I'm a woman CEO and it doesn't change anything

IMO, to be a successful CEO, women have to give up as much personal life as men do. if raising children is part of the equation, it just depends on how much either sex is willing to give that up for a career. i believe i've read that Elon's family is pretty hard-hit on the available-father standpoint stemming from his ambitions.

also, depending on the size of the company, i think women CEOs need to take on some atypically aggressive and assertive business characteristics that are unbecoming of either sex but are typically more acceptable in society for men to step into.

could a woman be the next Larry Ellison? certainly yes, but not without first taking on his asshole qualities. the aggressive characteristics that make him a great multi-$bn CEO also make him a pretty hated guy in many circles. there's a difference between business-respect and personal-respect, some people don't give a shit about the latter and will step on their partners' throats to get ahead.

>>Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you’re a woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have people listen to you...

The way my company's CEO, who is also female, put it: "when you're a woman, people in business don't take you seriously until you are successful."

I'm a guy, but I see this phenomenon everyday when observing the way my female coworkers are treated by (male) managers. The good-looking ones have it worst, in my opinion: while their looks may give them an advantage in certain situations, they often have to work extra hard to get noticed, and when they do become successful, their success is attributed to their looks instead of their intelligence and hard work.

“We need to start emphasizing the success of women CEOs instead of the womanliness of successful CEOs.”

I cried male tears of joy, and when I showed this to my friend, she smiled as well. I'd upvote more than once if I could.

So her title says "it doesn't change a thing" and then in the body she admits that there are some differences:

Of course there are some drawbacks of being a female CEO. When you’re a woman in charge, you do have to work a bit more to get credibility and have people listen to you; it might be harder to recruit developers and make them trust you; and you will end up going to a few sales meetings where the other person is more interested in you than in your product.

There are also some pretty good advantages. It’s sometimes easier to get press coverage, and sales can happen faster. People will usually be keener on lending a hand. And I’m not even talking about all the help I got from fellow female entrepreneurs, especially when I was trying to get things off the ground.

I agree with her general sentiment that being a CEO is hard, regardless of gender. I also agree with her agenda that women need more role models of what it looks like to be a successful woman. But I don't think this kind of dismissal of the issues women have is very helpful. Being a woman does change some things. Understanding that "it has its good points and bad points" is a much, much better message than saying "it isn't any different at all" which is what the title says.

Sort of cleverly, she just used her gender as a means to tout her app in a national newspaper, while mentioning that being female makes it easier to get press.

We have the questions in the debate concerning demographic bias in business or power completely wrong. These articles should disturb us because they aren't about examining what demographic bias means but a rather they produce fluff pieces meant to distract from the issue by saying "see look, a woman can run a country/company and it's no different." The debate is framed in the context of the glass ceiling, if it exists and if there are barriers to entry. What the debate should be about is the glass floor and the group think that is the result of in homogenic environments.

We have way too many articles by women describe how the ceiling works or is broken and way too few from men that look at the problem of the glass floor along the lines of "i'm a man working in a mostly male power structure and here's how this structure creates adverse results." We are so used to accepting the latter we can hardly imagine its effect. Until the entire power structure of a institution mirrors that of the social demographic makeup there is really no reason to take these articles seriously.

Bravo. Love this.

This statement may come off polarizing, but the same applies to minorities.

As a black man, and a Jamaican, other black people and other Jamaicans don't need "black CEOs" to look up to. They just need other CEOs who happen to be black, and other successful entrepreneurs that also happen to be Jamaican.

It is for this reason that I don't support things like quotas. Make sure that X% of your executive ranks are female, or black or asian or any other "under-represented" minority. Quotas are bad policy.

The more people of minority origins that become successful is the more they will inspire others to do the same.

There is a reason so many young black men want to become basketball stars, and why so many Jamaicans are "running" (no pun intended) into athletics. It is because they have realized that they can excel in those fields because of the examples before them. Not that they are anyhow more advantaged in those fields. It is just that the glass ceiling is no longer there.

So Kudos to Ms. Collin for writing this article. Well said!

We need more female entrepreneurs with attitudes like this. Although awareness for equality issues is undoubtedly important, Collin hits the nail on the head by re-focusing on the undeniable truth: running a company is just plain hard. Sure, being female, minority, short, nontechnical, etc can all be drawbacks, but I'd argue that they all pale in comparison to the difficulty that is successfully running a sustainable company. Full disclosure: I am relatively young (20) male hacker of minority descent, and I used to use some of these factors as excuses but now I treat them as irrelevant. Those things simply don't matter to me (in context of running a company or building a product) because it's not really in my power (and not really my overarching mission) to change the culture of the valley and the rest of the tech world. Just my $0.02.

I know this doesn't really touch on the meat of her column, but I was kind of surprised that Mathilde uses "woman CEO" and "female CEO" interchangeably. Usually people have a strong preference for one or the other. (Personally, I prefer using adjectives as adjectives and nouns as nouns, and don't think there's much of a need to turn "woman" into an adjective.)

Isn't Front YCS14? I would love the author to revisit this another year into the company.