Women Executives

From Emiliya Mychasuk @ Financial Times:

In examining the best and worst countries to be a female chief executive, what is most surprising is the continuing paucity of female chief executives in developed countries such as Germany and Italy. Stereotypes are especially reinforced in Italy, where many of the female chief executives are either at subsidiary companies, such as Patrizia Grieco at Telecom Italia subsidiary Olivetti, or running family-controlled companies, such as Marina Berlusconi as chief executive of Fininvest.

Peninah Thomson, founder of the FTSE 100 Cross-Company Mentoring programme, argues that childcare isn’t the only problem. In her research as an executive coach, she found that male executives were often “horrified that family-friendly policies were … only 25 per cent of the reason women left”. “They [senior women] look at the top and don’t see someone they want to emulate … They become weary of what they often describe as game-playing, as they discover a greater level of jockeying and competition.”

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