Fast Company magazine’s cover asks “Where are the Women?” The starting point of the article is to ask why there aren’t more women in corner offices / executive positions, given the number of women in the workforce and the number of years we’ve now had to make it into the cushy chair. The article basically examines a study done by a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business that determined that men are almost exclusively the ones in executive positions because men compete harder and sacrifice more of their personal lives than women. Women are just as competent, just as skilled, etc, as men, generally, but men are m ore willing to work longer, relocate, and just generally give more of their lives to work than women are. This is actually the second article I’ve seen that’s based on this study. The first was in Fortune magazine, entitled “Power: Do Women Really Want It?”.

Particularly in article in Fortune, the spin seemed to be that women just aren’t willing to go that extra mile for the executive spot, and that, hey, that extra mile is required for those who want to reach the pinnacle. Two thoughts come to mind: one, is that extra mile really required for the job itself, or is it just more of a barrier to entry, a way to winnow the competition? Couldn’t companies figure out better ways to use their top job resources, so that above and beyond all call of duty _isn’t_ the required duty? Seems like then the company would be less about the man (nearly always) at the top, and more about its mission of producing something that produces value (to shareholders or some other ownership).

Second thought, and more interesting to me to explore… If the reason that more women aren’t at the top is because they value other things in life over the rewards gained via sacrifices for work, why is it that men don’t value those same things? The articles pointed out that women aren’t stepping aside merely for the “mommy track”, that they’re often stepping aside for other jobs that provide a better balance of work and life. Lots of folks seem to look at that as “settling”, as somehow demeaning what you could have been. But that supposes that the best you could be was the person wholly focused on beating the competition out to win the top spot in this one arena of business, and thus necessarily losing focus on other areas in life. Those other areas – family, personal time, other interests – why are they of so relatively less value to the men examined in this study?