THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 1, 1995 TAG: 9511010001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
This paper carries a local column called ``He said/she said.'' He says, and she contradicts, or vice versa.
The typical American corporation board of directors might be described as ``he said/he said/he said/he said/he said/he said/he said/he said/he said/she said.'' They say and maybe she gets a word in, though probably not the last one.
According to a poll of Fortune 500 companies last year, 9.5 percent of the 6,274 corporate board seats were occupied by women.
Two-thirds of the boards had one woman or none, the poll showed. On those boards, never is heard the sound of one woman reaffirming what another woman just said.
``It takes the presence of two or more women for a company to fully benefit from the perspectives of its female directors,'' said John Bryan, chairman and chief executive of Sara Lee Corp. and chairman of the board of directors of Catalyst, the nonprofit consulting and research group that conducted the survey of boards of directors.
When companies essentially cut out half the population from a meaningful role on their boards of directors, they play the business game with one hand tied behind their backs. Motorola Vice President Roberta Gutman said as much recently at Hampton University's second annual conference on Advancing Minorities' Interest in Engineering.
Motorola, which intends to open a computer-chip plant near Richmond, aggressively recruits female and minority scientists and engineers, she said, but not out of ideology or kindheartedness.
``For us, this is not an altruistic venture. What's driving us is global competition. If we wish to compete globally, we need to use the entire population. The power of plurality in our society has for too many years been left lacking.''
Without question, women are advancing in business - but slowly. The percentage of Fortune 500 companies with a woman director rose from 69 in 1993 to 75 last year.
Still, a measure of what women face in the business world, not to mention life, is the fact that T-shirts with the message ``Someday A Woman Will Be President'' proved controversial.
The Associated Press reported that the shirts were yanked from a Wal-Mart store in Miramar, Fla., after a few customers objected. Their complaint, as a company spokesperson carefully put it, ``was about the political nature of the message.''
After Ann Moliver Ruben, the psychologist who designed the shirts, went public saying a Wal-Mart buyer told her the message ``goes against Wal-Mart's family values,'' women's groups across the country threatened to boycott Wal-Mart, whereupon the 2,188-store chain said it would sell the shirts after all.
Wal-Mart spokesperson Stacey Webb said recently regarding the initial decision to yank the shirts, ``We have a tendency to overreact to our customers needs and requests.'' (That's putting the best possible light on a dicey situation.)
Speaking in a voice that seemed to walk on eggs, Webb continued, ``We are negotiating with the T-shirt vendor, so we are not sure which areas they will be in.'' Initially, they were only in the one Miramar store, starting with 205 shirts. When the complaints were received, 168 remained. Currently the T-shirts are in no Wal-Mart stores.
That a T-shirt saying a woman will be president should prove controversial is enough to make a man or woman scream, though if woman does, she'll be labeled hysterical.
A final thought: If women ran the world, especially Congress and the General Assembly, discussions about driving welfare recipients into the workplace would begin with planning for child care. by CNB