How Women Will Save the World

Europe is in deep trouble, its economy treading water for the moment, but always threatening to plunge into the abyss of recession and pull much of the rest of the world in after it. Women potentially could come to the rescue if there were more of them, not only in the workforce—where their numbers are high, but their salaries often aren’t—but in top management. They’re needed in the executive suites and on the boards where they’ve traditionally been absent—and where, despite a lot of hot debate and well-intentioned hype, they’re still amazingly rare. On average, 10 percent of the top officers of a European corporation are women, but in many European countries that figure declines dramatically. In Sweden the figure is 21 percent, for instance, while in Germany, just 3 percent. (In the United States it’s 14 percent; in Japan, a pitiful 1 percent.)