Regarding Anne Jolis's May 19 op-ed ("What Women Want"), the question of whether European women want to serve on corporate boards is moot until they are given the opportunity to do so. A German acquaintance once summed up the prevailing wisdom quite clearly: "Women will never be managers. They cannot be trusted to make the right decisions."
This lays bare the underlying issue: how women handle and use information. First, women are not afraid to hold and discuss dissenting views. This deviation from groupthink forces those around them to think and can create rifts when others are insecure in their positions. Second, women tend to share information instead of hoarding it, which tends to compromise secret strategies and backroom deals. This openness is a key factor in the exclusion of those of us who would gladly serve in the upper ranks of command-and-control organizations.
Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann's remarks earlier this year about improving the looks of corporate boards were clueless, but they included a grain of truth. It's not our pretty faces that improve things so much as the disinfecting sunshine that beams from them.
Katherine Helmetag
Düsseldorf, Germany
Note from KBJ: I'm confused. You mean there are differences between men and women? Don't tell progressives!
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 