????40年后，這種情況看起來相當明顯了。每年一度的財富“最具影響力商界女性”排行榜可以輕松地羅列出50位女性，遠高于1973年的10人。《財富》在2012年10月發布的排行榜上寫道：“雖然目前有19位財富500強女性CEO……但杰出的女性太多了，我們不得不割愛其中兩位。”

????在這50位女性中，有些人是沿著所在公司的艱難晉升之路向上攀爬。例如，IBM公司CEO羅睿蘭在1981年加入這個科技巨頭，當時她才20歲出頭。僅僅8年前，羅伯遜指出了女性管理人員面臨的“荒唐”歧視，比如密爾沃基房地產規劃委員會（Milwaukee Estate Planning Council）拒絕把會員資格授予威斯康星第一信托公司（First Wisconsin Trust Co.）總裁凱瑟琳?克利里（她是1973年財富“最具影響力商界女性”排行榜成員），盡管她管理的資產達到12.5億美元，這意味著她管理著密爾沃基（實際上是整個威斯康星州）最大的信托公司。

????同樣有趣的是，羅伯遜在1973年那篇文章中提出的一些問題與如今的情況非常相似。

????羅伯遜忠實地告訴讀者：“這些女性大多都能兼顧事業與家庭。她們中有6人已婚，3人喪偶。這9人中有7人身為人母。”但羅伯遜寫到，沒有更多女性擔任領導職位的一個重要原因在于事業和子女不能兼顧的觀點。確實，“受過良好教育的女性常常在養育學齡前兒童期間辭職。如果她們不辭職，她們可能是最有機會獲得晉升的女性。”

????然后是抱負的問題。Facebook首席運營官謝麗爾?桑德伯格談到了女性是否應該“在生孩子之前辭職”。羅伯遜寫道：“這些極其成功的商界女性有個共識，那就是女性的抱負仍然太低。”

????“女性或許能達到某個較低層級的最高職位，但她們不會攀向下一個高峰，”奧格登公司（Ogden Corp）的蒂莉?劉易斯說。“她們沒有受到激勵。現在有了婦女解放運動，或許她們將會受到激勵。”

????Alberto-Culve公司的柏妮絲?拉文的個人介紹顯示，她的三個孩子出生時，她像瑪麗莎?梅耶那樣休假一個月，“從來沒覺得大力家庭會增加付薪工作的難度”。柏妮絲說，她銷售隊伍中的女性比男性做得更好。但羅伯遜寫道：“她發現更多的女性不愿意承擔重任，過于害怕犯錯。她說，‘很多女孩想做秘書，僅此而已。’”(財富中文網)

????譯者：千牛絮

????Forty years later, this seems pretty apparent. Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women in Business list can easily rank 50 women vs. the 10 on the 1973 proto-list, and as Fortune noted in its October 2012 rankings, "While there are currently 19 female Fortune 500 CEOs ... the talent pool was so deep that two of them didn't make the cut."

????Some of these 50 women climbed the harrowing ranks of their companies. IBM (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty, for instance, joined the tech giant in her early 20s in 1981. That's a mere eight years after Robertson pointed out the "absurd" discrimination female executives faced, such as the Milwaukee Estate Planning Council's refusal to grant membership to Catherine Cleary, president of the First Wisconsin Trust Co. (and a member of Fortune's 1973 list), despite the fact that the $1.25 billion in assets under her management meant she was running the largest trust company in Milwaukee ("indeed in all of Wisconsin.")

????What's also interesting is how similar some of the issues brought up in Robinson's 1973 article are to what's rehashed now.

????Robinson dutifully informed readers that "Most of the women were able to combine careers with families. Six of them are married, and three are widows. Seven of those nine are mothers." But one key reason there weren't more women in leadership roles, Robinson wrote, is the view that careers and kids were incompatible. Indeed, "highly educated women are the ones who most frequently quit their jobs during the rearing of preschool children -- and they are presumably the women whose chances of advancement would otherwise be greatest."

????And then there's the question of ambition -- whether women "leave before you leave" to quote Facebook (FB) COO Sheryl Sandberg. "Among these highly successful businesswomen there is general agreement that women's aspirations are still far too low," Robertson wrote.

????"Women may get to the top of the heap at some low level, but they don't try to move up to the next plateau," said Tillie Lewis of Ogden Corp. "Somehow they're not inspired. Maybe they will be, now with women's lib."

????Bernice Lavin of Alberto-Culver, whose profile noted that she took off a Marissa Mayer-esque one month when her three children were born and "has never felt that running a home made her paying job more difficult," reported that the women in her sales force did a better job than the men. But, writes Robertson, "she finds lots more women unwilling to take on responsibility and unduly fearful of making mistakes. She says 'A lot of girls want to be secretaries, and that's it.'"