Gender and Work: One Small Step for Women?

Carly Fiorina may have been the most powerful woman in business, but she didn't see herself that way. "I don't think of myself, nor do I appreciate being characterized, as a woman CEO," she told TIME in 2002. But she was one of just eight female CEOs of a FORTUNE 500 company, and so her performance at HP drew keen attention. As it turns out, Fiorina took the same risks as her male counterparts, made the same mistakes--and met the same fate. "This is not about gender. It's really about business," says Deborah Soon of Catalyst, a nonprofit group promoting women in business. She points to remarkable progress: Fiorina was far from the only woman at the top of the tech world. Indeed, a major player in her ouster was another prominent woman, Patricia Dunn, who took over as chairwoman. Ann Livermore runs a key division of HP; Patricia Russo runs Lucent, Fiorina's old company. And Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy is rumored to be a possible successor to Fiorina. The moral: women have come a long way in business, but they can fall just as far. --By Jyoti Thottam. With reporting by Chris Taylor/San Francisco