Do women make better bosses? Their subordinates - male and female alike - may debate that question for as long as there are corner offices and workplace gossip.

In the meantime, some women executives are wasting no time weighing in with their opinions.

“Hands down women are better. There’s no contest,” Carol Smith, a senior vice president with the Elle group, told The Times’s Adam Bryant. “In my experience, female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers.”

To bolster her argument, Ms. Smith cites the inferior time management skills of her male peers. “All of a sudden they’re on football, she added. “All of a sudden they’re showing videos of their son’s soccer game. Then they’re telling a couple of jokes. I’m not good at jokes during meetings. I’m very focused.”

Football talk and jokes are not grounds for firing. Nevertheless, in America, job losses in the current recession have hit men much harder. Last winter, The Times reported that 82 percent of those losing their jobs were men, often leaving their spouses as the primary earners.

And while the recession accelerated the trend, women may simply be working harder then men, beginning in the school years. The Times’s Tamar Lewin reported that American men are not only less likely to attain their bachelor’s degrees or graduate within four years, but that they also achieve worse grades.

“The boys are where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better,” Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, told Ms. Lewin.

But even if those good grades lead women onto the path to executive power, pitfalls remain. Alice Eagly, chairman of the department of social psychology at Northwestern University, noted in The Times’s Room for Debate blog that even though women may be perceived to be less bossy than male executives, they still battle sexist stereotypes.

“In roles that have been held mainly by men, women’s competence is often questioned,” she wrote. “In these situations, women managers can face a double standard. They have to be extra- competent to be recognized as effective.”

And Joanna Barsh, co-author of “How Remarkable Women Lead,” warned on the blog that women business leaders must guard against being drained by the conflicting pressures of their personal and professional lives, especially when many still handle the major burden of housework.

“Energizing is critical for leaders,” Ms. Barsh wrote. She added, “One area women can improve is to stop (yes) multitasking when our full attention is required.”

But even household skills can provide a competitive advantage in the executive suite. Ms. Smith argues that female bosses are better at organizing priorities.

“They will do their to-do lists, she said. “They will prioritize their to-do list. They will go through their to-do list. Maybe it’s because we do shopping lists.”


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