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Of Feminism, Conception, and Some Reality

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Indira Krishnamurthy Nooyi (from Tamil Nadu, India) is the chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, the world`s fourth-largest food and beverage company.  According to Forbes magazine`s 2007 poll, Ms. Nooyi is the fifth most powerful woman in the world. She has been named the #1 Most Powerful Woman in Business in 2006 & 2007 by Fortune magazine [source].

Nooyi was born in Southern India, and went on to obtain degrees in chemistry, physics and math and master`s degrees from Calcutta`s Indian Institute of Management and Yale University. She came to the U.S. from India in 1978. Prior to joining PepsiCo in 1994, Nooyi did stints at the Boston Consulting Group and Motorola. "Being a woman, being foreign-born, you`ve got to be smarter than anyone else," she has said [source].

This week's reading portrayed a picture of women, primarily in the organization structure and analyzed the reasons why women feel [they are] oppressed. From a feminist lens we see why women are neglected, subordinated, marginalized, and abused in the work place. With many relevant examples we see the working conditions, ways of abuse, language as tools of oppression and maintaining dominance. Most of us probably know about the situation in western companies during the middle of the last century, where women employees were expected to provide sexual favors to their bosses as "after lunch quickies." But domination continues, and in more and more different and 'creative forms nowadays. And yet we read about female CEOs from other parts of the world. One example is that of Indira K. Nooyi above. But there is more.

Indian women may not have proportionate representation in companies, but they are better off than women elsewhere. Eleven percent of 240 large companies - Indian-owned as well as multinational, private as well as state-owned - have women CEOs, according to a study carried out by executive search firm EMA Partners. In comparison, only three percent of the Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs [source].

Are these CEOs in their positions without hard work? Have they not been subjected to work place issues as mentioned and propagated by feminist theorists? Why are there more CEOs in eastern countries than western one? Do these questions force more questions about what is there difference (if any) in the practices of organizations in those two geographical locations? 
Let us talk more about this.
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