There’s a reason women aren’t doing well in Michigan’s executive boardrooms: Stupid, self-defeating, narrow-minded sexism.
That’s especially true in the automotive world. How dumb is that? Consider: The presidents of the state’s two major universities, MSU and the U of M, are women. The governor is a woman.
One of our two U.S. senators is a woman, as is the secretary of state. Yet do you know when the Ford Motor company named its first woman executive vice president? Two weeks ago, when Anne Stevens became chief operating officer for North America.
The first time General Motors made a woman head of one iof its major brands, Debra Kelly-Ennis soon found herself given the task of shutting Oldsmobile down. Afterwards, she was shunted off to Saab.
Chrysler nowadays is, of course, only an American subsidiary of a German company. They aren‘t doing especially better in terms of promoting women, so far as I can tell, but then they probably aren’t in the same league as Ford and GM. Chrysler, after all, makes money.
General Motors and Ford are bleeding green at a virtually unimaginable rate. General Motors lost more than a billion dollars over the last three months. Ford lost that much in North America alone. The reasons why are well known. Basically, the automakers are run by an insular group of similar-minded white men.
Fourteen years ago, facing similar losses, the GM board revolted and, for a time, turned control over to a toothpaste salesman from Cincinnati who at least got rid of the deadwood.
Now it is time for sterner measures. As soon as I become dictator, I plan to make Anne Stevens head of Ford and tell Bill Ford Junior to turn his attention to fixing the Lions. And I would put revered automotive analyst Maryann Keller in charge of GM.
And if you don’t think that is a fair test of female executive ability, you are probably right.
After all, it is hard to see how they could possibly do worse.
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