The "18% higher revenue" figure specifically applies to companies with more than 1000 workers, while companies with fewer workers may average more revenue per employee if they have male CEOs. Besides discussing the study itself, in our interview Viktoria talks about how male employees might want to alter (or not alter) their behavior if they find themselves working for a female boss for the first time. She also discusses challenges a woman might face if she is suddenly put in charge of a heavily male IT or programming staff. Other thoughts she shares have to do with finding mentors and dealing with negative people, both of which apply to people of all genders. Interesting food for thought all around.
Viktoria: If a company has over 1000 employees it has 18% more profitability if it is run by a woman.
Robin: Okay. Why aren’t you running a big company?
Viktoria: Why am I not running a big company? Well... not yet.
Robin: So you feel sooner or later that will be you.
Viktoria: You know, the future is full of mysteries.
Robin: Okay, this survey. How did you choose the people to survey?
Viktoria: Mintigo is a predictive marketing company and we have a database of about 20 million companies so we actually went to our own database and our own information and we pulled the companies from there. So we didn’t go and survey anyone per se but this is data that has been sourced from all over the web. We separated it out female and male CEOs in our database, and that is a really good representative sample, and frankly it is most of the data you can get off the companies in the US we have. So it is a very comprehensive study.
Robin: 20 million? Now I have read over and over again and seen it in my own family that the majority – a slight majority of really small companies – are woman-owned. Part of that, in my family, is because most of the hairdressers are women. I mean, did you get down that far at any point?
Viktoria: So I mean we weren’t really analyzing companies, you know, that are one person or a few people. I would say that just to your same point, there are research studies that say more women start companies but few of them make it to $15 million revenue because for whatever reason, right, you can probably pull up a thousand different ones -- whether it is because their gender, or because the type of company they are founding.
Robin: Okay, but let’s go back to the large companies. Is any of this going to get boards of directors to start specifically recruiting women as executives, do you think?
Viktoria: I think it should. I think what the data shows is that there is you can look it one of two ways: Either that 17% of companies are run by women, and the women who made it to the top are just higher quality than the average man who made it to the top because there were fewer positions for them. Or you can take off in a different way, and the data supports this actually, where women have certain skills that they can offer that are really important to big companies, whether it is communication, whether it is media, whether it is social, whether it is stronger HR, we are seeing all these things in those companies run by women and that should be important.
Robin: Okay. I don’t know if you are qualified or want to speak about specifics—Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!
Robin: What about her?
Viktoria: What about? What specifically are you interested in, how she fits into this?
Robin: Yeah. Do you think she is going to do good, or is she going to blow it, like all other Yahoo! CEOs before her for the last five years?
Viktoria: Well, I think we will see. That’s just the first part of my answer. The other part is that she has really specific skills in the areas that Yahoo! is lacking in and unlike previous CEOS she can dig in pretty deep and move the company forward. It is kind of... it is one data point though, right, it is Yahoo! it is a very unique environment. And Marissa offers certain things just because of who she is, but not necessarily because she is a woman.
Robin: Okay that’s a good point and a good answer. So let me ask you, that leads me right on to the next question, and that is, do technology companies because here this is on Slashdot which is a techie site, women in technology companies: Easier? Harder? I mean, there is so much misogyny in the tech business. You know better than I do, right?
Robin: Yeah, so does that make a difference?
Viktoria: Misogyny? Well of course that makes a difference. I am going to start a little further away and come closer to your question. About tech, what we see is it just supports the hypothesis that companies that are more advanced and are more progressive basically do better. You see that geographically, where there are more women in leadership positions on the coasts than in the center of the country. You see that also in terms of less traditional industries so for example, many factory and construction companies have very very few women, but things like healthcare... and actually tech is not the worst industry when you look at it across the board; tech is kind of middling. You know, there are much worse environments actually out there, if you want to talk about where the biggest problems are, they are actually not in tech -- which is very surprising for a lot of people.
I think part of it, and you think about it from the perspective of, you know, is it a pipeline problem? I think it is two things, right, you need more people, more women going into STEM kind of careers, that is engineering and sciences, but you also need them to be supported in that area, right, so they need to not have the rug pulled out from under them and leave and either go be moms or go to some other industry. So I think if you look at the data about 30 years ago, there were more women than now; twice as many women going into STEM careers then than there are now because those people have been told that oh it is really terrible, it is really scary, don’t do it. The answer is you should do it, you should do it, and I think the environment right now is really right for those people to get the support they need.
Robin: So you are saying even if a few guys -- the basement dwellers with acne guys -- go nyuk nyuk nyuk if you as a... you know, let’s face it, you're an attractive young female in business, what you are saying is you should slap them or ignore them and just drive on, am I right?
Viktoria: Ignore them, move on it is one option sure, I think the other one is to kind of confront them. Sometimes that doesn’t get you the result you want, but I think the more times you try, the more likely you are to succeed and if you can find people to support you and mentors that will move you forward, right, and see you what you are worth, and I think those are the things you should focus on and not the naysayers. Because no matter who you are, you always have someone who is trying to bring you down, if you are doing well especially.
Robin: Always happens. You can have a beard and be an old fat man and it happens. Trust me. How would I know that? But no, seriously, to move just a little bit away from the center and away from the survey that brought this on, how about finding a mentor? How does one do it? I’ve never looked. Well, I had one, several but you know...
Viktoria: Well, that’s one way to do it, right? Sometimes they fall into your lap, but the other part is, you know, keep an eye out, look for people who have had the career path that you would want to have and ask them lots of questions. People love talking about their experience and themselves and if you let them do that then I think they will want to mentor you, and if you are inspiring and motivated, people love communicating with you, you have a fire inside of you, and you can share that with them, and you are getting knowledge from them so it is a two-way street, there’s actually something that each person is getting out of it. I think it is not just I am going to take, take, take from this person, but I am forming a lifelong relationship hopefully with someone who I can offer something to, and they can offer something to me.
Robin: Alright. Let’s move back to our tech people again. We are talking right here, you and me, to an overwhelmingly male audience, overwhelmingly I mean like it is reflective of the technology industry and of the hands-on programmers and sysadmins and such. Overwhelmingly male. If you were one of these guys, and suddenly your new boss is a woman, what should you do differently -- if anything?
Viktoria: I don’t think it is so much about doing something differently. I think if you look at two different people, you are going to treat them differently whether one is a man and one is a woman, or both are men, or both are women. I think it comes down to empathy... what’s hard for that person and where are they going to need you to be more flexible, and you know, I think that works across the board whether she is a mom, so you know on some days, she leaves earlier and some days she comes in later, but if she is getting the job done that you shouldn’t be judged for that. But I think the flip side for a woman is that she needs to understand that maybe this man she is working with has never had a female boss. So it is both people being empathetic and trying to understand and trying to basically make the best out of any situation they are in.