Schumpeter
Sex in the boardroom
Claims that women manage differently from—or better than—men are questionable
Jun 6th 2015 | From the print edition
来源：Economist
翻译：Z.K.
ONE by one, the glittering prizes are falling to women. General Motors, IBM, PepsiCo, Lockheed Martin and DuPont are among a couple of dozen giant American companies with female bosses. Oxford University is about to follow the footsteps of Harvard and appoint its first female leader; and next year the United States may elect its first woman president. Women still have an enormous way to go: the New York Times points out that more big American firms are run by men called John than by women. But the trend is clear: women now make up more than 50% of university graduates and of new hires by big employers.
一个接一个，女人获得了越来越多的好评。美国几十家大公司都拥有女性高层，通用，IBM，百事，Lockheed Martin(美国洛克希德-马丁公司)和杜邦是这些公司之一。牛津大学也准备跟随哈佛大学的步伐，任命其第一任女性校长。到明年，美国可能会选举出他们的第一任女总统。女性还有很大的发展潜力：纽约时报指出，美国的大公司更多的是由名字叫John的男人在领导而不是由女人来领导，但是趋势很明显，现在，大学毕业生和大公司的新员工当中，女性比例站到了50%以上。
Will this growing cadre of female bosses manage any differently from men? Forty years ago feminists would have found the very question demeaning. Pioneers such as Margaret Thatcher argued that women could and would do the same job as men, if given a chance. But today some management scholars argue that women excel in the leadership qualities most valued in modern firms. Some ask whether the financial crisis would have been as bad had Lehman Brothers been Lehman Sisters, given research suggesting a link between testosterone levels and risk-taking.
越来越多的女老板管理跟男性有什么不同吗？四十年前，女权主义者会认为这个问题是在贬低女性。女权主义的先驱，如撒切尔夫人认为，只要给女人机会，她们的工作可以做得跟男人一样好。但是现在，一些管理学家认为，女性拥有出色的领导素质，这是现代企业最为看重的素质。鉴于研究表明睾丸激素水平和冒险之间的联系，有人会问，如果是雷曼姐妹而不是雷曼兄弟主导华尔街，经济危机是否会如此严重？
Supporters of this position are fond of quoting two studies by McKinsey, in 2007 and 2008, of large groups of managers in a variety of businesses. The consulting firm found that five “leadership behaviours” are seen in women more frequently than in men: people-development; setting expectations and rewards; providing role models; giving inspiration; and participative decision-making. It argued that such behaviours are particularly valuable in today’s less-hierarchical companies. By contrast, the two that men were found to adopt more often than women sound rather old-fashioned: control and corrective action; and individualistic decision-making.
这一立场的支持者喜欢引用麦肯锡公司在2007-2008年所做的两个研究，这两个研究涉及到了大量不同企业的管理者。这个咨询公司发现，五种“领导行为”在女性身上表现的更为频繁：人的发展，设定期望和奖励，树立榜样，给予激励，参与决策。麦肯锡公司认为，这些行为对于现代层次较少公司尤其有价值。相比之下，两种男性比女性表现频繁的行为显得老式一些：控制和纠正措施，个人主义决策。
Those who say women are better suited to taking charge of today’s companies also lean on two other arguments. The first is that women are better at “androgynous” management—that is, combining supposedly “male” and “female” characteristics into a powerful mixture. This is particularly valuable in businesses undergoing great upheaval, which need a combination of command-and-control and caring-and-sharing. The second is that women differ from men not so much in their leadership styles as in the values that they bring to the job. They are much more influenced by compassion and fairness than men.
那些说女性比男性更适合管理现代公司的人还有另外两项依据。第一，女性更擅长所谓“雌雄同体”式的管理，也就是说，把男性的特点和女性的特点结合起来成为一个强大的组合。这种品质在经历大动荡的公司中尤为珍贵，它们需要指挥和控制，同时需要关怀和分享。第二，女人和男人的不同不仅是他们的领导风格不同，还在于它们给工作带来的价值不同。她们更容易受同情心和公平的影响。
McKinsey’s studies rest on taking snapshots of managers’ opinions and scoring them. But opinions about management are in a constant flux; and managers tend to tell interviewers what they think they want to hear. The argument that women are better at managing androgynously is a bit more plausible—though the data to support this are scant. The final argument, about the human values women bring to the job of leadership, has the best supporting evidence. Around the world women are more likely to vote for parties that place a higher value on compassion than men. American private companies run by women lay off significantly fewer workers than ones run by men. Fortune 500 companies with more women on their boards donate more to charity. However, even when it resonates, the claim that women make better leaders needs to be weighed against three considerations.
麦肯锡的研究是基于对管理者的意见采访，并对他们的观点进行打分。但是对于管理的看法是不断变化的，并且管理者倾向于告诉采访者他们认为采访者想听到的。关于女性更善于“雌雄同体”的说法还比较可信一些，虽然支持这一说法的数据十分有限。最后一个说法，女性领导工作带来的人的价值，有非常好的佐证。全世界的女人都比男人更愿意把票投给把慈善赋予更高价值的政党。由女人领导的美国私人公司裁员明显比由男人领导的公司要少很多。董事会里面女性偏多的世界500强企业给慈善机构的捐款要多一些。然而，即便如此，宣称女性是更好的领导者的说法必须经过三个方面的考虑权衡。
The first is that lumping women bosses together obscures the huge differences between them. There are plenty of female bosses who are as hard-headed as any male. After Harriet Green took charge of Thomas Cook, a struggling travel business, she got rid of 2,500 staff and cut senior management posts by one-third. Jill Abramson, the first female editor of the New York Times, was removed for “arbitrary decision-making”, a “failure to consult” and “inadequate communication”. Even if women as a whole are more compassionate than men, that is no guarantee that a highly selected group of women, such as those who reach the top of companies, are also more compassionate.
首先，把所有的女性领导混为一谈会掩盖她们之间的巨大差异。有很多的女老板跟男人一样头脑清醒。Harriet Green接管Thomas Cook这个陷入困境的旅游公司之后，她裁掉了2500个员工并且削减了1/3的高层管理职位。纽约时报的第一任女编辑Jill Abramson因为“随意决策”、“不能协商”、“沟通不够”而被解雇。即便女人作为一个整体比男人富有同情心，但是这不能保证一群经过层层筛选的女人，比如那些到达公司的顶层的女人也更富有同情心。
That leads to the second consideration: that both male and female managers are perfectly capable of adapting their leadership styles to meet changing circumstances. Male managers are increasingly embracing a collaborative approach to leadership, as they adapt to a society that has become less deferential. In a 2013 study of 917 managers in Norway—a country that has led the way in female-friendly policies, from board quotas to public child care—Anne Grethe Solberg, a sociologist, concluded that: “Men and women don’t have different styles of leadership.”
这导致了第二个需要考虑的因素，男性和女性管理者都能够完美地调整他们的领导风格以适应变化的环境。男性管理者越来越多的欢迎协作的领导方式，因为他们适应了一个没那么毕恭毕敬的社会。2013年在挪威这个倡导对女性友好的国家，一个关于917名管理者的调查
Vive la difference?
The third, and main, problem with the argument that women do a better job in running a company is the lack of solid evidence that putting more women into senior jobs improves a business’s performance. Several early studies in this field found that companies with more women in their executive suites and on their boards had better financial outcomes. But more recent research has cast doubt on this. A study of a large sample of American firms by Renee Adams and Daniel Ferreira, two economists, found that: “The average effect of gender diversity on firm performance is negative.” A large study of the influence of diversity on group performance in companies, by Hans van Dijk, a Dutch academic, and two colleagues, found that gender diversity has no overall effect. Two studies of public companies in Norway, following legislation requiring them to give at least 40% of board seats to women, found that increasing the number of women had a negative effect on profits.
Those arguing that women leaders are different, and better, may have the best of intentions. But they are piling flimsy evidence on dubious argument to produce politically correct hokum. In some societies such claims risk reinforcing stereotypes about the sort of job that women are “good for”. The only enlightened policy for selecting leaders is to judge people purely on their individual merits. Anything else is just prejudice in disguise.