Where Have All the Girls Gone?
February 28, 1999
Last week I got a call from a woman in Connecticut, Sharon, who produces special events for women-on-the-move. As we talked, getting to know each other through our capsulized life stories, I realized that she’s another one who bit the dust!
“You’re a departee too?! When did you get out?” I ask. We laugh in mutual delight at having turned our backs on corporate America several years before. Sharon and I are not the only ones who left the system and started our own businesses. “Every 12 seconds another woman leaves corporate America to start her own business,” according to the National Foundation of Women Business Owners. (This is twice the rate for men.) That’s 5 women per minute or 300 per hour! Wow, that’s somewhere between a half million to a million per year. What’s going on here?
Have we made new inroads, or have we just made the patriarchal values portable? We’re still pushing ourselves to inhuman limits, working 80-hour weeks, never saying “No,” putting other people’s extreme demands before our own needs and sacrificing what we (supposedly) know is the “right” thing to do. We perpetuate that which we thought we left behind.
Cutting across all ages and functional levels, employees wonder if it’s worth the effort. When a 34-year-old female client of mine was recently offered a prestigious position with a well-known women-owned business, she declined with no reservation.
“Are you kidding? It’s no different there—they’ve got the right percentage of women, but it’s pure lip service. I’d be trading in my navy blue pinstripe suit for a pink one! Instead of a 60-hour week, I’d have an 80-hour workweek! That’s no life! And for what?”
It doesn’t stop at the employee level according to a top 52-year-old female international consultant. “I’m so fed up! I was thrilled to collaborate with some of my women colleagues on a big client presentation. We agreed in principle—on a hand shake—we were a team! So I prepared a great strategic plan. Once contracts were signed, they brought it in house. I got no credit and no money!” The lessons seem obvious. Both our entrenched old-time companies, and many of our newly formed businesses, are by and large still being run by our masculine aspect parading in drag—its counterpart, the feminine aspect, wounded and pushed to the sidelines.
Recent studies suggest that 44% of new women business owners are leaving corporate life after banging into the glass ceiling. Further, the majority of these women adamantly declare that nothing will bring them back. Lack of recognition and upward mobility may only be the presenting reason. I believe our departure is indicative of our dying souls seeking new ground to express our unrealized feminine aspect. Our current win-lose, short-term-profit-driven system thwarts passionate self-expression and leaves no room for values-driven self-fulfillment.
What I see as a Master Coach and Mentor is that we are doing the same things—devaluing the expression of Soul and paying lip service to how we interact with each other— with our employees, our suppliers, and even our customers. “I can’t take it anymore! We’re cutting styles I don’t believe in! What happened to my dream? The investors are calling the shots! Doesn’t anybody else care about what the customer needs?” cries out a “made it to the top” 45-year-old female international CEO.
There is a pervasive sense of values being out of whack, as expressed by a self-made 51-year-old importer: “Clients bust my hump to get the best selection and immediate turn-around. Committed to top-quality service, we ship goods out on 30-day net terms. They pay in 90 or 120 days. Then, 6 months later, the same client ships back half the goods for credit—and the returned goods aren’t even our merchandise! This is no way to do business. It’s just not fun anymore!”
Women aren’t the only ones who are struggling with these frustrations of bringing the feminine forward. Approximately 1/3 of my clients are men, each coming to a point of reevaluation of how they are living their lives and doing business. And it’s not just accomplished midlifers. Generation Xers are asking the same questions a lot earlier than we did. “What I want to know is how I can make a lot of money and do something that really means something.” says a 27-year-old. According to Yankelovich Partners, 87% of Generation Xers want to own a business.
Whether you are on the fast track or out on your own, the fact is we must harness this awesome power—the emerging feminine in all of us. Ultimately this is not a gender or age-related issue. It’s more about how we do business than about who runs it. Whether female or male, young or older, our successful survival depends on how well we elevate the feminine.
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