The Wall Street Journal recently published a report on the top women in business—50 of them, to be exact. The report notes that so far, women have mainly broken into the upper ranks in industries with a customer base of women: consumer products, retail, publishing, and media, whereas very few of them are leaders in science and technology. 
An S&MM series on women in business was based on our own research that found that there are very few women in top sales roles, and that they tend to pursue advertising, marketing or communications instead. Sales is especially notorious for long hours and traveling; could this be a reason why women avoid it? I know I wouldn’t enjoy all the traveling involved. Or is there more of a glass ceiling in the sales profession?
The actual list from WSJ has women business leaders from a variety of industries. There are some from the female-oriented industries: Oprah Winfrey, Andrea Jung of Avon, and Tami Booth Corwin of Rodale Books. But I wouldn't consider most of the listmakers as being from industries that cater to a large female market. For instance, some other list-makers were Xie Qihua of Shanghai Baosteel, Linda Cook of Royal Dutch Shell, and Zoe Cruz of Morgan Stanley.
Comments