I would sum this book up as the workplace edition of Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. Written by Shaunti Feldhahn (she also wrote the For Women Only and For Men Only series), this book is based on confidential interviews that she conducted with more than three thousand men about how men tend to think in work environments. Some of the information is basic - for example, it's almost common knowledge now that women are often better at multi-tasking, while men tend to have one-track minds. But Feldhahn explores this issue a bit deeper (and uses a great analogy of women being like a computer that can have many windows open at once that you can click and switch between; and men being like a computer than can only have one window open at a time, and you have to close one before you can open another) by explaining how this can affect how men and women in the workplace. For example, we know that women (generally) tend to be more emotional than men. But because men have more of a one-track mind, when a man perceives a woman as being emotional about something at work, he is more likely to assume that she is not getting work done because he figures that she is like him and can't do more than one thing at one time (i.e. be emotional and be effective at work). Further, men are much more likely to perceive someone who is emotional as violating the rules of the business world - i.e. being "unbusinesslike." So what's the moral of the story, per Feldhahn? "If something might evoke personal world, don't let a man see it."
Here's a passage from the chapter on emotion:
The issue of managing emotion was one of the top topics that came up in my interviews; men clearly thought that an inability to manage emotion well was a way talented women sometimes shot themselves in the foot. Yet these same men often commended women for their superior empathetic, listening, and interpersonal skills. In short, many men clearly saw the benefits of someone who was "relational" but not "emotional."
Another interesting point that Feldhahn made is that women to be very interested in the process, and men tend to be more interested in the end result. So if an associate is explaining his or her research to a male partner, the partner is much more likely to be interested in the very narrow answer to his question, rather than, "Well, I didn't find anything here, so I checked this resource, but then I had to ask this partner this question because ... and then ultimately I found ..." As one man in Feldhahn's survey put it: "Don't tell me about the pain; just show me the baby!"
Oh - and what about the short skirts and low-cut tops in the workplace?! Even if you don't think your male colleague is looking at your body ... he probably is.
Neuroscientists have consistently found that more areas of the male brain are devoted to visual-spatial processing than in the female brain. By contrast, more areas of the female brain are devoted to verbal and emotional processing. Where a woman's brain predisposes her to experience the world more relationally, a man's brain predisposes him to experience the world more visually.
On top of that - because of hormones like testosterone, men are more likely to perceive certain stimuli as sexual in the first place. So even if you think what you're wearing is "high fashion," a man is more likely to think, "She must want me to look at her chest!"
Of course some people can write off some of what's in this book as "stereotypes," "overgeneralizations," etc. - but to that I say take from it what you will. I'd definitely recommend it to any working woman.
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