The female factor

South Florida CEO, May, 2004

As we planned this month's cover story about women in South Florida's executive suites, we began by compiling the names of women who were in the top echelons of management. We were surprised by how quickly we came up with so many high-profile women at the helm of South Florida companies. After that, our phone calls yielded many more names in lower-profile positions.

We set out to speak with a cross-section of those women in charge, asking them about the role that gender has played in their careers.

We learned that, while women occupy the executive suites of what you might call "corporate America"--the larger corporations--in disproportionately small numbers, women running their own companies are plentiful in entrepreneurial South Florida. We also learned that few female business leaders believe that gender hinders their ability to excel in their current positions.

Certainly, there may be more barriers along the way to the top than there are once you're actually the boss. But institutionalized discrimination against women is largely absent in South Florida, as are the days of outright refusals to consider women for certain positions, or the days when companies believed it was acceptable to deny promotions or to pay differently based on gender.

That's not to say that there are no barriers for women in the business world. There are still plenty of people, of both genders, who believe a man should be in charge. There are the simple habitual assumptions: that a woman wouldn't enjoy a ballgame with a client, or that a woman must be the assistant to the man who is with her--instead of the reverse. Some of this is simply the legacy of the past. Some of it has to do with how women approach--or fail to approach--the world of business and deal-making. The reasons are myriad and some of the answers to our questions were unexpected. To see what we discovered, read the feature, which begins on page 20.