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Family Matters
Many leadership qualities -- passion, risk taking, team building -- are not gender-specific. But the realities of holding a leadership position, working long hours and traveling extensively pose special challenges for women who have families. As much as roles are changing, women are still viewed as the primary caregiver.
"I come from a culture where the boys are always told they are going to be engineers and the girls are always told they are going to be married or become teachers," Riazi says, adding that her parents broke from this tradition and encouraged their daughters to pursue careers. "We learn in this society to be a woman. What does that mean? We need to define that." Or perhaps redefine it.
The Compel- and WITI-sponsored study found that the majority of the women CIOs interviewed were married with children. "It was very interesting to us that many had achieved these incredible positions and, more often than not, were married with children," Shafer says. However, this was not the case with the women we interviewed: They were married, sometimes more than once, or had significant others, but the majority did not have children.
"I see a lot of high-powered women in big jobs with fabulous families, and they do make time for their family. Can you have both? It's difficult," says Riazi, who is not married. "[CIOs] are expected to work much longer hours. We are expected to travel a lot. And with the technologies everywhere, even when you're home, you're looking at your mail or you're on a conference call and, especially if you are global, it is all hours."
Schwab, who is married but doesn't have children, agrees. "I will say there are probably some things that have been easier in my career because we don't have kids," she says. "Now, I don't want to send a message to people that says you can't do it with kids, because you certainly can. But when there was some systems crisis going on or some really intensive project that required a gazillion hours, it was flat-out easier to not have to worry about kids as well -- just a fact of my life."
Even the spouse or significant other needs some time. Bayles, who is not married, traveled quite a bit during her consulting years. But she made it a point to go home on weekends to maintain relationships. "The significant other needs to see you at least once a week, I figure," she laughs.
Bonnie Hardy, CIO of $100-million fisheries company Slade Gorton & Co. Inc., is one of the few interviewed for this story who has children. She says her household underwent a change when her job required regular travel. Her husband became a stay-at-home dad and assumed the lion's share of daily responsibilities for their two children. "Without that, it would have been far more difficult for me to achieve some of these things," Hardy says. "For three years, when I was doing [an] integration project, I was gone every other week."
Mary Finlay's husband is another stay-at-home dad watching two teenage daughters who are 13 and 14 years old. "I couldn't have or wouldn't have wanted to do what I do as a career if I didn't have that behind me and what my husband has done to support me on that front," Finlay says.
Clearly, becoming a CIO isn't easy for a man or woman. It requires a helpful hand from mentors, a passion and commitment for the job, and the courage to stick one's neck out. And it's a demanding job that will also put pressure on a CIO's personal life.
"It is much more a family struggle now," June Drewry says. "Maybe because it is no longer a woman's role [as primary caregiver], more and more companies are struggling with it overall and saying, 'We have to find the right balance for our people,' because everybody wants that balance."
But these women CIOs don't express any regrets. They may have made sacrifices, but they see the rewards. As Ogilvy's Riazi says, "Every decision I made until now was the right decision for me."
Linda Tucci is senior news writer for SearchCIO.com. Write to her at ltucci@techtarget.com.
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