I wholeheartedly agree that we should be encouraging young girls to become leaders. But why is the focus on business and the corporation? The very idea of private corporations is inimical to the public interest and serves only a few elite clients. Why not teach all young people to become informed citizens?

How about teaching boys to be nice and respectful....and teach all children to share, think of one another, and admit that the "self made man - or woman" is a myth. The problem I see with the title of this article is it seems to agree that if women had equal representation in the number of those who are exploiting the rest of us (what they call "business executives"), that would be a good thing.

Be a leader, not a business exec.

Any opinion which strives to promote a monolithic recommendation of what we or women should do will find little success. The diversity of views among women themselves should prove this is folly. You will see it reveal itself in the comments on this board. It's no different than asking a bunch of men what should be the role of men. Uncomfortable to acknowledge but impossible to deny are fundamental differences between the genders as a whole. Across the entire population of men and women there will be some traits more common to women and others more common to men. Some may fear admitting this because they fear it will lead to restriction of opportunities for the men or women that are not the norm. There will be individual women who will want to pursue jobs normally assigned to men and they have every right to do so. This does not mean they will be joined in the pursuit by most women. It is about choice for individuals and if the number of CEOs that are men relative to women don't equal it is not failure.

This is a serious goal of DNC based " identity politics " - more female executives ? In what significant way - from the point of view of an exploited working class female- is a female boss preferable to a male boss ?
If the bottom line - PROFITS - remains the same, the female over-achiever promoted to those glass ceiling heights is just a cosmetic change.
Just think of Hillary Clinton as Commander- in- Chief. What a wonderful world it would be !
" The Sisterhood " does not cross CLASS boundaries. Ask " Rosie the Riveter " .

I wanted to make a comment that dovetails with this article. I do think that self confidence at a young age for both boys and girls is very important.
However, one issue that I think is fascinating and I do not have an answer is this --
societies on an economic basis do seem to value the professions that men in that society traditionally go into. Look at the field of medicine. For many years, girls were told "become a nurse, boys become doctors" in America.
Meanwhile in the USSR I read that the majority of doctors were female. Were they paid a lot? No. Doctors in the USSR were not viewed with the same prestige as they are in the USA. Their relative pay in that communist/socialist society followed. In the USSR, being a member of the Politboro was considered to be a very prestigious and high paying job. Only 3% of that body was female.
So in the USSR, doctors (vast majority female) had a lot less money and prestige than Politboro (97% male)..
Now, over the past 20+ years more females have gone into the field of medicine.
What fields do they tend to go into? Pediatrics, psychiatry, maybe some other primary care.
Where is the big money in the USA in medicine?
Not in those female medical fields. No the big money is more in the procedure oriented medical fields. Those are more dominated by men. Again the female dominated medical fields seem to have the lower pay.
Pediatrics in fact is the lowest paid of the medical professions..
I cannot say which comes first "the chicken or the egg" but I do find it interesting to say the least.

"As they grow, many girls are also taught lessons that undermine leadership
aspirations. Eighty-six percent of the 3,000 professional and
college-age women surveyed in a recent KPMG study
were taught to be “nice to others” when they were younger and to do
well in school. But in this same group, less than 50 percent were taught
fundamental leadership lessons. The goal should be to increase this to
100 percent."

Wait, so let me get this straight. Being taught to be nice to others is diametrically opposed to the fundamentals of leadership? Excuse me. Since when? I was a leader within my group of friends when I was in school and guess what? I was nice and kind to others and being so has never stopped me from believing that I could excel in life. In fact, spreading kindness is the main factor that drives me to be active within my community.

Oh, and how about this? Rather than teach women to succeed in the same hetero-normative patriarchy that oppressed them and minorities in the first place, why don't we teach girls that they can upend the whole system to create a better one? How about that? This is the reason there is a divide between baby-boomer women who worshiped at the alter of Hillary Clinton and Millennial women who saw they didn't have to conform to the bs rules of men like Hillary did. And thank you, Hillary for paving the way, but in paving the way 30 year old, multi-racial women like me were able to evolve.

We should train boys to be “nice to others” too rather than just increasing the number of women in the sociopath class.

please define the 'sociopath class'

An recent Australian study has shown that CEOs often have many of the same characteristics and behavioral tendencies as sociopaths.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
https://www.forbes.com/site...

http://www.independent.co.u...

I would want to see the original study to be as fair as possible.
Your point is a good one. I still would not call CEO's "the sociopath class".
I would expect many leaders who have to make tough decisions to have some overlapping qualities with "sociopaths". That does not make them a sociopath. You know, Generals or Captains who send men off to war , etc

Bingo. My thoughts exactly.

Timely article. Part of the solution to create more female executives is to teach boys (who will be future husbands) that child rearing and housework is also their responsibility.
Women's liberation does not mean women get to be executives so they have to hire other women to clean their toilets.
True liberation is when the fathers of the women's children share in household responsibilities so the women are more free to pursue time consuming and intense career interests.

True liberation is when we stop these extreme capitalist ideologies from controlling the majority of people's lives.

please define, as you see it, an "extreme capitalist ideology". thanks