A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
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Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#2The author mentioned only two top females Marissa Mayer and Belinda Stronach. How about the very successful Chanda Zaveri we just had a post about? http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130126/jsp/calcutta/story_164...
I'm not saying looks don't affect interviews, I think they do, but I'd like to see a little more investigation and a little less assumption.
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#3The author mentioned only two top females Marissa Mayer and Belinda Stronach. How about the very successful Chanda Zaveri we just had a post about? http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130126/jsp/calcutta/story_164... I'm not saying looks don't affect interviews, I think they do, but I'd like to see a little more investigation and a little less assumption.
She's smokin'.
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#4So the theory presented here is:
=
Attractive women are disproportionately hired and promoted.
Many of these attractive women are not intelligent enough for upper management therefore there is a limit to how high these women reach in an organization.
At the same time, less attractive women languish in the lower rungs, far below their intellectual potential.
Furthermore, this phenomena does not affect men because they are judged based on their ability.
=
Well, there seems to be a lot of assumptions baked into this theory, but one I think is most likely to sink it is this one: Attractive women are, on average, less intelligent and capable than their less attractive counterparts. Seems a bit prejudicial to me.
Edit: You all are right, of course -- I shot from the hip. While it would be relatively easy to fill a single position with someone who is both attractive and intelligent, when taken across a workforce (assuming it is a widespread practice -- widespread enough to skew the curve) you would end up with a smaller pool when taking anything but intelligence into account.
I've got to wonder, though, how ubiquitous it is when hiring for skilled positions that can eventually lead to management and how much those types of factors differ compared to men?
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#5Here are the female CEO's of the fortune 500.
Meg Whitman, HP (#10)
Virginia Rometty, IBM (#19)
Patricia A. Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) (#28)
Indra K. Nooyi, PepsiCo, Inc. (#41)
Irene B. Rosenfeld, Mondelez International
Marillyn Hewson, Lockheed Martin (#58)
Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont (#72)
Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics (#92)
Carol M. Meyrowitz, The TJX Companies, Inc. (#125)
Ursula M. Burns, Xerox Corporation (#127)
Sheri S. McCoy, Avon Products Inc. (#234)
Deanna M. Mulligan, Guardian (#250)
Debra L. Reed, Sempra Energy (#266)
Denise M. Morrison, Campbell Soup (#334)
Ilene Gordon, Ingredion Incorproated (#390)
Heather Bresch, Mylan (#396)
Kathleen M. Mazzarella, Graybar Electric (#451)
Mary Agnes (Maggie) Wilderotter, Frontier Communications (#464)
Gracia C. Martore, Gannett (#465)
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo (#483)
Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp (#499)
Ironically despite being low on this list Marissa Mayer is by far one of the most recognisable, probably because as an attractive woman it's a good brand for Yahoo.
Just in my opinion, but the most interesting thing the article brought up is the attractive lawyer being fired for being incompetent. It seems like a company could get great talent by assessing women independently of their looks and hiring appropriately.
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#6The author mentioned only two top females Marissa Mayer and Belinda Stronach. How about the very successful Chanda Zaveri we just had a post about? http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130126/jsp/calcutta/story_164... I'm not saying looks don't affect interviews, I think they do, but I'd like to see a little more investigation and a little less assumption.
Sounds like she founded the company with money she earned as a talented student, rather than rising through the ranks of an existing company (where hiring and promotion bias takes effect).
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#7I'm slightly apprehensive (terrified) about commenting on this topic or any relating to gender/race because it seems like the bar for public crucifixion is somewhat low, even to those who just want to add data or other side-points to a discussion.
Anyway, and I apologize in advance if I derail the topic, but I think there's a semi important distinction to qualify this discussion, because I do think the discussion applies just as much to men as it does to women.
Casually attraction does seem like less important of a factor for men, but in data that seems to be because height is vastly important instead. So much so that a woman's attractiveness is not congruent to a man's attractiveness, but his height.
I find this to be true casually and it certainly has some scientific backing[1]. In online forum threads (okay fine, AskReddit) and female friends have nearly universally expressed less interest in short males precisely because they are short.
In fact, I think if you replace "attractive women" with "tall men" you have a slightly better scientific basis for this article, because we can base it on studies and not the author's perceptions of attractiveness.
10% of Russel 3000 CEOs are women, and similarly 10% of (original source doesn't say) CEOs are below average height. Wikipedia says[1]:
> A survey of Fortune 500 CEO height in 2005 revealed that they were on average 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) tall, which is approximately 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) taller than the average American man. 30% were 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall or more; in comparison only 3.9% of the overall United States population is of this height.[11] Similar surveys have uncovered that less than 3% of CEOs were below 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) in height. Ninety percent of CEOs are of above average height.
[1] See especially the "unsolicited messages per week, by height" graph: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination#In_busine...
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#8So the theory presented here is: = Attractive women are disproportionately hired and promoted. Many of these attractive women are not intelligent enough for upper management therefore there is a limit to how high these women reach in an organization. At the same time, less attractive women languish in the lower rungs, far below their intellectual potential. Furthermore, this phenomena does not affect men because they…
It's a speculative article, but it does address your last point:
"In no way am I suggesting that attractive women are necessarily incompetent. But I am saying that the greater emphasis on looks we place on women shrinks the pool of exceptional leaders we might get tomorrow."
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#9So the theory presented here is: = Attractive women are disproportionately hired and promoted. Many of these attractive women are not intelligent enough for upper management therefore there is a limit to how high these women reach in an organization. At the same time, less attractive women languish in the lower rungs, far below their intellectual potential. Furthermore, this phenomena does not affect men because they…
The assumption is that women selected for attractiveness are, on average, less intelligent than women selected for intelligence. That doesn't mean attractive women are less intelligent than unattractive women.
Re: A Truth About the Glass Ceiling No One Wants to Talk About
#10If you do a google image search for "pictures of fortune 500 ceos" you will see that most of the women coming up are just as ugly as the men. I think this has more to do with the industry attracting people who are ugly on the inside and by the time they get to the top they just say "fuck it" and let their monstrousness show.