During a quick perusal of editor Stephen Beale's MacWEEK article entitled "Jobs Talks to Stockholders," our eye fell upon a subheading titled "Board Questions," where we found the iCEO's answer to a sharelholder's question about the lack of female board members particularly interesting.

[We would first like to say that we in no way intend our remarks to be construed as a criticism of Apple's chief executive officer! In our estimation, Steve Jobs is nigh unto a god, a thoroughly briliant and aware individual, (hopefully) one of the last persons on earth to be rightfully accused of slighting women or their abilities. No, we consider his answer to be both honest and understandable, and we will take no offense at the guffaws or sputters of disbelief that our observations and simple suggestion may elicit. -- JHF]

What Steve Jobs said was that he and his fellow board members "would love to add some women to our board," but that it is difficult to find females with the necessary corporate management experience, because "it's hard to find women running companies of significant size."

Your editor has seen a lot of water pass under his own little bridge, and we would like to remind all of you that precisely the same arguments, whether sincerely uttered or intended to manipulate, were advanced time and time again in the century just past to explain why blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Irishmen, etc. etc. and women were not to be found, recruited for, or admitted to this position or the other. ("We'd like to hire one, but we can't find any qualified candidates.") These dynamics are true, as far as they go. If you're starting a software company in Kabul, Afghanistan, you might find it easier to hire Pakistani programmers than Afghani ones.

However: once upon a time Apple Computer consisted of a couple of young guys in a garage, and you know what happened after that. Our suggestion to the Apple board would be to look for women running companies of what they would consider "insignificant" size and women with noncorporate management experience. Perhaps the definitions themselves are at fault, in other words. If so, why not think different?

March 19, 2010