Musings

Outliers - good read, but no Women, at all!

 

I listened to most of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers in the car with my 15 year-old son this past weekend on the way to Tahoe. Its a good read, and sparked a fair bit of conversation with my teenager (and that's always a good thing) about the importance of hard work and practice, the benefits of parents that provide good environments (phew!), that smarts (IQ) is not enough, and learning how to spot and take advantage of opportunities.  All good.  

But what if my 15-year old were a girl and not a boy?

After the section on the importance of background, it didn't take long for Christopher to comment "and of course what a great advantage to be born a guy."  '

Women, successful women, are hardly mentioned at all in the entire book.  Gladwell doesn't even mention that women are missing nor does he go so far as to apologize for it.  Women are just not there.  The book is shock-full of examples and statistics, anecdotes and family stories, and the only place where women appear are in a discussion of Gladwell's mother (who he admires) and a helpful wife or two behind successful men.

I also find it surprising that mainstream reviews of the book, including NY TImes, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, do not mention the lack of women (I didn't check the gender of the reviewers).  Many of the reviews are critical - note that his conclusions are not always supported by research - or that some of the stories are somewhat obtuse or individualistic (Oppenheimer vs. Langham?).  Excuse the high expectations, but shouldn't reviewers take Gladwell to task for leaving out women?

Julia Cheiffetz on the Huffington Post remarks:  "The omission of women in Outliers says more about the nature of "big think" books than it does about Mr.Gladwell" pointing out that most of the writers of these books are men and that women ought to publish their own "big think" books.  But is that the story?

My POV:  Malcolm didn't think it makes a difference and no one else did too.  But reallY?

Blog, Twitter, or Status Update?

I haven't posted in a while on "Musings" primarily due to the fun I've been having connecting on facebook, sharing articles there, and occasionally writing mini-notes.  . Recently a few people shared with me that they had read my blog and asked me why I wasn't keeping it up. At the same time, everyone's twittering and why aren't I? 

So today, while the beans are simmering, I thought I'd wade back in to Twitter and Typepad.  And what do I find - they all connect to one another, one way or another, and with enough patience I can try to navigate the best way to make these tools to share, connect, and conjecture.

Wishing you all a happy thanksgiving.

F

Its Online Dating Season Again

Online Dating. The category I helped to create with match.com when I started with Electric Classifieds in 1994. Here's the short history.. And an update courtesy of today's Wall Street Journal . Several feelings about this -- wow $39.95 per month, very cool, we launched one of the very first paid subscription models with Match.com in 1995 and I believe we charged $3.95 per month (if we only knew . . .). The article lead is interesting "attracting older singles" not surprising, back when Match.com was started we knew that women over 29 and men over 32 were much more likely to pay (and this was more than 10 years ago when the net was dominated by more men and younger people overall). Match.com's former president is given alot of credit here; good for him, no doubt he did a terrific job. My regret is that after working so hard on Match.com for three years, when we were clearly ahead of our time in terms of the value of brands and community on the Internet, that I didn't stay with it. Complicated story, we sold it to Cendant for less than $10 million, Cendant wanted to move it to Connecticut (I wasn't going to move) and at the time my sons were still very small and I was burnt out, especially given how long I had been fighting for resources within Electric Classifieds. Alright, water under the bridge, I'm proud that I launched and helped to build one of the strongest /leading brands on the Internet, met some great people doing it, andmade an impact not only on Internet business but on people's lives (loves).

I want my Board!

Interesting article about Carol Bartz, forme CEO and current Chair of Autodesk in Sunday (Dec 17) NY Times Business section "How Suite it Isn't". Same old review of the low number of women in CEO positions blah blah blah (I'm just kind of tired of the same old story, you know, dropping out of the workforce, challenges to being taken seriously ). What was of interest to me was the data on women serving on boards and the relative roles they play: it points out that only when you have 3 or more women on the board does the gender issue go away and they are perceived as peers not "special interests." It points out that only 76 companies of the Fortune 500 have more than 3 women.

My current board at TRUSTe has 2 women including me (and Christine is such a superstar). This is a recent change and I believe the men on the board would be welcoming to women. Even so, they have been more likely to recommend other men. I don't serve on any boards (aside from "advisory boards") but I believe my male peers who run similarly sized non profits do sit on boards.

So yes, I want MY board.

What the F!

I just got back from a 3+ week family vacation in Germany and Italy with Gary and the boys and upon arrival in SFO I got 3 different emails from friends sending me this article published in Forbes

"Don't Marry a Career Woman"

http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html

Here's a discussion on BlogHer
http://blogher.org/node/9769

and another from a friend and venture capitalist
http://www.christine.net/

Simply unbelievable . . .

Yet another article that pits the stay at home moms to the career women; denigrates choices many of us have made; paints "working women" as selfish, cheating, and infertile bitches; and obviously makes it harder on everyone including our husbands and children.

Yes,its hard to navigate marriage especially when roles are different than what we were raised with, everyone has to make tradeoffs, its not always easy for the husbands (or wives), everyone can't be going 100%+ all the time, and yes I can be demanding, bitchy etc. but geez, goddamit I work real hard to also be a good wife, mother, and lover. I don't want this message to go to my sons - I want them to find a love and a true partner to build a life together without the encumbrance of this bullshit.

To GSB or not to GSB

I've had the opportunity in recent years to speak with younger women (young women? does that mean I'm older ? argh) about going to business school. And despite the great time I had at Stanford GSB and I'm sure the many doors it has opened for me, I'm not an enthusiastic cheerleader. Why? Well, it comes down to a few reasons, but this NY Times interview (Sunday 6/18) with Linda Livingstone, dean of the business school at Pepperdine University offers some insights, including this one:

Q. Why aren't business schools attracting more women?

A. You typically go to medical and law schools immediately after you finish your undergraduate work. But with traditional business programs, we encourage students to get three to six years of work experience before they come. That can bump up against the time when women want to start families. Another reason is that many business schools have a culture of being cutthroat and competitive. But we here are trying to create a very collaborative, team-oriented learning experience with smaller class sizes. So we've seen an increase in the number of women.

I do buy Linda's first reason - the timing of business school around the child-bearing years. I had my first child within a year of graduating and in the first year of my post business school job (at Clorox in brand) and it was very very tough. Not only because of the impact (new mom, high demand job, etc.), but we were broke. Lots of debt from school made it much harder and I didn't take one of those high paying consulting gigs (and a kid in that situation would not have worked).

An additional reason that I don't encourage business school is that I don't think the payoff for women is as great because of the time out for kids (of one kind or another) and the still persistent glass cieling. Where are the women CEO role models in significant numbers? Why do Stanford GSB Women (working full time) make 70% to the men? (this may be an outdated stat). And of course, I do note that women do not leverage the networking as much as the men.

My typical advise to twenty-something women thinking about business school is this: If you have a sugar daddy (or in other words if paying for it won't totatlly debilitate you and your parnters), if you have the passion (you really really want to learn the stuff), and if you think it'll make a difference, go for it. But only if its a top school. Otherwise, think about local night programs (of which there are many).

Commander in Chief

Maddening! NY Times on Sunday offered plenty of food for thought. One of the most provacative was an article in FASHION AND STYLE - no less - titled Ascent of the Woman - pondering the question of whether we're ready for a female president, contemplating Geena Davis in Commander in Chief and speculating about Hilary. Made some good points, such as that other countries have had woman premiers and presidents, but not the US. Some speculate its the cowboy image (did that go out with Brokeback Mountain? Could we be so lucky?). Most important point, that applies to both politics and business, especially technology, is that to have women emerge as leaders, they have to be in the pipeline. Hell yes. All the more reason to work harder at advancing ourselves and supporting others.

NetSquared Breakout on "Gender and the social web: new tools, same...stuff?

Participated in a terrific panel on Gender and Social tools on Tuesday at NetSquared and reconnected with some old friends and made some new ones. Susan Mernit was a terrific moderator, all the panelists offered great advice and anecdotes and the audience participation was great (and the room was packed including a few men).

Themes:

Tools are great (networking sites, blogs, etc.) but have to use them

Must be present. Show Up (credit Christine Herron - the technology conclaves, conferences etc. need more women (love her ongoing count of women in technology conferences); no reason why we can't be there

The software design process, mostly dominated by men, needs to consider women's needs (and design sensibilities) which may differ. OMG, we're like, you know, half the market!

Get Active: mentor, hire, promote, refer, do the deal

This was also unique for me as I had never been on a panel addressing women's issues outside of a women's oriented conference. And while we addressed the particular challenges of "Voice" in new technology, it wasn't about men bashing. Although we all enjoyed Christine's oblique references!

Thanks Lisa Stone for introducing me to Blogher, NetSquared, and the rest. Lisa and I worked together years ago at Women.com and she's really embraced the new model and seems so excited and happy with her Blogher work. Faboulous!

Things to check out:
YouthNoise community for teens; gender balanced
Drupal (wow, didn't know this was happening) - open source community platform
Mom's Rising

Do the Deal

This is an essay I submitted for the Stanford Graduate School of Business recent Women In Management event . . .

In 2004, my MBA class celebrated its 15th reunion. It had a very different tone from our 10th reunion, at the height of the dot.com mania.  By 2004, many of us still were suffering from the dot.com bust and the bravado and energy had changed.   In many ways thought it felt that the connections were more genuine and real.

As is typical at the reunion, we had a chance to catch up. And although I saw many of my female friends and we spoke of the last time the families got together, I began to notice that the guys seemed to be reminding one another not only of social engagements but that deal they worked on or that partnership they formed. At first, I thought I was being overly sensitive, but more and more I saw the truth – the men in my class really did work with one another, not just in spotty, one-time ways but regularly and in significant ways.

Was it true that the women did less of this with one another or with the guys? I looked at my own experience, and good news: I had founded Match.com with my classmate Gary (score 1, but Gary had reached out to me). Later, I did a marketing deal with a couple of other classmates (score 2). On a few occasions, I helped classmates with references or referrals. Of course I followed up with any classmate who reached out to me, and on a few occasions, generally in between jobs, I also tapped the GSB network.   Although this sounds fine, in my gut I believe the networking was at a lower level than it was among the guys, and while I engaged in some sporadic deal making with my classmates and other women, I may have been at the top end of the curve among professional women.

After the reunion, I checked in with some of my female friends still working outside the home, and we all agreed that we did not reach out to each other professionally. We keep our professional lives separate. We all admitted we could do more networking, but where's the time with the job, the husband, the kids, the time for exercise – and I need to do my book club! Still, we agreed that the lack of serious networking and deal making was one reason we could own for not necessarily achieving the same level of success as many of the men (or having to work so much harder for it). We don't do the deal with each other.   We don't hire and seek out one another as much.   We need to do the deal.  With the guys, for sure, but especially with other women.

Since then I've tried to Do the Deal. Network more. Seek out and share with other women.  After the we-need-to-do-the-deal conversation with one of my friends, she made sure her company got the TRUSTe seal and I made sure her organization got the best service possible. I've reached out more and participated in more networking events, many focused on women. Looking to the next election cycle, in California and nationally, I'm committed to supporting female candidates. I'm making sure my board of directors has more gender balance. Achieving what we deserve to achieve isn't going to happen if we don't Do the Deal.

So, DO THE DEAL. Reach out to other women. Form a partnership, buy the service, give the reference, hire the talent and when all things are pretty equal (do they have to be exactly equal?) then support the women. Do the Deal. Tell others they need to do the deal. Make it a cause, make it second nature. The guys do.

Why now (and again)?

This is officially the third attempt to create a blog:
1) Blogger.com. 2000. About dot.com bust. I was unemployed. Actually interviewed with Blogger.com. But no money - not even salary - and I needed that
2) 2006 Yahoo 360!. Not really a blog, but a profile page. Posted a number of articles uner the title "What the F!" about women in the workplace and related issues.

Ok, so why now:
- Passion - need to do this, on women's issues, issues of trust, brand and marketing. I have alot to say; great feedback to my article on "Do The Deal"
- Imperative - alot of people I admire are doing it. My old friend from women.com days, BlogHer's Lisa Stone has been very encouraging
- Can find the TIME - god knows I spend enough time organizing my music library. It's always a trade-off between the time and the rewards, don't you know
- Challenge - get over the fear

we're going to start a blog on TRUSTe as well
- Tools - will this community and toolset meet my needs?

So, I'll have to make the investment to post, to comment, to update, to link. It's time (I hope)

[ohmygod, just tried to post and was getting blog spam, helppp!]