Women in Business

Recently, it seems there's an uprising of publications, events and organizations dedicated to women in business. Some seem serious about bringing women together to help advance their careers, while others seem more interested in creating out-of-office days for shopping veiled as “networking.” Pink invitations are a dead giveaway.

At the Business Observer, we've talked about doing a women in business issue for years, but we've always shied away from it. It wasn't because we weren't comfortable with the subject, or didn't think it was important or relevant. It was that in our minds, it seemed wrong to do an issue that lauds women for doing the same things men do.

We look for success stories no matter the race, ethnicity or gender of our subjects. We care about what strategy they've chosen to advance their business, how they've found success and what they're going to do next to keep their business growing — not what they look like. We think it's insulting to treat women any differently from their male counterparts on these pages, including caging them into an issue about women.

Yet the fact remains that we end up with far fewer women in our newspaper than we'd like. It appears there are fewer women presidents, CEOs and entrepreneurs — the C-suite positions on which we focus. This results in a disparity of coverage regarding gender.

The issue has sparked some spirited discussions in our editorial meetings for years, but we decided it was time to tackle the topic. We put a lot of thought into how to cover the issue without diminishing the achievements of the women featured, as well as how to add something to the conversation that isn't trite or obvious.

To cover this complex topic, the issue before you has two main parts. We start with stories of women who have built their business in typically male-dominated industries — long before this was accepted — and what it took to overcome some challenges inherent in that quest.

The second part features a discussion from a panel of five prominent women business leaders, as well as their tips for other women in business. Although we can only share a fraction of the conversation in print, you can listen to the entire discussion below.

The most repeated parts of the ladies' advice (have a plan, be professional, then outperform and outwork everyone) could apply to either gender. Members of the panel stated several times how much progress has been made, and some wondered if talking about women in business is even worth the time these days. As Alex Miller, CEO of Mercedes Medical, put it: “... in a decade where we need it least, we are getting it most.”

That may be true, but the truth also remains that there will always be differences between men and women — it's in our DNA. But, as our columnist Denise Federer writes, the key to lessening disparity is having both men and women understand these differences, so that we can focus on what really matters: performance.

Notes