Collegiate Case Study done by USA Today they looked at Women CEO’s and the small and slowly growing group of Women CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies. One of the first women to break this “glass ceiling” was Carly Fiorina in 1999 when she took over the major company, Hewlett Packard. She was one of the first women to take over a successful Fortune 500 company and pave the way for all of the other women CEO’s. It was said that Fiorina was “the first woman CEO in a male-dominated industry”. In this article it talks about two types of leadership style: pink and blue. The pink leadership style emphasizes relationships and the blue leadership style is task-focused. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that the pink leadership style is focused on emotions and relationship much like the common conception of women being emotional and that the blue leadership style focuses on getting the job done and doing anything to get it done effectively and efficiently much like the common conception of men (USA Today, 2005).

Pink and Blue Leadership Styles

                                               Women in the Military (Google Images)

This idea of pink leadership styles versus blue leadership styles became very interesting and appealing to me. As much as women are commonly linked to the pink leadership style and men to the blue, depending on the job one of these is more suitable than the other. For instance, a woman of higher rank in the military would need to possess the blue leadership style to assert authority and gain respect from their peers. On the other hand the pink leadership style would need to be used for such occupations as nursing or teaching, to be able to relate to their patients or students in a nurturing way. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a male nurse would probably need to posses the pink leadership style in nursing and the blue leadership style in the military. Certain jobs require different leadership styles and it isn’t always based on gender. Overall women show to be as good of leaders as men, even while adopting different methods along the way. Some of the most successful people in the world are women and credit should be given to all of them.