For Women Only

Women and Power – Men Are Not the Enemy

The book is coming out late 2004. To celebrate, Annette Simmons will send 100 women a “Run Your Own Workshop” package. It will include a videotape of instructions and excerpts from one of Annette’s original Women and Power workshops, along with ten free copies of the new book. If you would like to be considered, email your thoughts on, “what power means to me…” Max: 150 words to Jacqueline jmessick2@triad.rr.com with your name, address, and the names of the ten women you intend to invite (so Annette can personalize their books).

If women are so smart – why aren’t we in charge? We got the vote. We pulled down barriers to entry in universities, corporations, churches, even the military. We have outlawed sexual harassment and refused to allow juries to blame women for crimes like rape and spousal abuse. In the United States, women control more than half of the wealth. We outnumber men, and yet we still hold less than 5% of the truly powerful positions in governments and businesses. What’s up with that?

There is a disturbing gap between a woman’s desire to “do something” and her ability to “get something done.” Too many women feel powerless in today’s world. For women who want to influence our most important concerns like education, environmental protection, world peace, corporate greed and other social issues we need a new answer to the old question: Why aren’t more women in power?

Discrimination is only part of the answer. “They won’t let us” is a conspiracy theory that keeps women in victim mode. The real reasons women are not in positions of power have as much to do with women as they have to do with men. The Power of a Women brings together a savvy reading of corporate cultures, interviews with hundreds of women, and the latest findings on how men and women think to reveal three female-style perceptual filters that encourage women to opt out, back off, and doubt themselves when faced with a battle for power. This book reveals these previously invisible deterrents so women can begin to choose for ourselves whether we graciously defer or graciously demand the power we deserve.

• In-depth interviews indicate that women tend to define power as an internal “feeling” summed up as, “no one tells me what to do.” Women who begin to rise in any hierarchical system quickly realize the price of “power” costs dearly in terms of personal autonomy. Males are happier with the trade-off as they tend to use external definitions of power measured by money or control over resources.



• Regardless of talk about merit, power is more often awarded to those who are willing to fight for it. And more often than not, in a fight for power women back off before men do. Men’s nostrils flare at the prospect of the battle, while women think it is silly. Women’s physical and intellectual natures and their social conditioning conspire to make fighting look ridiculous while the same factors drive men to live for these moments of triumph.



• Men and women’s brains are different enough in structure and chemistry to ”see” different details as relevant, thus creating different conclusions about necessary action. Women’s perceptual range is more horizontal and includes more details about emotions and the lateral (relational) impact of actions. Men tend to scan vertically, and concentrate on measurable impacts. Since measurable impacts are more easily communicated to large groups and more easily verified, women’s subjective observations are treated as less valuable. The real crime is that women buy into this value system and discount what they “see”, shut down entire parts of themselves, or live with internal conflicts that leave them exhausted and feeling like they live two lives.