(December 18) - Out of thousands of Israeli start-ups, only a handful are run by women. Three of them explain the 'facts of life' for female CEOs in the male-dominated hi-tech sector

The world has an image of an IDF where men and women train and fight side-by-side, leading to greater equality between the sexes . We know a different reality: there are many Yitzhak Mordechais around; women have fewer combat opportunities than in the US armed services, and women are out of the loop in many of the branches that become the foundations of the hi-tech industry: the Air Force and, for the most part, the elite computer units.

"I'm not surprised there are so few women CEOs of start-ups," says Tamar Naor, CEO of Sphera, a provider of advanced and automated Web hosting solutions. "The overwhelming majority of start-ups are founded by technologists coming out of the IDF, and they are mostly men. The situation is changing, but slowly, as technology studies are beginning to be taught in high schools."

Naor is one of three women CEOs of start-ups who agreed to speak with The Jerusalem Post on the challenges that face women who take on such a daunting career.

Each of the three women was speaking at different stages of their professional careers and personal lives, and all the conversations took place separately - yet, remarkably, it turned out they have convictions in common:

¥ Each made it clear at the outset that she was agreeing to be interviewed because she thought the exposure would be good for her company. Any women's issues were distinctly secondary.

¥ Israeli society is very conservative in its attitude that the mother, and not the father, is the parent on whom the burden of child-rearing is deemed greater.

¥ It is not possible to be a good mother and a good CEO without an unusually supportive husband, plus extra help in the home.

¥ An "old boys' network" does exist, but at the end of the day it is professionalism, and not cronyism, that drives business decisions.

¥ Women have to work harder than men just to be considered equal.

¥ Women who wish to devote time to being mothers can succeed very well in business in Israel, if they stick to jobs in more mature corporate structures, such as banks, law firms and the public sector. (Start-ups are a different breed; hence the narrow focus of this article.)

¥ Women executives must dress professionally for all meetings - not necessarily like men, but not showing off feminine attractiveness, either.

¥ Money is not the main reason for taking on the grueling job of a CEO of a start-up. it is primarily the challenge, as well as the creativity that is called for, that motivates these women.

"ANY PERSON who takes a start-up CEO job for the money is not going to succeed," declares Sissy Mevorach-Levy. "If you are in it for the money, your focus is not going to be on the right things: taking care of your people, solving problems, growing the company."

Mevorach-Levy is the CEO of C-4-U, the developer of an Internet technology that highlights changes on Internet surfers' favorite Web sites since their last visits. In addition to worldwide industry press acclaim, C-4-U was the audience winner of "best start-up idea" at the Ernst & Young Journey 2000 conference competition in Tel Aviv in September of this year.

Mevorach-Levy is the youngest of the CEOs interviewed, and the only one not married or a mother. She is also the newest at her job, hired about 10 months ago. But of the three, she has the broadest formal education for the position, the holder of a combined M.Sc. and MBA degree in technology management from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has worked as an executive on the technology side of things for established hi-tech companies, including Intel and Orbotech, but really made her mark with IP (Internet protocol) telephony start-up DeltaThree, which went public on Nasdaq and gave her the financial freedom to pick her next job carefully, which she did after being referred by "headhunters."

What Mevorach-Levy and Naor have in common is that they were initially hired by men to be CEOs. That in itself was the first hurdle successfully overcome - as well as proof that being a woman does not have to be a disadvantage in dealing with hard-headed businessmen, who sat on the boards of directors that approved them.

Naor was recommended by the chairman of Sphera, Yuval Cohen, who is also a managing partner in the venture capital firm Jerusalem Venture Partners. "She had the right combination of skills that we were looking for at the time," says Cohen, "chief among them intelligence, a thorough understanding of the market, and sales and marketing experience gained in Silicon Valley.

"What we did not know was how well she would do, from displaying sensitivity in interpersonal relations to signing up important clients, raising substantial sums of venture capital, attracting top management personnell and establishing the company in a leadership position in our segment of the market," Cohen adds.

"If it were not for my Silicon Valley experience, I doubt I would be a CEO today," Naor concedes, and she is not talking only about the credentials it added to her resume. "The allowances made for working parents in the US and lacking here, such as full school days and longer day care hours, made it possible for me to advance in my career."

Naor, who has two young children ages five and seven, stresses that the important keys to combining parenting and work are setting some priorities, having full-time help at home, and the support of a devoted husband.

"My husband has a successful business career as well," she says, "so we can afford a nanny. But we also have made some rules: that weekends are sacred, and one day a week, one of us comes home a bit early to be with the children."

RAHEL ("HELI") Ben Nun, CEO of ArelNet, a provider of VoIP (voice over IP) gateway solutions for next generation telecommunications and Internet service providers, has grown children but said (independently of Naor): "The solution to being a parent and a CEO is to have a supportive husband, and excellent logistics at home. My mother has always taken care of the children during my career, and my husband is critical when I have to travel for work, which I try to do as little as possible.

"We women have tremendously guilty consciences about whether we are being good mothers when we sacrifice parenting for our jobs," she adds. "I know I missed important things while my children were growing up. But now that I see how they have turned out, my conscience is at rest."

Ben Nun has been a career woman all her life, starting as a production engineer, and taking over ArelNet along with a partner as a co-founder/CEO in 1996. Since then, she has cultivated her company from 20 to 80 employees, raised millions of dollars, taken her company public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and formed strategic alliances with such global powerhouses as Nortel Networks, and Keppel T&T in Asia.

"The satisfaction I get is from pleasing my shareholders and my customers," says Ben Nun, whose company still has a way to go before she strikes it rich and can cash out. "I cannot say my job is enjoyable, since it consists all day of having to fix problems. But I am addicted to the excitement of it.

"And," she declares proudly, "I have never lost a single employee."

Ben Nun emphasizes she treats men and women alike when it comes to work versus their parenting duties. But she also gives a powerful example of limitations.

"I have a woman product manager who is excellent. She has chosen to go home every day at 3 p.m. to be with her children, and that is fine with me, because when she is needed for extra hours, I know she will come back after putting the kids to bed and work from 10 p.m. until the small hours of the morning.

"But she will never be a CEO."

Or, as Naor puts it, "Israeli society does not train women to succeed."

Moreover, she says, money cannot be the motivator for success as a CEO, "because money is not even a concept for a start-up, until there is an exit" - a merger or acquisition or IPO, none of which is ever guaranteed.

When it comes to appearing before venture capitalists, invariably males, all three women are unanimous that the first few moments are critical: a woman has to prove herself capable in a "man's" business world, before the men pay attention the same way they would to a male presenter. According to Ben Nun, "it just takes a few minutes, until I start speaking." But Mevorach-Levy is more blunt.

"I have given presentations in the US, Europe, and Israel," she reports, "and one does not realize how bad the situation is for women CEOs in all those places until you've been to Scandinavia, where the attitude is indescribably better.

"There is no denying that there is a certain tension when a lone woman is in a room full of men," she continues. "The trick is to use this time of being at the center of attention to get them hooked on your vision and message." Mevorach-Levy has an advantage here, having minored in philosophy and theater at university, so she knows how to play center stage.

Mevorach-Levy answers an unasked question. "I know the price I am paying for doing a job that I love: I do not have a family. But I do not want to have children and then have someone else other than me take care of them. And I need a husband who can understand that sometimes my work comes first."

No technology has been invented to solve this dilemma.