The Chosen Few

But Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam, professors at the University of Exeter in the U.K., sound a note of caution over recent executive appointments. They found in a 2005 study of FTSE 100 companies that women were significantly more likely than men to be appointed to boards of poorly performing companies, most often in a bid to use these relatively rare promotions to signal a major change of direction in policy. Charged with tricky turnarounds, these women find their positions more precarious. Having broken through the glass ceiling, the academics note, women often find themselves perched atop a "glass cliff."

Female executives also face a lot of old prejudices. Last year, Catalyst, a consultancy, polled 935 alumni of Swiss business school IMD — most of whom, both male and female, identified themselves as managers — and found that they held clear stereotypical views of the relative strengths of male and female leaders. Women were thought to outperform men at supporting others, or "taking care," while men were seen as more effective problem solvers with a knack for influencing superiors, or "taking charge."

Verluyten of Umicore experienced the effects of this type of thinking first hand. After winning the promotion to her first CFO post, at Mobistar, "there was a lot of resistance," she recalls. "I have a different style of influencing than most men, and in the beginning my finance organization saw this as a sign of weakness." It took six months to establish her style within the culture of the department, she says, after which it "ran like a train." Her finance team won awards in Belgium and her reputation as CFO grew. After announcing her move to Umicore, analyst Pierre-Antoine Machelon of Exane BNP Paribas published an alert on Mobistar, noting that the departure of "highly regarded" Verluyten was "not good news" for the company.

Push and Pull
Now in her seventh year as CFO of a large, listed company, Verluyten is one of the longest-serving female finance chiefs in Europe. Against all of the hardship, she says, one factor that has aided her rise to the top is the fact that she is not married and doesn't have children.

"Successful businesswomen often don't have breaks or part-time arrangements," notes Hamori of the Instituto de Empresa. But according to the New York-based Center for Work-Life Policy, around 40 percent of women step off the career ladder at some point, most often driven by "pull" factors, such as having children or caring for a parent, rather than "push" factors, such as career-related stress or unhappiness. More than 90 percent of women who "off-ramp" want to return to work, although only 75 percent eventually do, with 40 percent making it back to full-time employment.

Helen Jesson, the London-based CFO for the international operations of Pitney Bowes, a $5.7 billion (€4.3 billion) U.S. office-equipment maker, provides a good example of the juggling act required for working mothers to reach the upper echelons of finance. After working at KPMG and then the Hilton Group in the U.K., she joined food group United Biscuits, taking up finance jobs in the Netherlands and Belgium, where she had her first child in 1999. Due to a heavy workload, she went on maternity leave for only six weeks before returning to work, while her husband, an engineer, took a sabbatical to stay at home with their daughter.

Upon finishing her assignment in Belgium, Jesson decided to leave United Biscuits before the birth of her second daughter. "I was keen to spend a reasonable length of time with my second child," she says, though the year she spent out of the workforce was longer than she initially anticipated. "Both financially and emotionally, it suited both [my husband and I] to go back to work," she says. Since moving back the to U.K., Jesson's husband has worked part-time while she spent three years as deputy CFO of ESAB, a London-based welding and cutting machinery maker, as well as a year as an interim executive running a global treasury project at sub-sea oil and gas group, Acergy.

Last summer, Pitney Bowes came calling with a major job offer: to lead the finance department for its billion-dollar international unit, covering 27 countries on three continents. Due to the time and travel commitments, "my husband and I had long, serious discussions before we decided whether I would take the job," Jesson, 43, recalls.

In October, she accepted the offer, but on her own terms. Pitney Bowes agreed with Jesson that she works the normal — that is, long — hours from Monday to Thursday, and spends Fridays at home, walking her girls to school in the morning and working a shorter day from her home office. "It was never up for debate," Jesson says. "The company had no problem with it. There was just a nod of the head and the interviews carried on."

Support Structure
Jesson's case provides evidence of companies showing an increasing willingness to help executives achieve a work-life balance. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox compares women in business today to second-generation immigrants. "The first generation were pioneers, learning to speak a new language and adapt to a new culture," says the Paris-based managing partner of consultancy Diafora and founder of the European Professional Women's Network. "Now, there are a lot of us, and we've adapted as much as we're going to. It's the companies that now have to adapt if they want to optimize this talent pool."

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