“The Rise of The Female CEO And The Folly of Men Who Just Don’t Get It” copyright Forbes 2011 as first appeared in “The Forbes Women Files”, November 15, 2011. Preview here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/7cpg4s4

By Laura Yecies

On Monday last week I woke up a bit before my 5:45 alarm (yes, quite amazing how one can actually adjust to a new schedule) so had a few minutes to scan email and the online news before my hike and came across the headline “Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO.” Gene Marks, the author, is a Forbes contributor.  My first thought when I read that headline was how silly it was. After all, “Most anyone won’t be CEO.”  You can put pretty name your group for the “anyone” place – most men won’t be CEO, most New Yorkers won’t be CEO, even most Harvard MBAs, though they hate to admit it, won’t be CEO.

Then I read on and was irked. And admittedly, while obviously very curious, I had to set the article aside for a few days to temper my reaction. The article starts with a description of some negative teenage behavior (both boys and girls actually) and then a projection (without any evidence) that the silly “high school girl drama” exhibited by the author’s teenage daughters is typical of professional women.

After reading this, I should have just abandoned the article – “Reason #1” was enough to make this article not credible. But my curiosity got the best of me.

The next point is that men are incapable of taking women seriously in the office and are only focused on women’s appearance. I find this to be an insult to the many serious, professional men I have worked with over the last 23 years. Not that I am naïve to human nature and a bit of normal banter (and by the way women occasionally notice men’s hot or not-so-hot appearance) but I do believe we’ve been mostly past this for years. And to the extent it is present, we should treat this behavior as an unacceptable aberration not to be accepted.

Read more here: http://tinyurl.com/7cpg4s4