Mother's Day Proclamation - Work/Life Debate Should be SOOOO Over

Enough already! The question has been answered. Yes, Virginia, a woman can be a mother and have a successful career.

So, on Mother's Day 2011, let's finally put the debate to bed.

Need proof? Of the F500 women CEOs past, present and announced, nearly every one of them has been a mother/stepmother - and often to 2 or more children.

In honor of these virtual mentors from whom we can learn so much, let's learn once and for all that work and motherhood are not mutually exclusive. Thank you:

• Brenda Barnes, retired Sara Lee
• Carol Bartz, Yahoo!
• Angela Braly, Wellpoint
• Ursula Burns, Xerox
• Carly Fiorina, retired HP
• Christina Gold, Western Union
• Susan Ivey, retired Reynolds
• Andrea Jung, Avon
• Ellen Kullman, Dupont
• Carol Meyrowitz, TJX
• Christine Morrison, announced Campbell's
• Anne Mulcahy, retired Xerox
• Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo
• Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft
• Mary Sammons, retired RiteAid
• Laura Sen, BJs
• Meg Whitman, retired eBay
• Patricia Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland

Apologies to Lynn Elsenhans, CEO Sunoco if she has children.  Online research turned up no references to any.

UPDATED 6/6: Financial News has a story about Helena Morrissey, head of Newton:

"ranked the Most Influential Woman in Asset Management at the Financial News Awards for Excellence in Institutional Asset Management Europe 2010, had a family of five when she took the job and has had four more children since her appointment."

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Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.
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CUS Words - Fending Off Harassment

Recently a friend of my son's told me that a guy in her office is "kind of creepy" and made comments the other day about liking her shoes. I asked her what she did about it and she said nothing and that she was going to wait a few months and hope he stops.

This is a very common responses - especially among women early in their careers.

I suggested that she needs to start as she means to go and nip this in the bud. I offered several ways she could verbalize her displeasure with his attention. This reminded me of the concept of CUS words that hospitals use when building a culture of safety. It is shortcut for language that escalates if the first message isn't taken in. 

CUS begins with I am Concerned...escalating to I am Uncomfortable...and finally to this is a Safety issue.

Here's how using CUS words could work if you or someone you know is confronted with uncomfortable comments the same escalation can work this way.

1. I am Concerned that your comments are focusing on my attire, shoes and not on my work. You might be trying to be friendly, but in the workplace how I look is not an acceptable topic for discussion.
2. I am Uncomfortable that you are continuing your comments about how I look and again asking you to stop.
3. Having asked you twice to stop commenting on my appearance, I am reporting you for Sexual harassment.

If you find yourself in a position of receiving unwarranted attention, try using CUS words to respectfully make clear your boundaries. Hope this helps!

To see what else we're keeping our eye on these days, check us out on Facebook.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.
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The Velocity of Women on Boards

I am a great fan of Jim Kristie's. He is the editor and associate publisher of Directors & Boards and has had a long term interest in women on boards. Here's his most recent update (with apologies for wholesale quoting!). It represents good news for those who care about greater representation of women on corporate boards.

"(Directors & Boards) has been documenting for the past two years elevated levels of women joining boards. Here are some of our latest findings (expertly crunched by Roster editor Kelly McCarthy):

• In the first quarter of 2011, 34% of new director elections that we tracked were women.
• In the fourth quarter of 2010, 38% of new directors were women.
• For 2010 as a whole, 34% of board appointees recorded in the Roster were women; in 2009, the recruitment rate was 39% — a dramatic leap from 25% in 2008.

Most major surveys of board composition point to representation of women stuck in the mid-teens range, where it has been mired for years. To my mind, there is a simple explanation for meshing these very different recruitment findings.

The major surveys are a snapshot of board composition at a fixed point in time — an annual look at who is sitting on a defined universe of boards. The Directors Roster is a snapshot of a quarterly flow of activity at a random universe of boards — companies that happen to have added a new board member.

This is a bit of apples and oranges. What we are looking at with the Roster is velocity — a moving target — whereas the annual board reports are measuring an end point. We need both sets of measurements to properly gauge marketplace activity.

As a longtime champion of board diversity, I am sympathetic to the concern my survey counterparts share with me — that the optimistic picture we present in the Roster could lull people into thinking that recruiting of women directors is going along just swimmingly, when in fact all the annual reviews of board composition do not seem to bear that out. That’s why I prominently cite other surveys in Directors & Boards that show how sluggish the progress is of board diversity.

I agree that many questions are left unresolved about the enduring impact of our measure of velocity. Perhaps it is a matter of time — and it will be a lot of time — before we see the cumulative impact of these elevated recruiting levels.

But something is going on, and that is where the Roster data play an important tracking role."

Thanks, again. Jim for your good work!

If you want to see what else we're keeping our eye on these days, check us out on Facebook.

Lead ON!
Susan
Susan Colantuono is CEO of Leading Women and author of No Ceiling, No Walls.
Follow her on Twitter |  LittlePinkBook  |  Facebook  |  LinkedInGroup |  LinkedIn