Networking: Pomp or Circumstance?

By Ann Bender

Women's networks have increasingly become the focus of attention (in print, by women mostly). Why do women want to join networks? To socialize? For status or prestige? Several times I have been asked, "Which network do you belong to?” (Not, “Do you belong to a network?”) Just "belonging" to a network seems to have become, for some, more important than "why" they might have chosen to join.

In Cleveland, there are several networks, and still more in the forming stage. That networks are taken lightly by many, men in particular, should be no surprise. When have women's efforts been taken seriously? But the days of personal communication through quilting, tea parties, sororities, etc., are over, particularly for the working woman. Networking provides a modern day substitute. I recently joined a local network which is a stimulating, thoroughly refreshing and diverse group of business women. They have been instrumental in helping me get to the decision-makers in several companies to discuss employment possibilities, otherwise highly unlikely. So far, it is a relaxing, fun and enriching activity which I look forward to once a month. But thewomen in this network really seem to want to help each other through the sharing of information.

Then there was the woman (a corporate vice president who belongs to another Cleveland network) who went into a lengthy discourse about the impressive members of her network, their titles and credentials. She invited me to attend a luncheon meeting, but indicated that a membership invitation would depend on what kind of position (title) I hold and the acceptability of my income (requirements of her group are

minimum $24,000 per year). I declined the luncheon invitation.

One of the reasons networks started was for women to help other women achieve greater success in their careers. That purpose cannot be achieved unless a network group allows women to attend who have not yet achieved their career ambitions. Otherwise no assistance is needed and an atmosphere of exclusivity develops. On the other hand, too diverse a group might have difficulty really enjoying each other's company and would probably find very few topics of mutual interest for meeting presentations. However, there are many women who could benefit from the knowledge and experience of others, yet those are often the women who are not "invited" to join a network.

Another purpose of networks is to allow businessrelated information to be shared among women on a regular basis (previously shared only by businessmen on a regular basis). In this light, the term "network" itself becomes an exclusive word, because this pur'pose eliminates the many working women who have not reached a level of employment which would give them access to information worth sharing with others.

Then there is the socializing. For career businesswomen who have fond memories of sorority days, networks could be the 80's replacement for those exclusive membership groups of "homogeneous" women who want to have some of the camaraderie that men have had for years. I can't help but think that it is better to emphasize the social aspects of networking in order not to add another area of concern for the already-so-easily-threatened male business world. If the network is working, we

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women can take whatever amount of patronizing is aimed our way, We're used to it. Besides, socializing is still men's primary method of transmitting important information. We women might as well give it a try.

So how do you find a network to join? Simple. By networking, of course. Don't look in the yellow pages under "Networks, Women". You won't find them. First, be in the kind of environment to meet women who could be members of a network, then indicate an interest (or wait until they mention the subject), then accept an invitation to attend a meeting to see if you want to join. Each network group, like every business, has a personality of its own and membership tends to be made up of women with similar employment goals and ambitions, so choose a group with whom you are comfortable. If you don't find one you like, or don't find one, set up your own. with a few friends and colleagues (with whom you do not work already or you have defeated the purpose altogether).

Those who want to belong to the "right" network more for the status and prestige than for sharing information are welcome to it. Any woman, however, who falls into this category of needing to increase her self-importance, to establish rigid exclusivity or to wave power and success in the face of any other woman, should think seriously about her motives. Then, too, if these women all belong to the same network, they won't interfere with the rest of us who think it's time for women to work together and help each other in any way possible. The more seriously we take the time we spend with other women in organizations, the more seriously we may, eventually, be taken.

Reflections on Women in Management

Miriam N. Weinstein

I'm one of these women who believe that women and men think differently. While it is obvious that the two genders act differently, it is less obvious in just what ways we think differently. The controversy over male/female differences has put women in the ridiculous position of defending or arguing the leftbrain right-brain theory. I say ridiculous, because the matter is not one of brain-capacity, but of mind-. capability. And the difficulty with determining mindcapability is that it is not a matter of genetic physiology, but of belief, experience, and consciousness.

In my experience, the fact that men and women think differently is nowhere more apparent than in management. Management is that sacrosanct avocation once limited to males which developed out of a need for one set of men to control the output and knowledge of another set of men. As management theory adopted the scientific method, it sanitized its underlying intention-to promote the avocation of control as "professional".

It is surprising to find that men have elevated control to a learned profession when experience tells us that men do not need to learn control mechanisms. It comes with their enculturation-just as learning to be controlled comes with our own. Yet, the significance of management as a profession hinges on the techniques by which control is translated into regulating the activities of any organizational actor.

In the ten years of affirmative action's effect on women's employment and training as managers, a large number of us have been exposed to what can be understood as the central intelligence of "worldmaking❞—a term coined by Dorothy Dinnerstein in,

her treatise, The Mermaid and The Minotaur. World-making is the stuff of what men's lives are all about. "Whatever life is to a woman, to a man it is first and foremost his work." In business, this aphorism is in its heyday. With Reaganomics, business has been set free to do its thing with virtually no accountability or constraint in any of its spheres of influence. It is now free to champion the interests of its control anywhere in the world, and with full cooperation of national and international monetary and political institutions.

Women enter management to get a piece of the action. We are led to believe that by building our "networks", developing our management skills, and learning to think as businessmen we will gain control of power bases similar to those of men and realize ONZALEZ À SA SERDARE AN

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our interests in relation to social justice. But this is a faulty belief.

For what does it really mean to "belong" in the world of management? First and foremost it means learning to think as world-makers. Thinking as world-makers in our day and age means grasping the mechanisms for control that lead to possession of the future. Possession of the future has been heralded as "wisdom" by some major writers in business strategy and policy. Controlling the future-as one controls the present-is the new-found slogan of strategic planners and business forecasters. Business profits and survival hinge on maintaining some measure (hopefully the marginal edge) over risks and unforeseen events that might upset one's grasp on the future.

To adopt this mentality, women eagerly seek to learn the tools which men have constructed for such an endeavor. On face value, it seems to make sense. If I learn how to run a business, teach managers, control my employees, and set my investments on the path of greater return, I will be in a position to grab my share of the market and carve out my sphere of influence.

But this path requires singularity of vision and linear thinking. It means that goals, objectives, and strategies for success are defined in terms of a limited view of a rational world, where only a few (usually two) options exist in any situation. And the options for success must be translatable into dollars and profits, rather than empowerment of people and the meeting of real social needs.

What most women in management are not willing to admit to themselves, their students, or their friends, is that learning to think in the present mode of world-making is learning to think in the aphorisms (continued on page 11) Cakeh

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February-March,1982/What She Wants/Page.9...