Recommended read for every working woman (and man). It was quite painful but enlightening to see your feelings validated on paper, and what to do about those problems that are effecting your career progression as a woman. ( )

Full review coming soon!

I thought the authors handled the issues women face in the workplace in the best possible way. They talked about each issue from various angles and presented ideas women can consider for dealing with them. I appreciated that they always acknowledged that what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. It can be good just to read something like this to understand how many other people out there are facing the same issues and it's not just you. Then you can decide for yourself the best way to handle it by taking into account what others who have been successful in their professions have tried before you. ( )

Another entry in advice for professional women, with a heavier emphasis on racialized elements of experience, along with measured criticism both of “man up!” approaches and “act like a lady” approaches; one size does not fit all. The four patterns are “prove it again” (women face negative presumptions again and again); the tightrope (don’t be too nice or too mean); the “maternal wall” (motherhood as work death); and “tug of war” (older women have different expectations than younger, and sometimes women accept business cultures in which only one woman can succeed and try to be that woman at others’ expense). I was most interested in “prove it again,” which the authors discuss in subvariants: (1) men are judged on their potential, whereas women are judged on their achievements, which means women aren’t given the same chances; (2) whatever characteristics male candidates have turn out to be the keys to success, a finding teased out by several clever experiments varying qualifications; (3) men’s successes are attributed to skill and women’s to luck, while mistakes are the opposite; (4) objective requirements are applied strictly to women and leniently to men (see (1)); and (5) women are assumed to be gossiping/not engaged in work while men are presumed to be talking about business. They offer various microstrategies for dealing with these structural barriers, but throughout emphasize that the problem is indeed structural and can’t be solved on an individual level. Among the advice: document your accomplishments; form a “posse” that celebrates each other’s accomplishments; “no random acts of lunch”—follow up on networking, and engage in reciprocal exchanges of favors, even if that’s just crediting someone with helping you succeed; say no to office housework or negotiate for something in return for doing it. ( )

What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know - an ARC from NetGalley. I read this book, particularly the first several chapters, which identify and explain the "four patterns," with a sickening feeling of recognition. The book is the product of Williams' years of work as in what she calls "experimental social psychology" and her interviews and focus groups with women who are generally working in pretty high-powered careers. Unfortunately, while the description and diagnosis of common gender issues and biases in the workplace were scarily spot on, the book's suggestions on how to deal with these problems were often lacking. This would not have bothered me overmuch if I were reading a book that simply aimed to diagnose the ills of the modern workplace, but since the authors state upfront that they explicitly aim to give advice on overcoming these challenges, I was disappointed by how much of it seemed weak.

However, the research on the common patterns was excellent. These patterns are:

(1) Prove It Again, in which women must demonstrate their skills again and again in order to be seen as equally competent to men. A man's success is assumed to be the product of inherent characteristics (e.g., "he's so creative") while a woman's success is contingent (e.g., "she worked really hard on this project").

(2) The Tightrope, in which women have to balance typically feminine behavior, which undermines perceptions of their competence but increases their likeability, with typically masculine behavior, which may increase perceptions of confidence while decreasing likeability.

(3) The Maternal Wall, in which motherhood triggers negative assumptions about a woman's competence, commitment to her workplace, and commitment to her family. Women who carve out time for their families and children are assumed to be insufficiently reliable and may lose out on opportunities. Woman who work "too much" are judged to be poor parents.

(4) The Tug of War, in which women's different strategies about how to navigate challenges in the workplace can pit women against each other. Are you "one of the guys" or "one of the gals"? How do you view woman who've made the other choice?

My workplace is probably about 50-50 men-women, but our leadership is primarily male and the people pointed to as "star performers" are more often male. I recognized so much of my own experience and those of my colleagues and mentees in the description of these patterns, it literally made me nauseated. This is a book that I will be recommending to colleagues - male and female - to raise awareness of common stupid things that we do in the workplace without probably even realizing it to diminish each others' potential. ( )