Posted on 02/13/2005 6:00:27 PM PST by ken21
Feb. 12, 2005, 8:56PM Was it just another firing? Failure of top female executive raises gender issue By L.M. SIXEL Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES
WOMEN IN CHARGE
The ouster of Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina leaves women in charge of eight Fortune 500 companies, shown here with rankings and when they took over. Hewlett-Packard was No. 11 in Fortune magazine's most recent list.
• 104. Sara Lee: Brenda Barnes in February 2005 • 128. Rite Aid: Mary Sammons in June 2003 • 130. Xerox: Anne Mulcahy in August 2001 • 243. Lucent Technologies: Patricia Russo in January 2002 • 275. Avon Products: Andrea Jung in November 1999 • 314. Mirant: S. Marce Fuller in July 1999 • 432. Pathmark Stores: Eileen Scott in October 2002 • 440. Golden West Financial: Marion Sandler in August 1963
Source: Associated Press When Carly Fiorina was fired at Hewlett-Packard Co. last week, it wasn't just another CEO who couldn't make the numbers.
She was fashionable, charismatic and a tough executive whose aggressive self-promotion put her on par with other first-name-only notables as Martha and Hillary.
Fiorina's departure as the nation's highest-profile female corporate executive also left a gaping hole in the progress of women who have broken through the glass ceiling. To find a woman who's running the next largest Fortune 500 company, HP is No. 11, you have to drop down to 104 — Sara Lee — to find newly appointed CEO Brenda Barnes.
In fact, with the exit of Fiorina there are only eight female CEOs, including Barnes, remaining in the Fortune 500.
So, why all the hubbub about Fiorina? Certainly other colorful CEOs have been axed in similarly public ways. Albert "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap of Sunbeam comes to mind. So, too, does Chuck Watson, who was given a shove out the door by the Dynegy board.
"It's true equality when women are allowed to be as mediocre as the men out there," said H. Joan Ehrlich, district director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office in San Francisco.
Ehrlich added quickly that she doesn't mean to imply that Fiorina was mediocre.
"She had to be an extraordinarily talented woman," Ehrlich said, "because women are not yet allowed to be as mediocre as men CEOs are."
Irene Helsinger, senior vice president of St. Luke's Episcopal Health System, was also not one to make much of the fact that Fiorina's gender had much to do with anything.
"It seems to me that the board made the determination that she wasn't the appropriate person for the board at this time," Helsinger said.
It doesn't mean anything about women as a group, Helsinger said. It's just like any other CEO losing a job.
However, one well-known Houston lawyer said, the fact that Fiorina is a woman puts a spotlight on her departure.
Whatever flaws and weaknesses a woman has seem to get more exposed than if she were a man, said Paula Hinton, a trial lawyer and partner at Vinson & Elkins.
Hinton said she sees that in the legal profession — what may be called aggressive in a man is called bitchy in a woman. Or a woman may be known as nice, but if the same traits show up in a man, he may be seen as weak.
Women are just looked at differently from men — that's just life, she said.
At the end of trials, Hinton always makes a point of talking to the jurors to get an idea of what they thought about the evidence, the witnesses and other key details.
While her male colleagues hear about the legal issues, invariably Hinton always gets a few fashion tips from the jurors.
"They know everything you wear," Hinton said. And they say things like, "I like your hair up better than down."
And her outfits draw remarks from jurors: "I like that blue suit you wore last Tuesday," she recalled one saying.
In a perfect world, the emphasis should be on performance, she said. And when it comes down to it, Fiorina was held to a performance standard by the HP board just as any other executive would be. Her departure is just more noticeable because she was such a powerful female executive.
And that was exacerbated by the fact Fiorina was trying to combine the old and new HP plus Compaq Computer Corp. by creating a cult of personality that almost became larger than life, said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm based in Chicago.
The huge photographs of Fiorina and her flashy theatrical presentations at tech shows had a Chairman Mao-like charismatic appeal, Challenger said.
"This is like an O.J. trial," Challenger said. "It's being played out in the public eye, and it's not just because she's a woman."
That added to the drama, he said, because she was able to do what many women haven't done — she fought her way to thetop.
Fiorina went to HP at the peak of optimism, when the economy was booming and boards were looking for big-thinking visionaries, Challenger said.
But when the economy turns down, boards are looking for the kind of leader who stays on task and makes incremental changes.
In this lackluster period, Fiorina was out of step as a visionary, he said. The board probably figured it was time to move on.
"But her very visible tenure is in fact a big positive and a big step forward," Challenger said.
And the story would probably be just as compelling if Fiorina were a man because it's a story with so many big-picture themes: a huge family feud, an unwieldy merger, the role of boards and their relationships with CEOs.
"This ought to be a movie," said Challenger, who even has a title in mind: The Godmother.
lm.sixel@chron.com
she leaves with a $21,000,000 parachute.
Women will never be truly equal in this country until we quit treating every success or failure as something special.
Oh, good grief. She ran Lucent into the ground, then did the same thing at HP.
She's probably never even been trained to leave the toilet seat up.
Equality means equal in mediocrity? That's a new one.
Acquire Compaq, screw the board. Go against the wishes of the founder's family, the board. Flip the bird at the board (figuratively.)
Ba-da-bing... you're out!
Gender is irrelevant.
you're correct, senor.
there was the h-p scion that warned against her take over of compaq.
!
right, that was my first thought too, "cheated" because the guys get to be incompetent!
i don't know, sorry.
amazing, isn't it?
i enjoyed the nyt story last week where a male journalist called her a "strategic thinker"!
Was it her idea of acquiring Suse? Not a bad move.
I'm looking for another HP comeback after this purge.
hope so.
some h-p people i've known seem energized. they said they ignored her.
Novell acquired Suse, not H-P.
What are the people in this article talking about. Carly stunk up the place with her acquisition of Compaq. Every Tech with a highschool diploma and an A+ Certificate could watch the commodization of the PC. So Carly stuck HP's eggs in the PC wars and let the printer business wither. And cause she was cute she got away with it, till the stock took the big tank.Buh bye Carly.
She was fashionable, charismatic and a tough executive whose aggressive self-promotion put her on par with other first-name-only notables as Martha and Hillary.
"...he was fashionable, charismatic and a tough executive whose aggressive self-promotion put him on par with other first-name-only notables as Bill and Donald..."
You bet your sweet life they wouldn't. But for a high-powered, mover-and-shaker business femme it's A-OK. What's with that?
And when one of these dames gets the ax it seems to be an unspoken a given that it wasn't because she flop, but because "sinister forces" [a.k.a. jealous straight white males] were at work.
"Ms. Fiorina, Please Resign."
Back in January of 2002, Red Herring editors called on Carly Fiorina to resign. Here is a replay of our then infamous letter. Also reprinted below is then-editor Jason Pontin's reflections on the "open letter" that appeared in his column in the same issue.
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I found this stuff while in another thread. You might want to take a look:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1330619/posts (Post #8) **************** My.... look what I ran across....
"All of the live webcasts above will be archived and available on demand at AlwaysOn in short order as well.
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Ya think the DAVOS tape is still archived??
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