Male Exec on Working Women: 'They're Crap'

Oct. 24, 2005 — -- Why don't many women make it to the top of the business world?

"They're crap," says Neil French, one of the world's leading advertising executives.

French, 61, resigned after making the remarks at an industry meeting on Oct. 6.

"Women do not make it to the top because they don't deserve to," French was quoted as saying. He reportedly also described women as "a group that will inevitably wimp out and go suckle something," and said motherhood makes women "wimp out."

French, who was working as the worldwide creative director of WPP Group PLC, said the point he was trying to make is "once you've got kids everything changes. ... You can't do two very demanding jobs as well as you can do one of them. Something has to give, or you end up doing neither well."

Linda Kaplan Thaler made it to the top of the advertising business by creating some of the industry's top campaign such as the AFLAC ads. She did it while raising two children.

"It's absolutely insanely ridiculous in this day and age with technology that we can't multitask," Thaler said. "We do it and we do it well."

About 60 percent of women return to work after having a baby, according to Work & Family Connection, a Web site devoted to work-life balance issues. But they often do not return to a pay check as high as that of their male counterparts.

Whether or not sexism is to blame, women's progress in many industries has been slow. Only 5 percent of the top jobs at Fortune 500 companies are held by women. And in 20 industries recently surveyed, women earned less money than men.

WWP Group PLC, which is based in London and New York, told Britain's Press Association news agency that French had offered his resignation and the company accepted it.