Results, Not Gender, Cited in CEO Ouster

Feb. 9, 2005 — -- Carly Fiorina, dismissed today as chief executive of the Hewlett-Packard technology company, was celebrated as the first woman to run a top 20 U.S. company.

Her ouster, however, is raising questions about whether Fiorina's gender was related to her dismissal and why so few women occupy the executive suites of the country's top companies.

In the buttoned-down world of corporate America, where men still hold 493 of the 500 top jobs, Fiorina knew it was hard for people to talk about her without talking about her gender.

"Shortly after she became CEO, she said something that has become a fairly famous line: 'My gender is interesting, but it's not the point,' " said Betty Spence, president of the National Association of Female Executives.

As CEO of one of Silicon Valley's most fabled companies, Fiorina made irresistible copy.

"At the time she was hired, she was so well regarded, many people thought she could be president of the United States at some point," said Peter Burrows, a reporter who covered Fiorina and wrote the book "Backfire" about her tenure.

Young, attractive, articulate and charismatic, Fiorina was named the most powerful woman in business by Fortune magazine for six consecutive years.

"She did not see herself as someone who should just be seen as a woman. She saw herself as a talented executive who could bring Hewlett-Packard to a new level," said Spence.

There was broad agreement today that her inability to fulfill that goal is what led to her ouster. The problem was not her gender, but her decision to buy Compaq Computer Corp., a costly acquisition that failed to boost bottom-line results.

"I think it's important to separate performance from gender at every single step along the way because that's the only way we're actually going to get equality," said Ted Schadler, a technology analyst for Forrester Research, a technology businesses research company.

While Hewlett Packard's stock price may not have done well with a woman in charge, women at the company thrived under Fiorina -- 38 percent of the company's top-tier managers are women.

"When women run things," said Spence, "they don't think twice about hiring other women because they know women can do the job."

ABC News' Betsy Stark filed this report for "World News Tonight."