The Last Male Bastion

Gender and the CEO Suite in America’s Public Companies

Douglas M. Branson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415872959
• eBook ISBN: 9781135234379
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Not until 1997 did a female become chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 corporation (Jill Barad, at Mattel Toy Co. Women's progress since that time has been in fits and starts, exceedingly slow. The number of women CEOs reached 4 in 1999 only to slide back to 2 in 2001. Meanwhile, while not reaching anything approaching parity, women made significant strides in politics (as senators, cabinet secretaries and governors), in not-for-profit spheres (as CEOs of health care and hospital organizations or of United Way chapters, with budgets of billions of dollars), and at colleges and universities (23 % have female presidents or chancellors). Currently, 3%, or 15, of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

After examining in detail the educations, career progressions, pronouncements and observations, as well as family lives, of the 19 women who have risen to the top (sitting and former CEOs), this book asks, and attempts to answer, two questions:

Why haven't more women reached the CEO suite?How might women in business better position themselves to ascend to the pinnacle?

Part I
Portraits of Women CEOs

1
The Fall of Jill Barad at Mattel Toy

“Be patient but not passive,” advice women in business often receive, is guidance Jill Barad never followed. Showing no patience at all, she brashly demanded progressively better jobs and pay. She showed up on her first day at work wearing purple boots and miniskirt. When she thought it was needed for emphasis, she used profanity. She pushed the pedal to the metal, all the way, for 15 years. It took her to the corner suite, where in 1997 she became the first female CEO in the Fortune 500, crashing through the glass ceiling at Mattel, Inc., the Los Angles toy maker.

There was little fanfare when the Mattel board of directors named Barad. There was similarly little fanfare when the board “accepted” her resignation in February 2000. Publicly, Mattel board members stated “they were willing to give her twice as much time to pull it off because of who she was.”¹ Privately, many rooted for her to fail.

In the business world, Jill Barad was unconventional. She “looked and acted like a Hollywood star.” She wore bright colors, “with accouterments such as fur collars and cuffs,”² much like the Barbie doll line she nurtured. Fortune named her one of the 50 most powerful women in the United States (6th), People one of the “Fifty Most Beautiful People.”³ She reveled in “puff publicity.”⁴

As with her appearance, her leadership style was unconventional. Subordinates at Mattel alternatively described her as “nurturing” or “vicious.”⁵ She had an aggressive “hands on style of management.” Less generously, critics alleged her to be of “sharp tongue and combative nature.” She “obsessed over the slightest details of ‘her’ toys” at Mattel.⁶

Despite her high profile, Jill Barad was dismissed, after three years in office. In an 8-hour emergency meeting, the Mattel board of directors fired her. What went wrong?

Early Indeterminacy

Jill Elikann Barad is the Queens, New York daughter of a producer for NBC. As a youth, she longed for a show business career, performing for her family by singing Broadway show tunes. “I’d try to go to sleep, and she’d be standing on her bed, belting out songs from Oklahoma or the Sound of Music,” says her sister, Jo-Anne. In her first job, as a teenage cashier at her grandparents’ pharmacy, Jill Elikann’s exuberance spilled over. She loved “to learn to meet customers, how to sell, how to talk. She took everything in.”⁷

After graduating from Queens College, Barad says of herself: “I had no clue what I wanted to do. I just saw jobs as fun. I had no goals.” She viewed the life ahead as an opportunity to layer various experiences on top of one another: “[T]he idea of trying everything is important. Somehow all your experiences come together … mak[ing] you multidimensional.”⁸

She acted on childhood aspirations. Jill Elikann went to Hollywood to pursue an acting career, landing a part playing “Miss Italian America” in a 1974 Dino De Laurentis movie, Crazy Joe. To her surprise, the childhood actress found Hollywood to be “silly.” She took a job at Coty Cosmetics as an East Coast traveling sales representative.

Managing Coty’s brands, she found that retailers hid Coty’s cosmetics, giving them limited shelf space. So, on her own, Jill Elikann built a prototype wall display. She forwarded her design to corporate headquarters. It was a hit. One of her supervisors at Coty recalls that “She knew conceptually what could be done to make products look better … [w]e used her display for twenty years.”⁹

After meeting movie producer Tom Barad, in 1978 Jill Elikann returned to Los Angeles, where the couple married. Jill Barad quit her job, after finding that she was pregnant with the first of two sons.¹⁰

Ascent Through the Ranks

Jill Barad re-entered the workforce in 1981, as a $38,000 a year product manager for Mattel, a position she had found through a “headhunter.”¹¹ Her first product at Mattel, called a “Bad Case of Worms,” was a flop but Barad’s home-made advertising campaign seemed to move some product. After the product flopped, Barad went straight to the CEO, Tom Kalinske. She stormed into his office, asking “What the f … do I have to do to get a decent assignment around here?”

Mattel assigned Barad to market an action figure for girls, She-Ra, Princess of Power—an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Master of the Universe, an action figure for boys. She-Ra ultimately flopped too, but Mattel executives were impressed with Barad. In 1982, they promoted Barad to the position of marketing director for the Barbie doll product line, after she had been at Mattel for a year.¹²

Barad became known as the “woman who saved Barbie.” But she did much more. When Barad took charge of the Barbie product line, the average American girl had only one Barbie. By the time Barad moved on from marketing the Barbie line, the average American girl had eight Barbies, plus countless outfits of doll clothing and accessories. Barad marketed Barbies to adult collectors. She introduced a Barbie Doll gift voucher system for the holiday season. Barad employed market segmentation and brand proliferation within the Barbie line to increase sales.¹³

At the Management Level

By 1984, Barad was well on the way to creating a Barbie empire within Mattel. In that year, Mattel promoted her to a vice-president title, with the task of creating modern roles for Barbie to convert the product from blonde bombshell into “a doll for the 90s.”

While Barad’s career was taking off, overall Mattel was in trouble. The video game business had been unable to compete with Nintendo, leaving Mattel on the brink of bankruptcy. Barad’s continued success with the Barbie line stood in contrast, suggesting a route out of Mattel’s troubles.¹⁴ Yet Barad’s quick rise, her success, and her aggression did not sit well with some at Mattel. She recalls, “Many men hated me. I think it can be a tough thing for a man to lose to a woman.”¹⁵

Barad’s marketing prowess, though, won over critics. In 1985 she created “Day-to-Night Barbie,” the first of many Barbie “theme dolls.” She devised a slogan for the new Barbie line: “We girls can do anything!” Each new Barbie was a success in the marketplace. Barad had “executed [her marketing game plan] beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”¹⁶

In 1986, Mattel promoted Barad to executive vice-president. Her business prowess enabled Mattel again to escape bankruptcy in 1987 when the wave it had been riding, action figure toys, crashed. The Barbie line’s sterling performance offset the poor performance of Mattel’s action figure collection. In 1989, Mattel promoted Barad to president of the girls and activity division. In 1990, she became president of Mattel USA.¹⁷

Despite her rise in the corporate organization, Barad remained obsessed with Barbie. In the company, she was known for “her overweening attention to detail, monitoring doll designs down to minor details on their faces.” She defended her hands-on approach by saying that “[w]hat I do in my job, first and foremost, is protect Barbie.”¹⁸ Her obsession was logical, for it had brought great personal success and for Mattel it had averted failure. In the eight years Barad had been involved, Barbie annual sales had gone from $235 million to $1.5 billion.¹⁹

The Slipper Fits

Within Mattel, Barad complemented her attention to detail with an aggressive approach. One colleague remembers that “[s]he was never afraid to go in and ask for a raise. She would just go in and tell people what she wanted and ask: ‘What do I have to do to get it?’ ” In 1992, she entered Mattel CEO John Amerman’s office. She threatened to leave Mattel if Amerman did not assure her that she would succeed him. He would not make that promise: “There was some trepidation on both sides. My retirement was still a long way away.” Barad was 20 years younger than Amerman, and a much more “spontaneous and emotional” individual than Amerman, who was “calm” and “distinguished.”

Later in 1992, Amerman had a change of heart, prompted by Reebok’s courtship of Barad, which culminated in a Barad house hunting trip to Boston, Massachusetts. He called Barad back, assuring her that she would be Amerman’s successor as CEO. In 12 years, she had risen from entry level to being the nation’s second highest paid female executive. In 1996, Mattel paid her $6.17 million.²⁰

On August 22, 1996, the Mattel board of directors named Jill Elikann Barad CEO, effective January 1, 1997. Journalists portrayed her as “the most powerful business woman in the nation.”²¹

The Parade of Horribles

It was not an auspicious time to assume the position. Although Mattel had recovered well from its troubles in the 1980s, with seven straight years of double digit sales and profit growth, in July 1996 Mattel reported a flat quarter. Mattel had also failed in its bid to acquire the second largest U.S. toy maker, Hasbro. Barad had been the lead executive on the 1996 attempt. Mattel had to withdraw its $5.2 billion bid after the Department of Justice raised antitrust objections and the controlling Hassenfeld family became skittish. The failed Hasbro bid was seen as a “major public relations blow” to Mattel.²²

Mattel shareholders had also sued Barad and other Mattel executives in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Mattel executives “inflated sales and disguised profits of its Disney products, allowing management to collect millions of dollars in incentive pay.” Mattel’s toys based upon Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame performed poorly, resulting in a $40 million earning shortfall.²³

Barad, though, consistently promised good things to Wall Street. She publicized Mattel’s goals of 10 percent increases in sales and 15 percent in profits. Under her leadership, Mattel was to decrease dependence on the U.S. market, from 65 to 50 percent of sales, entering new markets worldwide and strengthening its European presence.²⁴

In February 1997, Mattel announced earnings for the fourth quarter 1996. They were flat: 41 cents per share compared to 40 cents in 1995. Mattel also took a one-time $15.1 million charge against earnings to settle the Delaware Disney products litigation.²⁵

In March, the Federal Trade Commission gave Mattel the go-ahead (“Hart–Scott–Rodino clearance” based upon information which a prospective acquirer must furnish the government under the Hart–Scott–Rodino antitrust legislation) for Mattel’s proposed acquisition of Tyco, the third largest toy maker. Barad hailed the acquisition as an opportunity for Mattel-Tyco to “expand their business into 36 countries.” But the $755 million acquisition, as well as other merger activity, would cause Mattel to take a one-time charge of $275 million against earnings for consolidation expense.

Barad then announced that Mattel-Tyco would eliminate 2,700 jobs, nearly 10 percent of their combined workforce, mainly by closing down “noncore” lines of business. About the same time she began pulling back...

Table of contents

• Also by the Author
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Portraits of Women CEOs
• Part II Why There Aren’t More
• Part III How to Get There
• Notes
• Index