Women @ The Wheel
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 26th, 2013
Good morning!
So sorry for the very late post. I have been working on Zen Lill’s photo montage this morning but technical challenges have prevented me from being able to post them. We’re working on it so please be patient. You can expect them in the next day or so.
Here’s a little something that we girls already know but certainly some men may not, and perhaps a few of you ladies too. :) In my opinion, this is something definitely worth sharing just in case you knew and need a little reminder, and if you didn’t, lucky you, you know now.
Get. on. it. Hire and promote more women in your company. Or better yet girls, start your own company. Women rock.
Women Executives Make Venture-Backed Companies More Successful: Study
Venture-backed companies that include females as senior executives are more likely to succeed than companies where only males are in charge, according to new research from Dow Jones.
The report, “Women at the Wheel,” does not speculate on why female executives improve a company’s chance of success, nor did it study companies where only females are involved.
But it finds that companies have a greater chance of either going public, operating profitably or being sold for more money than they’ve raised when they have females acting as founders, board members, C-level officers, vice presidents and/or directors. At successful companies, the median proportion of female executives was 7.1%; at unsuccessful companies, 3.1%.
The report followed 20,194 U.S.-based companies in the Dow Jones VentureSourcedatabase that either received funding or exited between 1997 and 2011. Of the 167,556 executives involved, about 7% were female.
Attitudes about women are changing rapidly in the technology industry, where female participation continues to increase. This year, while two Bay Area investment firms (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Pantheon Ventures) were sued by women for gender discrimination, the board of Yahoo Inc. named a pregnant Marissa Mayer as the company’s president and CEO.
Very few companies in the report–only 1.3%–had a female founder, but companies tend to hire more women as they grow: 6.5% of companies had a female CEO, and 20% had one or more female C-level executives, most commonly in sales and marketing roles.
“I continue to be surprised that there aren’t more venture-backed companies with women CEOs,” said Cameron Lester, a general partner at Azure Capital Partners. Azure has invested in several women-led companies, including VMware Inc., a software virtualization company that sold to EMC Corp. in 2003 for $635 million and later went public.
Women face bias in the tech industry, Mr. Lester said–investors “tend to go with what they know” and are more likely to back a company when it’s run by someone who fits the typical entrepreneur profile, such as a young, male computer scientist who’s graduated from Stanford University and worked at a hot company like Google Inc. or Facebook Inc.
Azure, which was founded by former Wall Street analysts, tries to avoid such bias by basing its investments on research. Also, female tech executives tend to be better on average than their male counterparts because they’ve survived the industry’s “natural selection,” he said.
Any kind of diversity is good for a company because it brings in different points of view when decisions have to be made, said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a partner at Accel Partners and one of Silicon Valley’s few female venture capitalists.
Women, for instance, are more likely than men to think of different types of customers for a company to target or different ways to sell to them, she said, since “women are not the target customer in Silicon Valley for highly technical services. They think more out of the box.”
Women also tend to be more conservative than men, which is both good and bad. Financially, they may raise less money than men, which makes them more capital-efficient, but they’re also more likely to sell a company when they get a good offer, rather than to keep it independent or take it public for a bigger success down the road, according to Ms. Ranzetta.
“There are not enough women CEOs and executives taking companies public,” she said.
Personally, women tend to be more careful about business decisions, and that’s not always good either, according to Damballa Inc. Chief Executive Val Rahmani, who joined the security company in 2009 after 18 years as an executive at International Business Machines Corp.
Women may think very carefully before making a business decision, she said, “whereas a lot of guys have a ‘What the hell, let’s give it a go’ attitude” that can be useful when companies need to move quickly.
But women are also more concerned about the emotional well-being of their team. Although she can be tough and mean when people aren’t delivering, “we run more as a family (at Damballa),” Ms. Rahmani said. “I would love for everybody on my team to be happy.”
Ms. Rahmani urges the women who work for her not to try to disguise their looks by wearing “frumpy” clothes to work. She also encourages women to study more math and ignore the mysticism that surrounds tech start-ups.
“Venture capitalists are smart folks, but at the end of the day, they’re just people wanting to invest in something good,” she said.
The full study can be found here.
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Happy Sunday! Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Thank for being here with me!
Peace & Love…you know what to do.
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michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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May 27th, 2013 at 9:55 am
Maybe the answer lies in the fact that the individual women who represent 7% of VC investors are such amazingly outstanding women to have made it to the top in the VC world.
It’s very difficult to generalize from such a small sample to the whole wide world of women. They are unique, and we should be grateful for the path they cut on our behalf.
May 27th, 2013 at 9:56 am
What difference does it make. White men will continue to give employment preferences to white men.
May 27th, 2013 at 10:10 am
Surprising Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
When people think about Parkinson’s disease, what comes to mind are the characteristic movement problems—shakiness, rigidity, slowness. Yet even very early in the disease, Parkinson’s brings other symptoms that have nothing to do with impaired movement.
Though these symptoms can lower quality of life, many Parkinson’s patients don’t mention them to their doctors, perhaps mistaking them for normal signs of aging…and doctors fail to ask about them.
This is a shame, since many of these nonmotor symptoms are treatable. A new study highlights what patients should know about these other Parkinson’s symptoms…
The study:
Participants included 159 adults with early-stage Parkinson’s plus 99 healthy adults. In both groups, the average age was in the late 60s. All participants answered a questionnaire that screened for 30 different nonmotor symptoms, including gastrointestinal and urinary problems…sexual dysfunction…emotional and cognitive troubles…sleep difficulties and more.
Findings:
On average, people with early Parkinson’s disease had 8.4 of these nonmotor symptoms, while the healthy participants had only 2.8 of the symptoms. The most common symptoms in the Parkinson’s group were drooling…urinary urgency…impaired sense of smell…anxiety…and constipation.
You might be thinking that some of these symptoms are common complaints that come with age. And that’s true—but the symptoms were much more common among the Parkinson’s patients than among the other people in the study.
For example, among Parkinson’s patients, 56% had problems with drooling, 46% experienced urinary urgency and 42% had constipation…but among the healthy participants, only 6% drooled, 19% had urinary urgency and 7% had constipation.
Even if you have not been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, it is important to be aware of this research because the nonmotor symptoms of the disease sometimes are the first to appear. Bringing these symptoms to a doctor’s attention may lead to a speedier and more accurate diagnosis.
What you can do: To take the Parkinson’s Disease Nonmotor Symptoms Questionnaire, click here and then download “NMSQuest.” Fill it out, then show it to your doctor.
Many of these 30 nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can be treated—but first, you and your doctor must recognize them for what they are.
More info on Parkinson’s disease: Read Cycling Improves Parkinson’s…Easy Way to Ward Off Parkinson’s…Gentle Treatment for Parkinson’s…and Exercise That Can Reverse Parkinson’s Symptoms.
Source: Tien K. Khoo, PhD, senior lecturer, Griffith University School of Medicine, Australia. He completed this research while a research fellow at Newcastle University in England. His study was published in Neurology.
May 27th, 2013 at 10:12 am
Of course we have to be better to even get a look for the position.
May 27th, 2013 at 10:13 am
I read your article today, and I agree that women’s roles in business are changing throughout the world. Recently, Richard Branson wrote an article backing more women in the board room and supporting countries that mandated it. What I think will be interesting to see is how women embrace their expanding roles and how they (and men) handle the new situations.
May 27th, 2013 at 10:25 am
The researchers didn’t delve into why women can help a startup succeed, or why there are so few at new startups. But it seems like having diverse leadership and a wide array of viewpoints would certainly be helpful to a company.”
May 27th, 2013 at 10:25 am
My wife has been involved in two successful start ups and was a key factor in them going public even though she was only a senior manager in engineering ( titles mean little at a true start up). Perhaps they should look into why women make a difference.
May 27th, 2013 at 10:28 am
Chicken and Vegetable Kabobs
by Dr. David Williams
Filed Under: Recipes, Main Dishes
Last Reviewed 08/24/2012
4 oz. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 green pepper
1 large onion
8 oz. cherry tomatoes
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
8 oz. brown rice, cooked
4 skewers (if wooden, soak in water before hand)
Cut the chicken and green pepper into 1-inch squares and skewer alternately with tomatoes and onions. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Grill kebobs for 8–10 minutes or until cooked through. Serve with brown rice.
Tip: Substitute steak for chicken. Also try zucchini and mushrooms in place of tomatoes and onions.