Beyond a pink phone

By Anne Bouverot, Director General, GSMA

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, the iPhone would have been pink. Siri would have been a man, and the default ring time before voicemail kicks in would have been two minutes, to allow women time to find their phone in their handbags. Very bad stereotypes, I know!, but sadly there is a grain of truth here. When I ran the mobile business for Orange – France Télécom, handset makers did actually send me pink phones, ‘because she is a woman’…

Thinking about this seriously now, if Steve had been a woman, I think products like the iPhone would be elegant and stylish. They would be perfectly sized to fit in your hand, and they would have a sleek design, sculpted from the finest materials. The software that runs on the phone would be simple and intuitive, while providing all of the features needed for your daily life. The iPhone would be a high-quality product that consumers would love to own.

Now, those of you that own an iPhone will realise that what I have described above is exactly what an iPhone is today. In fact, many of the latest generation of smartphones coming to market meet these criteria. We are in the midst of an exciting time for the mobile phone industry, with a range of amazing designs from companies like Apple and Samsung and others to capture the imagination of consumers.

«My goal is to live in a world of great design and services, but also a world where they are produced by companies that are led by great men and great women»

The key point for me is that it does not matter whether Steve Jobs was a man or a woman. What is important is that great design comes to the fore and helps us all take advantage of the revolution in our lives that is being enabled by mobile broadband services.

But there is an underlying problem that needs to be resolved. While woman make up over half of the world’s population, they hold less than 5 per cent of the senior management positions in technology companies globally. And this is a massive lost opportunity for the world’s leading technology companies.

My goal is to live in a world of great design and services, but also a world where they are produced by companies that are led by great men and great women. Only then will we see the next generation of amazing products, and the demise of the pink phone stereotype!

Could Steve Jobs have been a woman?

By Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and founder of the Hot Spots Movement

Over the last couple of years my team and I have worked with companies around the world in a Future of Work Consortium where we have looked at technology trends including how Gen Z’s (those under the age of around 12) think about work and technology. Will this generation create another Steve Jobs? Certainly this generation are true mobile mavens, they take for granted a world of smartphones, tablets and high-speed wireless Internet, untethered from the constraints of a landline or a traditional Internet connection and they don’t distinguish between online and offline as they are connected all the time. We have video clips of kids younger than two years old working proficiently with iPads, often using games before they can even talk. What is interesting is that we found no real gender difference in how these young generations use technology. At the same time technology is transforming the gender roles.

«In the future we can expect many jobs to be done anywhere anytime, without rigid working hours and the demise of that long-standing male bastion: the office»

Generation Z will begin to enter the workforce within the next 10 years. What will they experience? Both men and women will have lifelong experience of using communications and media technologies that are at once sophisticated and simple to use. We can expect many jobs to be done anywhere anytime. With the formality of rigid working hours we will also see the demise of that long-standing male bastion – “the office”.

Generation Z are growing up in a world with increasing equality between men and women and where single parents and same-sex parent families are no longer unusual. We can imagine that this generation will be more accepting of gender equality. Take a look at the Becoming Chaz documentary, where Chaz Bono found it was the youngest members of his family that took his gender transition the easiest whilst his mom needed more time to accept her child’s decision.

«Generation Z are growing up in a world with increasing equality between men and women and where single parents and same-sex parent families are no longer unusual»

I believe that gender equality and communication technologies will be key aspects of the information age. There are currently few women leading companies – and very few leading technology companies. But the experiences of our youngsters suggest that this will change. The next Steve Jobs could indeed be a woman.

Would it have made a lot of difference?

By Inger Lassen, Professor, Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University (Denmark)

Intriguing as this question may seem, it might not have made a whole lot of difference whether Steve Jobs had been a woman. On the other hand it could. The question is perhaps not so much whether Steve Jobs would have been man or woman, but rather how Steve Jobs is discursively constructed as man or woman with stereotypically masculine or feminine features. Much gender research seems to be gradually moving away from essentialist views and the binary distinction between what professors Matts Alvesson and Yvonne Billing have referred to as bio-men and bio-women^[1], concepts that refer to the biological sex of men and women. However, we still tend to categorize each other, making stereotypical statements about what we see as typical masculine or feminine behaviour.

This is perhaps particularly predominant in management approaches, where for instance Judy Rosener, professor at The Paul Merage School of Business, refers to masculine and feminine leadership styles as transactional and transformational^[2]. In this view men’s role in leadership is seen as authoritative and women’s as empathetic. A transactional leadership style is task-oriented and uses the principle of rewards or punishments, relying to a great extent on positional authority. A transformational leadership style, on the other hand, encourages commitment to groups and organizational goals, participation in decisions making processes and managing through personal qualities, such as showing empathy and being able to listen to staff.

«Much gender research of today seems to share the idea that masculine and feminine behaviour may be characteristic of men as well as of women»

However, much gender research of today seems to share the idea that masculine and feminine behaviour may be characteristic of men as well as of women, gender primarily being constructed in social and cultural processes. Focusing on gender in organizations, Alvesson and Billing have warned us against gender over-sensitivity, claiming that gender might not always be a relevant parameter because individuals may perform a number of different identities which are not necessarily gender-specific. For instance, in a meeting where executives discuss whether to acquire another company, the parties involved in the discussion would rely more on various aspects of professional identity than on gender identity, which in the situation would most likely be irrelevant.

But where does this lead us when addressing the Open Thoughts 2012 question? According to journalist Sarah McInerney^[3], Steve Jobs’ management style «wasn’t the stuff of university textbooks – he wasn’t known for his consultative or consensus building approach. He was a “high-maintenance co-worker” who demanded excellence from his staff and was known for his blunt delivery of criticism». If the dual management styles mentioned above are anything to go by, this would categorize Steve Jobs as a transactional leader.

«There’s an impression that Jobs possessed both authoritative —or masculine— and empathetic —or feminine— features»

In many ways, this impression is shared by some experts, like Roberto Verganti, Professor of Management of Innovation at Politecnico di Milano,^[4] who refers to Jobs’ leadership style as «vertical, top-down and often harsh». However, Verganti recognizes at the same time that Jobs «managed by meaning» in the sense that to Apple’s co-founder people were human. In his view, Jobs thus offered meaning to customers as well as to employees by offering them a sense of mission, and thereby a sense of identity and loyalty with Apple. This might indicate that in addition to transactional features, Jobs also possessed what Rosener referred to as transformational features.

In his biography on Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson^[5] thus characterizes him as being «very emotional and sentimental» and able to «understand other people’s emotions». According to Isaacson, «Steve Jobs understood what caused people’s emotions and was able to connect emotionally with people». This combined with the sense of ‘meaning-making’ Jobs was able to infuse in people might be more closely related with a transformational management style.

So what if Steve Jobs would have been a woman? Well, there might not necessarily have been a whole lot of difference, don’t you think?

Footnotes:
1. Alvesson, M. and Billing. Y.D. (2002). «Beyond body-counting: A discussion of the social construction of gender at work». In Gender, Identity and the Culture of Organizations. Aaltio and Mills (eds.), 72-91. London and New York: Routledge.
2. Rosener, J.B. (1990). «Ways women lead», Harvard Business Review, November-December.
3. McInerney, S. (2011). «Steve Jobs. An unconventional leader». The Sydney Morning Herald, October.
4. Verganti, R. (2011). «Steve Jobs and Management by Meaning», Harvard Business Review, October.
5. Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs (Biography). USA: Simon and Schuster.

Further reading:
Majstorovic, D. and Lassen, I. (2011). Living with Patriarchy. Amsterdam and Philadelphia. Benjamins.