01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page v The Naked Truth A Working Woman’s Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters Margaret Heffernan 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page ii 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page i 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page ii 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page iii The Naked Truth 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page iv 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page v The Naked Truth A Working Woman’s Manifesto on Business and What Really Matters Margaret Heffernan 01_97143x ffirs.qxd 7/29/04 12:51 PM Page vi Copyright © 2004 by Margaret Heffernan. All rights reserved. Published by Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 www.josseybass.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, e-mail: [email protected]. Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986 or fax 317-572-4002. Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Permission credits appear on page 263. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heffernan, Margaret, 1955– The naked truth : a working woman’s manifesto on business and what really matters / Margaret Heffernan.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7879-7143-X (alk. paper) 1. Women executives—Interviews. 2. Businesswomen—Interviews. 3. Women employees—Promotions. 4. Achievement motivation in women. 5. Success—Psychological aspects. 6. Ability. 7. Success in business. I. Title: Working woman’s manifesto on business and what really matters. II. Title. HD6054.3.H435 2004 658.4’09’082—dc22 2004007900 Printed in the United States of America FIRST EDITION HB Printing 10987654321 02_97143x ftoc.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page vii Contents Preface ix Participants xiii Introduction 1 1 Start Smart 6 2 Geishas, Bitches, Guys—and the Invisible Woman 26 3 Balls to the Wall: Toxic Bosses and Hostile Environments 52 4 The Emperor’s New Clothes 77 5 Power and Where It Comes From 93 6 Sex, Love, and a Vision for Life 120 7 The Whole Life 139 8 How High Can You Go? 163 9 Breaking Up Is Hard to Do 186 10 The Entrepreneuse 200 11 The Parallel Universe 217 Notes 231 Web Resources 237 Bibliography 241 Acknowledgments 247 The Author 251 Index 253 vii 03_97143x fbetw.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page viii To Lindsay 04_97143x fpref.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page ix Preface In 2002, I wrote an article for Fast Company magazine. I had a sense that some weird things were happening in women’s careers and I wanted to test the waters, to see if what I thought was going on was as ubiquitous as I imagined. I discussed some of these issues with the magazine’s founder, Alan Webber, who invited me to write something. He said if it was any good he’d publish it. When the article appeared in Fast Company, I was entirely unprepared for the response. I was inundated with email, from all over America and, eventually, all over the world. Thousands of emails from women stuck, frustrated, angry, disillusioned, disap- pointed, and, in some cases, disappearing. Many of the letters were passionate accounts of the obstacles these women had encoun- tered—obstacles that no one had warned them about. Some of the letters were cries for help; others were practical solutions. I spent four months doing almost nothing more than answer- ing my email. The letters were too personal and too passionate to warrant an automated reply—and there was too much to learn from them. When the tide subsided, I sat down and listed every correspondent and her location, industry, age, and position. When I came to write this book, I started with a sample from this group, chosen to ensure that I looked at issues that transcended any par- ticular age or place or job. My correspondents—many of whom I’ve now met, many of whom introduced me to yet more extraor- dinary women—form the basis of this book. My Fast Company experiment confirmed—beyond my wildest imaginings—what I had seen in my own career and the careers of many women I’d worked with and for: that women are still abused, undervalued, and alienated in a business world that still can’t rec- ognize and respect them; that the pressure to align personal and work values is urgent and unrelenting; and that many women are ix 04_97143x fpref.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page x x PREFACE inventing solutions that, if they were shared, could make us a lot less lonely. I’d always known women preferred solving problems to reporting them, but I’d never imagined so many smart, creative solutions. My meetings and correspondence with so many women also delineated the fundamental pattern of women’s careers: we start off promisingly, do well—and then, as we gain some seniority and power, weird things start to happen to us. What worked before sud- denly isn’t effective any more. If we can understand the pattern here, and know that it is systemic, not personal, we can work through it and emerge with personal power, freedom, and a true sense of having crafted our lives. We can see what’s happening to us, make some choices, know when to leave (and how), and go on to craft careers that map meaningfully to the values we refuse to surrender. The shape of this book mirrors that pattern: from how we decide what we want to be when we grow up, through the bad things we encounter, to the gaining of power, creation of a life, and the making of big decisions about staying and going. There is a lot about money in this book. Not because I believe that money is the only reason to work or the only reward that work brings. I don’t. (In fact, I’m staggered that after decades of research showing that money is not a primary motivator for work, most cor- porations still manage their employees as though it were.) Women in this book come from the for-profit and non-profit worlds and pursue rewarding careers in both. But the economic independence of women is a vital issue for us if we are going to change our pres- ent circumstances, in which the poor, for the most part, are women; in which we are paid less, have a lower standard of living, and retire on less. No one who respects and admires women can be satisfied with a state of affairs in which women remain dependent on, and loyal to, institutions and companies that continually let them down. We can’t wait for those institutions and companies to fix this; we have to take responsibility for our financial independence. We have to make informed choices and understand the financial repercus- sions of our decisions. Facing some of the truths in this book will take nerve. It’s dis- appointing to find that stereotypes, harassment, and discrimina- tion are still with us. But it’s exhilarating to find women fighting through those obstacles to evolve their own concept of power, to 04_97143x fpref.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page xi PREFACE xi craft a blend of work and life that really does satisfy, to design career paths that do not require the splitting of personal values from work values, and to run companies that give the entire busi- ness community a different view of how work can be done. These women, all with successful careers, know that telling the naked truth about what business is, and could be, is the only way to make it better for everyone. Boston and Farrington Gurney MARGARET HEFFERNAN July 2004 04_97143x fpref.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page xii 05_97143x flast.qxd 7/29/04 1:00 PM Page xiii Participants The names of some participants have been changed to protect their careers. Linda Alepin, senior executive at IBM and Amdahl Corporations. CEO, Pebblesoft Learning Inc. Partner, Center for New Futures. California. Mother. Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO, Mavens & Moguls. Worked in Wall Street, for Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola. Boston. Cathy Aston, mid-level manager in one of the big three finance companies. Midwest. Mother. Jacqueline de Baer, managing director, Jacqueline de Baer PLC. London. Mother. Kimberly Bunting, CEO/President, Business Access LLC. Texas. Mother. Chris Carosella, SVP for Fortune 100 company. Now CEO, Bold Strategies. Colorado. Betsy Cohen, VP, consumer products. Midwest. Mother. Ruth Cohen, medical practitioner.