The Gentle Revolution: Men and Women at Work - what goes wrong and how to fix it
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Review by: The Alternative Newsletter Editor, James Boskey |
While the book is presented as focusing on the difference between men and women and their approach to the world, it in fact rejects the simplistic approach that there are inherent female and male characters and treats gender as a convenient proxy of limited accuracy for sets of characteristics that frequently cross gender lines. Although the equivilances are not exact, the character types that she presents parallel, in substantial respects, the Myers-Briggs types, which also tend to parallel gender without necessarily reflecting it.
Cornelius begins by examining the traditional character of the workplace and the change that is being brought about by the increasing presence of women at all levels. Many of those, mostly men, who have become comfortable with the traditional means of allocating authority, feel threatened, or at least challenged, by alternative styles and approaches, and many of the new entrants, especially women, feel uncomfortable with the traditional approaches and structures. As the anthropologists Robin Fox and Lionel Tiger pointed out some years ago in Men in Groups, women and men have traditionally formed different types of intra-gender liaisons, and those differences often create conflicts when gender lines are crossed in non-traditional settings. This can also be seen in Deborah Tannen's work on inter-gender (I wanted to write inter-species) communication.
Having established the existence of the problem, Cornelius then turns to four primary areas in which differences of approach are often reflective of gender characteristics. These are: Equality and Status, Agreement and Competition, Feeling and Actions-and-Objects Focus, and Interdependence and Autonomy. In each area she examines the "stumbling blocks and stepping stones" that lead to mutual misinterpretation or present difficulties for people in working together in an effective manner.
As in her earlier joint work (with Shoshona Faire) Everyone Can Win, Helena Cornelius writes exceptionally well, with elegance and outstanding clarity. She carefully balances theory and anecdotes to draw the reader into an understanding of the issues being presented and to show the way out of the dilemnas that the issues often pose. Her use of supplemental materials, such as self-tests and lists of ideas, is restrained and, because of that restraint, unusually effective. When such material is used, it clearly serves an important pedagogical function and is not, as in so many books today, simply covering a lack of authorial capacity.
In some respects this is a painful book to read. The reader may well recognize some of his or her less desirable characteristics and be forced to confront them. The pain is bearable, however, and the gain well worth the investment.
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