"Because women have had only indirect power in the past, the kind that allows success to be achieved only through other people, we're naturally good managers," says author and business consultant Charlotte Taylor. "We're more into team-building than egocentrism. We're less hierarchical."
All that may make for a happier, healthier work environment. But the men around the Business Roundtable no doubt would dismiss such niceties as frills or fads, and business magazines tend to relegate them to the back pages. They know that human-relations skills alone won't build the bottom-line results that assure visibility, credibility, and, most of all, survival in the dominant business culture. Unfortunately, it appears not all women have reached the same understanding.
"There are a lot of sad stories of talented, bright women who failed because they didn't understand numbers, or like paperwork, and wouldn't do what needed to be done," concedes Linda Holloway, managing partner of Dupuis & Ryden, a public accounting and consulting firm in Flint, Mich. More than men, she finds that women "want only the creative side of business, not the grunt work."
Indeed, in their attempt to avoid the fast-growth and high-profit addictions of businessmen, some businesswomen may be becoming junkies to another fix: love and personal validation. "Women get hung up on believing everyone has to like them," says Beatrice Fitzpatrick, president of American Woman's Economic Development Corp. (AWED), a national organization dedicated to training women for business ownership. "For most women, it's a real trauma not to be nice." And too often, nice girls finish last.
White Plains, N.Y., psychologist Suzy Boehm has recently noticed a pattern in which female business owners develop roles that are more familial than managerial. And she finds that the young, ambitious M.B.A.s, not the empty-nesters and the hobbyists, are more likely to fall into that trap. "What happens is they substitute the company for a family life, or a dating life," she says. "Most of them are bright and capable, and they think they're doing business for business's sake, so it's a shame that people can't take them seriously. They won't, though -- not as long as these women let the business serve other needs."
If the male-dominated business culture doesn't take women, or their management style, very seriously, then it seems only fair to ask: Who do they take seriously? Men, of course. But not all men. The archetypal business heroes generally fall into three categories: the Innovator, the Salesman, and the Wheeler-Dealer. And one reason you don't hear much about businesswomen is that these are role models to which very few women aspire.
Consider innovation. With some notable exceptions, most of what we consider to be innovative companies these days are founded on scientific or technological break-throughs. But whether it's because they weren't interested, or because they were encouraged to be uninterested, women have tended to stay away from careers in engineering, mathematics, physics, or biochemical research. It comes as no surprise, then, that it wasn't a woman who founded Apple Computer, nor was it a woman who designed the latest process for the steel industry's new minimills. These are the technological backdrops against which many of our new-age business dramas are staged. And the techies remain predominantly male.
Women have tended to cluster instead in what are the business equivalents of the helping professions, the service industries -- clerical services, personnel, travel, catering, advertising, and public relations are the most popular. They require small support staffs, and controlling growth is often as simple as cutting back the owner's hours. Moreover, in a world in which banks and venture capitalists still view women as bad risks, these businesses have the advantage of requiring minimal start-up cash.
Yet, for all their contributions to the growth of the economy, service businesses, by and large, get no respect from the business world. Without bricks-and-mortar assets and a good-size payroll, service companies can be easily dismissed as unbankable hobbies or business boutiques. And because the barriers to entry are easily scaled, competition is often intense, leading to high failure rates and relatively low profit margins. To survive, many service companies find themselves nice little niches that keep them out of the line of fire -- and out of the limelight.
But how about sales? With the superior interpersonal skills widely attributed to women, you might assume them to be naturals when it comes to selling. Generally, that hasn't proven to be true. The image of the successful salesperson is aggressive, distinctive -- and male. Since childhood, women have been taught the inherent value of being self-effacing and demure. Perhaps that's why various women's magazines, when offering sales advice, bring it down to basics. New Woman, for example, recently presented tips for how to get noticed (say "I'm Phyllis the wallpaper lady," rather than "I have a wallpaper shop") and how to make an impression on potential customers ("develop a collection of hats," "wear unusual earrings"). At AWED, Fitzpatrick says that from her experience, there are few things more exasperating, or more common, than businesswomen who "sit and wait, as if hoping someone will introduce their customers to them."
It's axiomatic, of course: to sell a product, or a company, you've got to be able to sell yourself. But women seem more inclined to toil in splendid isolation. "I've got one client," reports accountant Holloway, "who won't get out of the office at all, no matter how often I've told her to get into the forums, the networks. Then she goes to the bank, acts like a diz, and says she didn't get the financing because she's a woman. It's a shame, because she works so hard."
"Women have always operated in isolation," agrees Holloway's colleague, management consultant Nancy Rosevear. "While men learned to play on teams, women jumped rope. While man were learning to ask for assistance, women were learning only how to provide it. Women don't self-promote."
