Where Are All The Gay CEOs?

Claire Cain Miller at The New York Times wonders why corporate America can't catch up with the NFL in the equality department. Michael Sam, the first publicly gay player, got drafted and made history in football, but where are all the LGBTQ CEOs?

"There is not a single openly gay chief executive at the nation’s 1,000 biggest companies," Miller writes. "[The] business world is one of the slowest sectors of society to adopt new norms of acceptance — despite the fact that failing to do so keeps out some talented people, the lifeblood of companies."

As Valleywag's Sam Biddle points out, though, Miller's forgetting one very prominent corporate leader: Apple's CEO, Tim Cook.

There's a reason for that. Cook is very coy about his private life and has never publicly come out with the words "I am gay." It is, however, widely accepted that Cook is gay, and he has even recently addressed his own experiences with discrimination. He has also been named by OUT as one of the planet's most powerful gay people — a distinction that Cook has never challenged, even if he hasn't officially confirmed it.

That's not to say that Miller doesn't still have a point. Cook's unconfirmed-but-understood sexuality doesn't change the fact that the rest of corporate America is still stuck in a post-war mindset. Miller notes that only 48 of the country's 1,000 largest companies, or about 5%, are run by women.

Maybe the boardroom will catch up with the gridiron soon enough, but it's going to take more than one CEO — or, for that matter, one draft pick — to really change that culture. (NYT)