So, a woman at the top of her game has been unceremoniously kicked out of her job - she's not the first and surely won't be the last. Carol Bartz, until this week CEO of Yahoo, has been fired by the company board. She received the news via a phone call from the Chair of the Yahoo board. Charming.
Does this have anything to do with the fact that Carol Bartz is a woman? If she were a man would this have ended the same way? Would enforced quotas for women on boards have helped this situation in any way? I believe that they would.
A recent 'Women and Work' survey of three thousand women by Marie Claire magazine and Everywoman found that sexism is still rife in the workplace and that women believe they are disadvantaged compared to men when it comes to pay, promotion and age. 44 percent of women surveyed said that that glass ceiling still exists in their workplace and 83 percent said that being attractive helps women get on better at work. In another survey of both male and female managers almost three quarters of the women surveyed said that they face barriers when it comes to top level promotion, while 62 percent of women and 42 percent of men, surveyed backed positive action to boost the role of women.
The pay gap between men and women is another issue that highlights workplace inequality. The Chartered Management Institute said last week that it would take 75 years at the current rate of progress before women will receive equal pay. I'm not sure about you, but I would definitely like to see equality for women in my lifetime, I don't think I will last another 75 years unless there are some remarkable advances in medical science.
It is now taken as a given that there is a very good business case for diversity in the workplace. Home Office Minister Teresa May said recently that "there is growing evidence that companies with more women on their boards outperform their male-dominated rivals."
All this leads me to believe that now is the time to start using quotas to sort this situation out. Lord Davies recommended in his Independent review into women on boards that FTSE 100 companies should be aiming for a minimum of 25 percent female board membership by 2015 and expects that many companies will exceed that target.
So why don't we just bite the bullet, get on with it and introduce quotas now?
They have worked amazingly well in Norway where it has been law since 2008 that 40% of the membership of boards in publicly listed companies must be female, if they don't comply companies risk stiff penalties.
Coming back to Yahoo, much is made of Bartz swearing and having the balls to make aggressive cuts within the company, would that be reported so disparagingly if she were a man? Oddly, less is made of the fact that Yahoo profits increased under her command.
There are nine people on the board at Yahoo, two of them women, both joined since Bartz became CEO in 2009. Would a stronger female presence on the board and within senior management have made a difference in the way she has been treated? Yahoo are not unique in having less than 25 percent females on their board and would not be surprised by similar situations in other tech companies.
If women were given an equal chance, most people (me included) would put sackings of female executives like Bartz down to non-gender-related issues. It would be nice not to have to consider the possibility of sexism towards a woman at the top of her game. Would having more women around her at Yahoo have helped? We will never know. But, if there were more women at the top, we wouldn't even have to ask.
And, what next for Carol Bartz? Maybe she and others like her should find somewhere more female-friendly to work. Perhaps it's time to check out the 'Where women want to work' guide.