Comments on: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

By: bob cannell

bob cannell — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:11:34 +0000

if powerful men have been in charge then the culture and also the structure and philosophy of management will support that position. we used to use the word ‘patriarchy’. an ideology so embedded that most of it is implicit and under the surface.
e.g. to stay in control and on top you need a plan which you make your subordinates follow (business planning) based on a worldview (systems theory) that requires an external controller (boss).
Once you start digging where do you stop?
UK worker coops like suma use a very different ‘no boss’ form of management and governance. is it better? hmmm i think we still have along way to go. the old ways keep seeping back in. people default to them when they cant think of anything else.
but there are relationship, communications and process based management models which do not start from the assumption that ’someone’ has to be in charge.
the distributed work patterns of the internet smash up old power structures so maybe we will see organisations starting to use these new ways. or maybe the patriarchs (male and female) will adapt.

bob

By: Anne Watson

Anne Watson — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:45:24 +0000

I have spent years as an entrepreneur and that path has taken me 3 times to directorships in male dominated businesses and each time I have found I have lacked the fundamental skills that make for a successful board member. I have failed to become adept at the kind of male power play politics that are essential if you fancy dominating the piece in the board room. I have remained resolutely determined not to know or care what the football results are and I won’t play golf. Refusing to meet “boys” on their own terms leads to exclusion and a feeling of difference. The very qualities that pundits claim are missing in the board room – the female voice, the different perspective, the voice of reasoned debate and argument and, most of all, the articulate ability to discuss motivations behind behaviours, are the qualities that make it difficult for women to join in and play the corporate game.

My choice is to create my own values driven business that does not have to conform to corporate standards that have their roots in male public schools. Superficial bonhomie and rapport based on trite tribal customs do not cut it for me. Real businesses grow from the kind of communication that requires emotional intelligence – not reading the paper from back to front. Women have seen what board rooms look like and they vote with their feet. Life at the top is not all that it is cracked up to be.

By: Kath

Kath — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:23:58 +0000

We agree that many many talented women are finding new ways of defining success at work. It’s exactly why we started our blogsite and survey, http://wherethebrightwomenare.com/ – to find all of those bright, cool, talented women that surrounded us at school uni and through our 20s working in media and advertising. But who seem to have disappeared from corporate life as they reached their 40s.

Do we think it’s fantastic that women are proving so entrepreneurial? Yes, of course. Do we think it worrying, even so, that so many women are turning away from corporate life? Hugely, actually. We go into this in more detail on our site, but if our corporations, our government and our media are so dominated by male board members, then they are by definition serving one gender better than the other. This is evident in everything from the design of the cars we drive to the stories that are deemed front page worthy in our press to the legislation that we all live by.

As we tweeted last weekend (we tweet as brightwomenare), it’s kind of incredible that the Sunday Times ran a front page headline on 7 March, both on and offline, along the lines of ‘Drink up girls: wine isn’t fattening’.

It’s not surprising that so many women turn away from climbing the corporate ladder. A company that produces reductive, patronising content of this nature can hardly be an inspiring place for a bright, talented woman to work.

By: Nigel Lockett

Nigel Lockett — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:37:15 +0000

Real power is about making your own decisions. Equality is about having the same genuine opportunities for decision-making. So, provided women have genuine opportunities and real power they might just create their own working environments rather than adopt someone else’s tired old model. I think we call this entrepreneurial behaviour!