DBL Partners’ Managing Partner, Cynthia Ringo Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle

But what­ev­er one’s reac­tion to “Lean In,” it has brought into focus, once again, the dis­par­i­ty between the num­ber of men and women who hold lead­er­ship roles in major busi­ness­es. It’s a real­i­ty faced by many female heads of Sil­i­con Val­ley star­tups, both new and veteran.

They have seen the issues that Sand­berg has raised play out in their own expe­ri­ences, and though they can’t pin­point one sure­fire solu­tion, many agree about the need to form sup­port groups, seek out role mod­els and get more girls inter­est­ed in math and sci­ence earlier.

Ann Scott Plante, 29, co-founder of Wello, a video-based work­out web­site start­ed in July, said her goal as a female exec­u­tive is to make high-achiev­ing women like Sheryl Sand­berg no longer the exceptions.

“It’s worth call­ing out sit­u­a­tions where it does­n’t seem like a lev­el play­ing field,” Scott Plante said. “We should aspire to do every­thing we can to play with the boys and make a more friend­ly envi­ron­ment for women.”

Workplace parity

A look at recent data on the top­ic of work­place par­i­ty in upper ech­e­lons under­scores Sand­berg’s con­cerns. A 2012 report from exec­u­tive search firm Spencer Stu­art points out that top lead­er­ship posi­tions are still over­whelm­ing held by men.

“The slow progress is dis­cour­ag­ing,” the report says. “Women now account for just over 17 per­cent of inde­pen­dent direc­tors, up from 16 per­cent in 2007 and 12 per­cent in 2002. Nine per­cent of S&P 500 com­pa­nies do not have any female direc­tors.” A mere 21 of the For­tune 500 chief exec­u­tives are women.

Matthew Bid­well, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, wrote an arti­cle for a Whar­ton busi­ness school pub­li­ca­tion on gen­der seg­re­ga­tion in man­age­r­i­al roles. He focused on pro­fes­sion­al women enter­ing the work­force, and found that few­er who fin­ished MBA pro­grams chose investor-type jobs, because those posi­tions require more stereo­typ­i­cal­ly male attrib­ut­es and attitudes.

“At least at low­er lev­els, I found the pos­i­tive thing is that women aren’t being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against,” Bid­well said. “But at the same time, man­ag­ing stereo­types is hard­er than man­ag­ing discrimination.”

Cather­ine Wol­fram, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley’s Haas Busi­ness School, stud­ied the “leaky pipe” the­o­ry, which says that women aren’t stay­ing in posi­tions long enough to rise through the ranks. Her study found that 15 years after grad­u­at­ing from Har­vard Col­lege, 28 per­cent of the females who received MBAs were stay-at-home moms, while only 6 per­cent of those earn­ing med­ical degrees left their jobs, sug­gest­ing the busi­ness world is less female-friendly.

Stereotypes persist

For women in lead­er­ship in Sil­i­con Val­ley, nego­ti­at­ing the path to their roles has been a con­stant learn­ing expe­ri­ence, some of it unpleasant.

Jamie Walk­er, 30, CEO of online health com­mu­ni­ty Fit Approach, is releas­ing the fit­ness class app Sweat Guru this spring. She recalled once inquir­ing of a pan­el of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists how many female star­tups were in their port­fo­lios. One pan­elist respond­ed: “We’re not look­ing at whether you have boobs are not.”

“It was­n’t real­ly the com­ment, but the reac­tion that was trou­bling, because peo­ple just thought it was fun­ny,” said Walk­er’s co-founder, Alyse Mason Brill, 29. “Even when we go into busi­ness meet­ings, there are sub­tle things, too — like you can see them look­ing at you and not tak­ing you as seri­ous­ly because of your fem­i­nine traits. I think we’ve seen the way to push through this is to not back down.”

Lynn Jurich, 33, co-founder of Sun­run, a home solar com­pa­ny, said her first job out of col­lege, in 2002, was at a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm, Often, peo­ple she dealt with were sur­prised she was in her position.

“One time I was going to inter­view some­one for a posi­tion at the com­pa­ny and he said, ‘Oh, I already have cof­fee, I’m all set,’ ” Jurich said. Anoth­er time, “I was on the com­pa­ny’s pri­vate jet and the pilot would say, ‘Your dad must own the company.’ ”

Myth of balance

Deeply ingrained gen­der stereo­types clear­ly play a part in the dearth of top women lead­ers. Tend­ing to be the pri­ma­ry care­givers for chil­dren, women are often pulled away from the work­place, thus lim­it­ing access to demand­ing cor­po­rate jobs.

But not all agree it has to be a hindrance.

Mon­isha Perkash, 38, is CEO of Lumo BodyTech, a Palo Alto com­pa­ny that received $5 mil­lion in Decem­ber for its back pos­ture prod­uct Lumoback. She says that the notion of work/​life bal­ance being a zero-sum game for women — choos­ing work or chil­dren — is a myth when it comes to lead­ing a com­pa­ny. She said she’s been able to bal­ance being a par­ent and run­ning her own start­up because she estab­lished con­ver­gence between her work and her per­son­al life.

Many women agree that hav­ing role mod­els is vital for advanc­ing to top posi­tions. Online per­son­al shop­ping start­up Stitch Fix’s CEO Kat­ri­na Lake, 30, who just raised $4.75 mil­lion, said it gets lone­ly as a CEO because you don’t have peers.

DBL Part­ners man­ag­ing part­ner Cyn­thia Ringo, 60, said some­times she feels like the Lone Ranger in the male-dom­i­nat­ed invest­ment world. She believes that young girls need more rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences — through math, sci­ence and busi­ness train­ing — to gain the cred­i­bil­i­ty to move for­ward into CEO-type positions.

Progress in Europe

The Spencer Stu­art report points out that Euro­pean nations have seen much more progress in diver­si­fy­ing their top busi­ness ranks. In fact, com­pa­nies in the S&P 500 now trail the top com­pa­nies in Nor­way (40 per­cent), Fin­land (27 per­cent), Swe­den (26 per­cent), France (22 per­cent), Den­mark and the Nether­lands (18 per­cent), tying with Ger­many (17 per­cent) for the per­cent­age of females on their cor­po­rate boards. Some of these nations have adopt­ed reg­u­la­tions or set vol­un­tary tar­gets to increase these numbers.

But some women are leery of change through regulation.

“I’m torn when it comes to the gov­ern­ment get­ting involved in this prob­lem,” said Lau­rie Yol­er, a vet­er­an Sil­i­con Val­ley tech­nol­o­gist. “Clear­ly it’s not hap­pen­ing on its own, so the ques­tion is: Is reg­u­la­tion a require­ment” to make it happen?

Sophia Yuan, 27, founder of fledg­ling res­i­den­tial rental prop­er­ty mar­ket­place Plat​sy​.com, said she believes change needs to hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly. It’s too dif­fi­cult, she says, to man­date inter­nal morale.

Changing behavior

So what can be done?

Pen­n’s Bid­well sug­gests that employ­ers can reduce the work and fam­i­ly con­flicts many women face with more flex­i­ble work sched­ules and access to day care. They can also present job descrip­tions in more gen­der-neu­tral terms.

Katia Beauchamp, co-founder of the com­merce plat­form Birch­box, which has 300,000 sub­scribers, says women lead­ers can rein­force their own effec­tive­ness. Each time they present to ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists in par­tic­u­lar, she said, it’s impor­tant to focus on how they plan to cre­ate demand for some­thing new and change behavior.

Yol­er says that bet­ter media rep­re­sen­ta­tion of engi­neer­ing jobs is one of the keys to chang­ing the num­ber of women who are attract­ed to engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence degrees, the kind of edu­ca­tions that lead to tech­nol­o­gy careers.

Films like “Zero Dark Thir­ty” and “The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too” fea­ture women in these fields, she points out, but the major­i­ty of career women rep­re­sent­ed in the media are seen in the roles of doc­tors or lawyers rather than hackers.

Diversity of thought

Yol­er believes it’s impor­tant to have more women in exec­u­tive-lev­el roles for rea­sons essen­tial to good busi­ness. Women can add a diver­si­ty of thought and strate­gic insight, she said. They may also offer a dif­fer­ent cus­tomer per­spec­tive, and often bring a dif­fer­ent kind of man­age­ment style.

Perkash agrees, say­ing that more com­pa­nies have to real­ize that “to be com­pet­i­tive, you have to be open to half the work­force if you want your com­pa­ny to do bet­ter. Oth­er­wise, (they) will be miss­ing out on a big part of the talent.”

Until then, she sug­gests a route she has followed.

“My advice to women is that entre­pre­neur­ship is a good route to take to try to have it all,” she said. “They won’t hit glass ceil­ings because they can make up the rules.”

Angela Swartz is a free­lance writer. E‑mail: business@​sfchronicle.​com