The Female Vision: Women's Real Power at Work

by Sally Helgesen, Julie Johnson

The Female Vision shows

• What women see matters to organizations
• What women notice is what organizations need now
• What women value Will Define Organizational Excellence in The Future

Women often see the world from a different angle than men. But this fact has been overlooked in most organizations. In this brilliant and strongly argued new book, Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson demonstrate why “the female vision”—what women notice, what they value, how they connect the dots—constitutes women’s most powerful asset in the workplace. Drawing on multiple strands of research, including their own Satisfaction Profile Assessment, they show what companies must do to engage, energize, and support talented women. And they show women how to nurture and sustain their own greatest gifts.

Genres: Leadership, Gender, Feminism, Business, Psychology

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Cole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall pretty good. I enjoyed the read through for the most part, I even annotated a bit. My main issues with this book were the very binary view of things and the exclusion of trans and enby people from the research and language. This is to be expected of research based things unfortunately but there was also an unnecessary amount of “he or she”, “his or her”, and other similar wordings when they and theirs would have worked perfectly fine. The sweeping generalizations that had to be made in order for this book to exist as it does were acknowledged by the writers in the text so that part didn’t bother me.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this book for work since I am in a male-dominated industry and the company is trying to retain their women hires. I am a feminist. But oh my gosh this book was so annoying and polarized. It was very “women are right, men are wrong.” “Men only care about numbers but women care about the big picture and people in the organization.” While this is a bit true due to biological nature, this book is an example of why some people don’t take feminism seriously. You need the viewpoints of women AND men to successfully run an organization. I didn’t look too much into the research done for this book, but it seemed very biased like the authors already had their conclusions and collected data to support their claim (opposite to collecting data THEN drawing conclusions). Instead of writing why women are right and men are wrong, I would have loved to read about how men and women can BOTH use their biological instincts to successfully run a company. I would have loved more data on how men think so I’m better equipped to work with my male coworkers. They made it seem like all men are just robots that care about numbers. I would have loved some tips on how to properly communicate my ideas in a male-dominated industry. I would have loved a story about men and women successfully working together on a team instead of ANOTHER story of how men were running a numbers-oriented company and the people were miserable until a ~woman~ spoke up. Overall, I think this book did have some great points and I did actually learn some things about myself, but feminism is about women = men and not women > men.

[Lisa Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Women can't afford to buy into the myth of our own inadequacy anymore."

[Michelle Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent book

Good book to start a much needed conversation on women in leadership and her leadership skills and abilities and her contributions to an organization

[Mariana Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found the book quite repetitive. She makes good points, and it was worth the read, but it felt like the point could have been made by 1/3 of the book.

[Elizabeth Schlatter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's great that the authors address the issue of why women aren't making it all the way to the top of the big, elite firms/companies/nonprofits. And what they conclude makes sense and is based on their combined years of experience: 1. women are broad-spectrum "noticers" and companies traditionally don't reward or appreciate that skill, as opposed to laser focus and larger, inflated vision that involve large amounts of risk; 2. women are not as motivated as men by traditional incentives such as large salaries, promotions, and bonuses, and by competitive systems vs. quality of life and workplace; 3. women like to "lead from the center" and value relationships vs. hierarchies and top-down management. This means that women's inherent skills and contributions are not recognized, so they are passed over for promotions and/or they drop out of the rat race.

But what bugs me is epitomized by the very title of this book, "female vision"??? It's very annoying and, I find, somewhat dangerous to so closely tie behaviors and values to gender. Even though these authors qualify that they make statements "in general" about men and women, they still make them, and then explain why organizations need more women at the top in order to bring these qualities to the fore, particularly in a changing world. But I worry that these qualities are then just as limiting as older preconceptions of women in the workplace, as in, bring in a woman so she can help us intuit what's really going on. Or, we don't need to pay a woman as much b/c they don't care about money as much as men, as long as they are rewarded by their work.

In a recent talk, Helgesen that some of these values and skills are being found in the "millennials" generation regardless of gender. Which makes me wonder if the "female vision" is not tied solely to gender but to age AND gender or to cultural biases imposed upon women, maybe even upon the two authors of this book. I'd love to see and expect to see more women "at the top," and a thoughtful discussion like this presented in the book is necessary to get there. I'm just uncomfortable being put into a professional "box" of expectations and skill sets.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well organized treatise on the author's extensive research and workplace experience with what women notice and why companies need to pay attention to the value they can bring to the way we work now. Companies who ignore these differences run the risk of losing talented female leaders and losing their competitive edge in the marketplace.

The book includes useful ideas that women can put into practice to put their vision into action. If you're a women interested in developing your leadership skills include this book on your reading list.

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Companies can't create robust female leadership pipelines because the sytem is structured to appeal to men. The result: too many women decide business careers aren't worth it and companies miss out on their unique qualities and prespectives.

[Lacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strategic, short, and super relevant for women who work for and with men. And, heck, for the men too!

[Sue Hagerty · Rating 3 out of 5]

nothing really new for me. Like Helgesen's first book better.