I'm in IT and six out of the dozen or so managers I've reported to in my eleven years here have been women. (We're definitely a serious outlier—there was at lea

I'm in IT and six out of the dozen or so managers I've reported to in my eleven years here have been women. (We're definitely a serious outlier—there was at least one time when my entire five- or six-level management chain was female except for the CEO.) I haven't seen much direct evidence for the competition-vs.-collaboration model in our organization, but there's one generalization I can make: for whatever reason, on average the women have been far more competent than the men. I've encountered several men up the hierarchy from me who were indifferent, ineffectual or incompetent, but none of the women have been, and the sharpest woman I've worked for could run rings around the sharpest man. I suspect this happens because women have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in IT. The main difference here seems to be that they can eventually get real career traction.