最具影响力商界女性的前世今生

    40年后，这种情况看起来相当明显了。每年一度的财富“最具影响力商界女性”排行榜可以轻松地罗列出50位女性，远高于1973年的10人。《财富》在2012年10月发布的排行榜上写道：“虽然目前有19位财富500强女性CEO……但杰出的女性太多了，我们不得不割爱其中两位。”

    在这50位女性中，有些人是沿着所在公司的艰难晋升之路向上攀爬。例如，IBM公司CEO罗睿兰在1981年加入这个科技巨头，当时她才20岁出头。仅仅8年前，罗伯逊指出了女性管理人员面临的“荒唐”歧视，比如密尔沃基房地产规划委员会（Milwaukee Estate Planning Council）拒绝把会员资格授予威斯康星第一信托公司（First Wisconsin Trust Co.）总裁凯瑟琳•克利里（她是1973年财富“最具影响力商界女性”排行榜成员），尽管她管理的资产达到12.5亿美元，这意味着她管理着密尔沃基（实际上是整个威斯康星州）最大的信托公司。

    同样有趣的是，罗伯逊在1973年那篇文章中提出的一些问题与如今的情况非常相似。

    罗伯逊忠实地告诉读者：“这些女性大多都能兼顾事业与家庭。她们中有6人已婚，3人丧偶。这9人中有7人身为人母。”但罗伯逊写到，没有更多女性担任领导职位的一个重要原因在于事业和子女不能兼顾的观点。确实，“受过良好教育的女性常常在养育学龄前儿童期间辞职。如果她们不辞职，她们可能是最有机会获得晋升的女性。”

    然后是抱负的问题。Facebook首席运营官谢丽尔•桑德伯格谈到了女性是否应该“在生孩子之前辞职”。罗伯逊写道：“这些极其成功的商界女性有个共识，那就是女性的抱负仍然太低。”

    “女性或许能达到某个较低层级的最高职位，但她们不会攀向下一个高峰，”奥格登公司（Ogden Corp）的蒂莉•刘易斯说。“她们没有受到激励。现在有了妇女解放运动，或许她们将会受到激励。”

    Alberto-Culve公司的柏妮丝•拉文的个人介绍显示，她的三个孩子出生时，她像玛丽莎•梅耶那样休假一个月，“从来没觉得大力家庭会增加付薪工作的难度”。柏妮丝说，她销售队伍中的女性比男性做得更好。但罗伯逊写道：“她发现更多的女性不愿意承担重任，过于害怕犯错。她说，‘很多女孩想做秘书，仅此而已。’”(财富中文网)

    译者：千牛絮

    Forty years later, this seems pretty apparent. Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women in Business list can easily rank 50 women vs. the 10 on the 1973 proto-list, and as Fortune noted in its October 2012 rankings, "While there are currently 19 female Fortune 500 CEOs ... the talent pool was so deep that two of them didn't make the cut."

    Some of these 50 women climbed the harrowing ranks of their companies. IBM (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty, for instance, joined the tech giant in her early 20s in 1981. That's a mere eight years after Robertson pointed out the "absurd" discrimination female executives faced, such as the Milwaukee Estate Planning Council's refusal to grant membership to Catherine Cleary, president of the First Wisconsin Trust Co. (and a member of Fortune's 1973 list), despite the fact that the $1.25 billion in assets under her management meant she was running the largest trust company in Milwaukee ("indeed in all of Wisconsin.")

    What's also interesting is how similar some of the issues brought up in Robinson's 1973 article are to what's rehashed now.

    Robinson dutifully informed readers that "Most of the women were able to combine careers with families. Six of them are married, and three are widows. Seven of those nine are mothers." But one key reason there weren't more women in leadership roles, Robinson wrote, is the view that careers and kids were incompatible. Indeed, "highly educated women are the ones who most frequently quit their jobs during the rearing of preschool children -- and they are presumably the women whose chances of advancement would otherwise be greatest."

    And then there's the question of ambition -- whether women "leave before you leave" to quote Facebook (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg. "Among these highly successful businesswomen there is general agreement that women's aspirations are still far too low," Robertson wrote.

    "Women may get to the top of the heap at some low level, but they don't try to move up to the next plateau," said Tillie Lewis of Ogden Corp. "Somehow they're not inspired. Maybe they will be, now with women's lib."

    Bernice Lavin of Alberto-Culver, whose profile noted that she took off a Marissa Mayer-esque one month when her three children were born and "has never felt that running a home made her paying job more difficult," reported that the women in her sales force did a better job than the men. But, writes Robertson, "she finds lots more women unwilling to take on responsibility and unduly fearful of making mistakes. She says 'A lot of girls want to be secretaries, and that's it.'"