Chris Richards for The New York Times

Zara F. Larsen, 48, quit one job to go back to school because she wasn't getting the intellectual stimulation she needed. She ended up being wooed back to work by Raytheon.

May 1, 2005
Behind the Exodus of Executive Women: Boredom
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

WOMEN now outnumber men in managerial and professional positions, and most companies have installed policies that aim to help their leaders balance the demands of job and family.

Yet three decades after a woman first became chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, fewer than 2 percent of the biggest corporations are run by women. Executive recruiters and corporate boards could be forgiven for asking themselves why.

The answer, experts are beginning to conclude, has less to do with discrimination in the corporate suite or pressures at home than with frustration and boredom on the job. "Men will grit their teeth and bear everything, while women will say: 'Is this all there is? I need more than this!' " said Mabel M. Miguel, a professor of management at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Deborah Merrill-Sands, dean of the all-women Simmons School of Management in Boston, said that despite years of work, "the majority of corporations don't have a sense of how to retain high-potential women."

Big companies are starting to respond. Industrial powerhouses like General Electric, Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., as well as partnership firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touche, have all begun programs aimed at keeping women professionally engaged.

The results are starting to show, as more women who skipped out on companies that did not offer them intellectually challenging work resurface at companies that do.

Consider Zara F. Larsen, 48, who learned long ago to use e-mail messaging, telecommuting and other tools to juggle family responsibilities and work. She rotated through four major assignments in 10 years at United Technologies. Last year, feeling that her career had reached a plateau, she quit to pursue a doctorate in management. "I was no longer getting the intellectual stimulation I needed," she said.

An "irresistible" offer from Raytheon Missile Systems wooed her back to the corporate world: Take time to pursue your degree, the company said, but also be our director of enterprise effectiveness, responsible for shrinking costs, speeding up processes and otherwise changing the culture.

Such a tale should not surprise corporate executives. A decade ago, Procter & Gamble, plagued by an attrition rate that was twice as high for women as for men, asked the women it considered "regretted losses" - high performers whom it wanted to retain - about why they left.

The answer was that they did not feel valued. "Many said they didn't realize they were regretted losses until they were contacted for the survey," said Jeannie Tharrington, a spokeswoman for the company.

Deloitte had a greater comeuppance when it surveyed women on the partner track who had quit the firm in the 1990's. "It turned out that more than 90 percent of them were still employed, just not by us," recalled Cathleen A. Benko, who runs Deloitte's high-technology sector and its Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women. "So much for the idea that women stay home to run families."

That may surprise some people, but not the researchers at Catalyst, a nonprofit consulting business on Wall Street that focuses on women in the workplace. "All our research shows that women have the same ambitions to get to the top as men," said Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst's president.

But it is only in the last few years that companies have been acting on the knowledge. And their retention numbers are rising accordingly. Here are examples:

Procter has been training women in time management, in part to enable those with family pressures to accept "line" jobs - work that involves direct profit-and-loss responsibility for specific brands. By enabling women to accept those high-pressure and career-oriented spots, Ms. Tharrington said, Procter improved its retention of women by 25 percent over the last five years and increased the number who move from midlevel to senior jobs.

At I.B.M., women now hold 19 percent of executive jobs worldwide, and Jeannette Horan, a vice president, says she thinks she knows why. Ms. Horan, 49, worked for five companies before landing at I.B.M. in 1998. At each one, she said, "I'd get an itch to develop more skills, to make more of an impact, and I always had to move elsewhere to do that." In her seven years at I.B.M., she has had three assignments - all at her request - and expects to shift responsibilities again when she wants a new challenge.

G.E., like many other large companies, has women's networks, c

Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (Idvor 1854 - New York 1935) Mihajlo Pupin je rodjen 9. oktobra 1854. u selu Idvor, opstina Kovacica, u Banatu. Otac Konstantin (Kosta) i majka Olimpijada, zemljoradnici, imali su desetoro dece, 5 sinova i 5 kceri.Nakon zavrsene osnovne i, delimicno, srednje skole u jesen 1872. posao je na skolovanje u Prag, u Cesku gde je nastavio sesti razred i prvi semestar sedmog razreda realke. Ucio je vrlo neuredno zbog ucesca u sukobima ceske i nemacke omladine i tugovanja za zavicajem. U svojoj 20-toj godini odlazi u SAD. Pupin je prvih pet godina po dolasku u SAD ziveo veoma tesko. Radio je kao fizicki radnik, istovremeno pohadjajuci Kuperovu vecernju skolu. U jesen 1879. godine polozio je prijemni ispit na Kolumbija-koledzu u Njujorku. Kao primeran ucenik oslobodjen je placanja skolarine, a vec na kraju prve godine dobio je dve novcane nagrade (iz grckog i matematike). Uglavnom se izdrzavao prihodima od poducavanja slabijih ucenika i fizickog rada. Po zavrsetku skolovanja 1883. godine dobio je diplomu prvog akademskog stepena Bachelor of Arts, a dan pre toga primio je americko drzavljanstvo. Dobio je odmah stipendiju, kao odlican student, za studije matematike i fizike u Kembridzu u Velikoj Britaniji (1883-1885), a zatim u Berlinu (1885-1889), gde je doktorirao iz oblasti fizicke hemije, sa temom: "Osmoticki pritisak i njegov odnos prema slobodnoj energiji". Svoju nastavnicku karijeru i naucnu delatnost zapoceo je 1889. godine kao nastavnik fizicke matematike u odeljenju za elektrotehniku na Kolumbija univerzitetu u Njujorku, gde je punih cetrdeset godina radio kao nastavnik i profesor. Patentirao je 34 pronalaska. Pupinov najznacajniji pronalazak je u svetu poznat pod imenom „Pupinova teorija“ (1896) kojom je resio problem povecanja dometa prostiranja telefonskih struja. Ovo otkrice omogucilo je otklanjanje stetnog dejstva kapacitivnosti vodova koje je predstavljalo glavnu smetnju prenosa signala na duzim rastojanjima, a manifestovalo se pojavom suma. Problem je resen postavljanjem induktivnih kalemova na strogo odredenim rastojanjima duz vodova. Pupin je bio predsednik Instituta radio inzenjera 1917, SAD, predsednik Americkog instituta inzenjera elektrotehnike 1925-1926, predsednik Americkog drustva za unapredenje nauke, predsednik Njujorske akademije nauka, plan Francuske akademije nauka, clan Srpske akademije nauka Pupin je bio i uspesan pisac. Za svoje autobiografsko delo "Sa pasnjaka do naucenjaka" (naslov u originalu: "From Immigrant to Inventor"), objavljeno 1923. godine, godinu dana kasnije 1924. godine dobio je Pulicerovu nagradu. Nikada nije zaboravio i nije se odrekao starog zavicaja i pomagao je i Idvor i Srbiju i Jugoslaviju na sve moguce nacine. Umro je 12. marta 1935. u Njujorku i sahranjen na groblju Vudlaun u Bronksu. English Michael Pupin was born on 9 October 1854th in the village Idvor, municipality of Kovacica in Banat. Father Konstantine (Kosta) and the mother Olimijada, farmers, had ten children, 5 sons and 5 daughters. After the primary and, in part, a high school in 1872nd went on schooling in Prague, Czech Republic. He stadied very irregulary due to conflict between Czech and German youth, and mourn for home. In his 20-year he came to the United States. The first five years after arrival in the USA, Pupin's life, was very difficult. He worked as a manual worker, while attending night school of Cupper. In 1879th he passed the entrance exam at Columbia-College of New York. As an exemplary student was acquitted of paying tuition, and at the end of the first year he received the prize of two signatures ( Greek language and mathematics). Mainly supporting the economic income from teaching weaker students and physical work. Upon graduation 1883rd he received the diploma of the first academic degree of Bachelor of Arts. A day before he received American citizenship. As an excellent student, he was relased of the cholarship paying , to study mathematics and physics at Cambridge in the UK (1883-1885), and then in Berlin (1885-1889), where he received his doctorate title in the field of physical chemistry, with the theme: "Osmotic pressure and its relation with free energy. His teaching career and scientific activities started in 1889th as a teacher of mathematics in the physical department of electrical engineering at Columbia University in New York, where he was full forty years as a teacher and professor. He had 34 patented invention. His most important invention in the world is known as "The theory of Pupin" (1896), which solved the problem of increasing range propagation of telephone currents. This discovery enabled the removal of harmful effects of capacitance lines that represent the main obstacle to the long signal transmission distances, and manifest the appearance of noise. The problem is solved by placing the inductive coil within strictly defined along the lines. Pupin was president of the I