The hazards of equality

When first named to lead Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina was asked what it felt like to be the first female CEO of a major high tech company. "I don't know," she famously said. "I don't know what it's like to be a male CEO." Admirably, she downplayed the impact of her gender on her role, acknowledging that she had been raised with the belief that she could achieve whatever she wanted. Her upbringing had been tempered neither with the message that she was held back from some things because she's female, nor that she had to work and fight all that much harder because she's a woman. If she worked hard, she could succeed. She confronted her share of discrimination along the way, but she faced it and overcame it, as any ambitious person would.

When Carly ran into difficulties at HP and ultimately was very publicly relieved of her duties, some pundits opined that she never really fit in because she was a woman in a male-dominated industry. Never mind that HP has quite a good track record of promoting and hiring on merit, regardless of gender. Never mind that she showed immediate and persistent disdain for the company's much heralded consensus-based culture. And never mind that her own substantial hubris had kept her from adapting her strategy when it proved unworkable.

It led me to think: we've achieved equality only when we have the chance to fail equally as spectacularly as we want to succeed. If women are to be judged on their own merits, we have to take the bad with the good. If we want a fair opportunity to succeed, we have to be willing to suffer the consequences of failure. To expect otherwise is to ask for preferential treatment -- just the thing feminists fought against when it was granted solely to white men.

If people in a business - or a society - expect to be treated fairly in a meritocracy, it seems to me that they'd want to be judged solely on what they achieve and the talents they bring to the table. They wouldn't want to be granted a mulligan after they err. If you insist on swinging from the mens' tees, you can't demand the womens' handicap when your shot misses the hole by five feet. Yes, it stinks to fail, and yes, it really stinks to lose something you've worked so hard and so long to gain. But that's what makes it so precious to win in the first place.

Said another way, "They wouldn't let me succeed because I am a woman" is the flip side of "they only gave me a chance because I am a woman." No ambitious person - male or female, Caucasian or otherwise - wants to be judged that way.

Maybe history doesn't remember those who come in second place, or the people who fail. At the same time, it does remember those who recover and go on to win. (Just look at the '69 Mets) I think that the real prize of equality is getting the opportunity to bounce back from failure or setbacks.

Here's to more second acts. And more chances to risk spectacular failure.