Great post, Christine. I, too, was frustrated by the WSJ article—all the more so because I think that gender is playing a big role in the HP story, and the article’s title had me hoping for some insights. Instead, as you ably point out, we just got more of the same.

Well the problem is that Fiorina's and Dunn's actions DID reflect badly on their gender. I remember being extremely excited for the feminist movement when Fiorina finally helped break the glass ceiling and gain a dual CEO/chairmanship and a top world corporation.

It sucks that they have to be viewed based n their gender but that's what it's always like when somebody breaks a barrier. The same thing happened to Jackie Robinson when he broke the color barrier in baseball. But the difference is that Jackie stepped up and was one of the best players in baseball.

Fiorina on the other hand was one of the worst executives in the world during her time as CEO of HP. She was only topped by the cronies at Enron and Worldcom. She took one of the top engineering companies in the world and turned it into a crappy, second rate consumer products company. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of her. And what did she get? A $40 million golden parachute! My dad was a top engineer for HP for 29 years, graduate of Caltech and UCLA, and they fired him a year before he could get early retirement benefits during one of her many rounds of layoffs.

So yes, it sucks that Fiorina and Dunn's actions have been tied to their gender. But that's the nature of being a barrier-breaker. Obviously it's not their gender that caused them to do these things like the idiots at the WSJ said. And the WSJ is foolish pretending that Mark Hurd is a saint - he's rescued the company from Fiorina, true, but he is going to be linked to the Dunn/spying scandal after the investigation is complete.

In the end I have no sympathy for Fiorina or Dunn. I have much sympathy for women in corporate America and the feminist movement and the damage that Fiorina and Dunn did to them. They will be remembered for doing the opposite of what Jackie Robinson did.

Trying to determine whether gender played a role in this case is difficult. Gender effects are easier to perceive over a large sample of cases than in an individual case, but as michael observes, we don't have a large sample of large companies run by women. That said, I don't think it is inappropriate to raise the issue of gender here, especially now that Fiorina has placed the issue on the table. (I raised the issue a couple of weeks ago here.)

Christine, you complain that Murray's "article focuses on how the two women's actions were the products of gender, not actions toward them." But if Murray had focused on the actions toward Fiorina and Dunn, wouldn't he necessarily be saying that those actions were the products of gender? That (some) men strive to undermine powerful women? Actually, I think this might be true, so when you write, "Did Tom Perkins' actions as a rogue director ... reflect badly on his gender?" I would answer, "yes." Or, at least, "maybe."

I had a negative reaction to Murray's column, too, and for many of the reasons you cite. Gender effects are interesting here not because Fiorina and Dunn failed to "act like men" in the wake of scandal, but because they were at the center of scandals in the first place.

I’ve got to say, because I have not been able to figure out this issue about gender, I have just been watching it flicker in and out of discussions from the sidelines. However, I find it frustrating to read an article that simultaneously raises the issue regarding someone’s gender and then seeks to maintain that the issue of gender is irrelevant. It seems to me that the very fact that people notice gender enough to warrant comment reveals that it matters—even if we cannot figure out how it matters. Christine is correct, when male executives make mistakes, there is rarely any discussion, either behind closed doors or otherwise, about whether the mistake had anything to do with the man’s gender (although you may get some claiming that a woman would have behaved differently). However, the question always seems to be lurking in the case of a woman executive. A woman in the executive suite is still rare enough that she stands out. The fact that she stands out means that we still think and wonder about whether and to what extent her gender impacts her performance, the decisions she makes and how people interact with her—good or bad. That means it is relevant. (Relevant enough for people to suggest that women are natural whistle blowers in this context). Even if the issue is only about a perception that there is some difference, I think it matters because we need to grapple with that perception and how the perception of different treatment may impact the behavior of both women executives and people who interact with them. This does not mean that things “happen” to a person because she is a woman. But you cannot overlook the possibility that a woman executive may take a more severe or less severe stance because she is a woman or that people may afford her greater or less leeway because she is a woman. You also cannot overlook the possibility that, because she is a woman in a place dominated by men, what she does may impact people’s attitudes about women in general and women as executives in particular. In other words, it is often the case that at any given moment, a woman executive is either overcoming or playing into people’s general perceptions about women and their capabilities. This seems inevitable when you do not have many women in these positions.

Lisa, I agree with all of that. Well stated.