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Top women execs quit office to become CEOs elsewhere

Views 0 Views    Comments 0 Comments    Share Share    Posted 22-10-2009  
The companies like Archer Daniels Midland, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods all have women CEOs, as the former CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, is running for governor in California. The Secretary of State is a woman, as are this year`s Nobel Prize winners in medicine, chemistry and economics.


According to a new study by Xavier University Business Professor Hema Krishnan, the turnover rate for women in top executive spots is more than double that for men.

Hema Krishnan, in an interview to Enquirer, said that she had been researching top management teams for a long time, and did her Ph.D. thesis on their impact during mergers in 1991. In 2000 she realized after the situation with Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard and her ouster that there were only a few women in these positions to begin with.

Hema found that the turnover rate for women in top positions was 33 percent, as compared to 19 percent among men. This was higher in functions such as law, marketing, research and development and operations. Hema found that with first assumption of these women leaving to go back and raise children, and she assumed they quit because it became more and more challenging to take care of their family as they progressed in their career.

But on the other hand, Hema found that women in these positions were actually getting better positions in different organizations and perhaps becoming CEOs. They became very sought-after in government and private business. Some became deans in big universities.

"Many women started their own companies. Their family was the reason they left the workforce, but they did not wanted to just be with the families. They used the opportunities and flexibility to start their own organizations," said Hema.

On the question of gender gap, Hema responded that out of the Fortune 1,000 companies, 45 percent don`t have any women in top positions.

"Employees are more empowered now. It`s okay to be very nurturing and you don`t need to be an autocrat. There is also a willingness to share power and information, while in the olden days; holding on to power was the way to survive. But in today`s environment of quickly sharing information through rapid responses and the Internet, society is changing at an exponential rate and there is no point in holding on to old notions of not sharing with others," said Hema.

Hema also opined that another important factor for sustainability is that higher education is critical. The women who moved up found the time to get advanced degrees to help themselves.

Source:
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Top_women_execs_quit_office_to_become_CEOs_
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