Female Officers of Companies per The Scientist
Dear Friends of Women in Science,
Jef Akst in the most recent issue of The Scientist (Feb, 2012) takes on an issue we've discussed here: what does it take for a woman to rise to the top in the biotech industry? He cites a 2010 study of New England biotech companies that found only 12% of founders of such companies are women, perhaps related to the information that we discussed with Sue Rosser as our guest, here, about patents being lower for women. He also cites Pharmaceutical Executive's 2007 survey to say only 12% of top positions for executives in biotech are held by women and women have only 22% of the upper management positions. No surprises here, we've often discussed some of the issues that get in women's way when they aspire to these levels of management.
In profiling three individual women who have made it to the top, Akst shows us a bit more detail. The executive director of Addgene, Joanne Kamens, has a PhD in genetics from Harvard and majored in biology as an undergraduate at University of Pennsylvania. She worked her way up to group leader at BASF, which was acquired by Abbott. Then she met Dmitry Samarsky and started working with him on RNAi, later joining his company RXi Pharmaceuticals. Then she became the Executive Director of Addgene, which distributes plasmids on a non-profit basis. She gets to work more closely with researchers, which she enjoys.
The next profile was of Rachel King, who received her bachelor's degree in French from Dartmouth and then received an MBA at Harvard. She always liked nature and science, despite not majoring in it, and joined the senior management team at Genetic Therapy, Inc which was acquired by Novartis. Later, she founded Glycomimetics, the company of which she is CEO. It focuses on developing drugs to treat rare diseases.
The third profile featured Daphne Zohar, who majored in entrepreneurship at Northeastern, started or helped start several small companies as she grew up, and is now the founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, which assists people who want to succeed in founding a company.
I wonder if you see the same trend in these three women's profiles that I do? What really struck me was that all three enterprises which are directed by women have a strong service aspect to their modus operandi. Two of the three were founded by the present female leader. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues as women, I hope, get a higher percentage of positions in industry.
cheers,
Laura
Perpetuating the myth that women are more nurturing than men, or are more successful as caregivers, is a disservice to us all.
Not all of us want to save the world. Personally, I'd rather rule it with an iron fist.
Hi Amy,
I think what you say is worth a lot of thought and could be right. When I was VP for Academic Affairs at Pomona College, for example, I loved working with faculty on curriculum issues and fairness issues, on designing recruiting and evaluation, but not on the currying of favor with rich donors who felt it was OK to express their racist ideas to me. I came to feel that would be an important part of my job if I were to become a college president, and I said no to all the search firms that came knocking looking for female candidates for presidencies. Definitely a choice on my part to step down to the faculty after five years and not to go on up the ladder. I still think it was the right choice for me, too. Thanks for bringing up the need to evaluate our measures of "success." cheers, Laura
You know, I wonder whether the obsessive focus on top leadership as a mark of women's success is really a good idea; it seems so...male. My world is chock full of bright, brilliantly-trained women who knock themselves out all day long, but if you asked them whether they'd *take* such a job if offered on a platter, I think nearly all would say no. They have specific things they want to do. Heading think tanks, companies, etc. -- not on the list. And it's not a matter of their being shrinking violets; they've seen enough to recognize that the top jobs involve various types of work that they're just not attracted to, and which may even stand in the way of the work they do want to do.
I think a better measure of success may be "are you able to do the things you want most to do, in your career; are the places that you work respectful of your voice, your authority in your field, your life outside your work? And are you reasonably compensated? Is your work recognized well? Are you influential in your division, company, field?" While you can get some of these things by force, or fear, when you're at the top of the food chain, the most dynamic and exciting places I've worked for had bosses who were careful about culture and genuinely respectful of other people. And when you have that, it stops mattering whether you're a man or a woman, because top and bottom matter so much less.
It seems to me you get farther by focusing on culture than by counting "how many on top". And of course the Sloan people have done lots of work there.
Neat question. Worth thinking about with regard to more and less successful senior women, or career women in general. Maybe I'll ask my kids and daughter-in-law about it.
Hi Janet and Sandra,
Good points, both of you. I am still thinking about features that might characterize women I like to call the FFs... first female whatevers. But this article isn't such strong evidence on the point, I have to admit. It's still food for thought. I also noticed that only one of the three was a science major, and that two of the three were Ivy Leaguers, for what that's worth!
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
Remember the CEO of IBM as of January, 2012 is Virginia Rometty, who came from the sales and marketing side. I don't think you could argue for a service aspect of IBM very successfully. Or perhaps HP, with Meg Whitman as its second female CEO (Carly Fiorina being the first a few years ago). HP isn't in this for service either, as far as I know. It's an interesting way, though, for some women to rise to the top without compromising what they are passionate about, I'll give you that much.
cheers,
SS
Hi Laura,
I don't know if this would hold if you had a larger sample. Like the previous article you quoted from The Scientist, this tends to rely on self-reporting in a survey that may or may not be a random sample, and who knows what caused the selection of these three women to feature? Proximity? Accessibility? Either way, they could be a non-random sample, right? I'm not saying it's not worth thinking about, but I'm concerned about spying a trend from such a shaky start.
cheers,
JW
