Friday Roundup: Will Women Leaders Carpe the Chaos?
Earlier this week, I came across an article titled “Why ‘Female’ Skills Are Worth More.” For example, just one stunning fact:
Companies with the most women on their boards post 66% higher returns on invested capital, and 42% higher returns on sales than companies with the fewest women represented.
Apparently the fact that companies with greater percentages of women in top leadership roles tend to be more successful is being translated into hiring decisions at an increasingly rapid clip.
This week’s roundup reflects the news that in the current financial chaos, with a little help sex scandals here and there, women are taking important leading roles in journalism, finance, and government.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
It’s a really big deal that the New York Times has announced its first female executive editor, Jill Abramson–check out these takes:
What Jill Abramson’s appointment means for women in journalism.
Statement by Eleanor Smeal about Abramson’s appointment.
On the same day as the announcement was made about Abramson’s appointment, the White House announced that Kathryn Rummler, the former Enron prosecutor, is being appointed as White House Counsel. Rummler is another woman who has fearlessly embraced power wherever she has gone. According to HuffPo’s story,
Meet Obama’s new White House Counsel.:
Ruemmler made a lasting impression with her closing remarks in the Enron trial: “Those … were … flat … lies!” Ruemmler shouted in the courtroom while slapping her hand on the lectern to the tempo her words, referring to Lay’s conversations with Enron employees about the company’s soundness. “He had no right to do that,” she added.
It’s fitting that among these appointments of women into top leadership positions, a woman should be emerging as the top candidate to replace Dominique Stauss Kahn at the IMF.
Christine Lagarde Seen as Shoo-in to Replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Lagarde’s possible appointment follows a promising trend of female finance professionals challenging the status-quo.
Female finance professionals moving into top positions.
In the financial industry it seemed at first that women were being brought in because there was a mess so large the men didn’t know how to clean it up (even though they had made it). I’m glad to see women carpe the chaos and finding the opportunities in it to move up the ladder.
But here’s the question: Was this just an exceptional week or is it a real trend? What do you think? How will women fare in these roles they are taking on during times of chaos?
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.