Powerful Women

2 Pages 560 Words

Power, Do Women Really Want It? & The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business



The two articles listed above share a common topic, the role of women in business. The thought behind the first article is that even though many women are capable of holding high level positions, a large number of them don’t want to. However, the same women feel that one day there will be a balance of men and women at the top of the corporate ladder. In light of these two conflicting ideas, the question arises: who are the women that will be at the top?
One reason why women don’t want to be powerful is because they have a different idea of “power” than men do. Some women, like Jenny Ming and Meg Whitman, see power as “in your face and aggressive” or having “a negative connotation.” Others, like Gail Berman, feel that power is a turnoff and don’t want it. The fact is that women, or at least the one’s in this article, see power as an influence rather than a rank. Influence through power is something that a majority of women aren’t interested in. They, like Anne Mulcahy of Xerox, would rather lead by other means. Having a demeanor that frightens, or worries people is simply not the type of leadership style that the majority of women want to possess. In fact, when the word leadership is substituted for power, practically every woman expressed wholeheartedly that they wanted to have leadership. Therefore, it seems to be that women do want to be leaders, executives, and CEOs, they just have a different interpretation of the word power than the majority of men do.
However, there is another theory that women simply don’t want power, or leadership, or any other form of the word. A study at General Electric found that voluntary annual turnover for women was 1.5% higher than that of men. Other studies find that 26% of professional women have no desire to hold positions at higher levels, despite the fact that they are ...