One Small Step for Women?

By Jyoti Thottam Chris Taylor

Carly Fiorina may have been the most powerful woman in business, but she didn't see herself that way. "I don't think of myself, nor do I appreciate being characterized, as a woman CEO," she told TIME in 2002. But she was one of just eight female CEOs of a FORTUNE 500 company, and so her performance at HP drew keen attention. As it turns out, Fiorina took the same risks as her male counterparts, made the same mistakes--and met the same fate. "This is not about gender. It's really about business," says Deborah Soon of Catalyst, a nonprofit group promoting women in business. She points to remarkable progress: Fiorina was far from the only woman at the top of the tech world. Indeed, a major player in her ouster was another prominent woman, Patricia Dunn, who took over as chairwoman. Ann Livermore runs a key division of HP; Patricia Russo runs Lucent, Fiorina's old company. And Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy is rumored to be a possible successor to Fiorina. The moral: women have come a long way in business, but they can fall just as far. --By Jyoti Thottam. With reporting by Chris Taylor/San Francisco