Living Dangerously - Issue 34

I ask her how her team differs from others. She immediately replies, "We have love. With one another, we are neither jealous nor territorial. What's important to us is not to let our boss down. She is unbelievable -- intoxicating in her fineness. There are only two other adults in my life whom I feel that way about: my brother and my father. I'm talking about love that is possible when you care for someone in a familial, or even sexual, way. Women have been mothers, wives, and daughters, so we're used to being expressively loving. Being surrounded by women brings out the best in people."

Justice is another important principle. For this woman, work has become not just a way to achieve success or meaning, but also a way to settle personal accounts. Like Mao's guerrillas, girl gangs are out to redress old wrongs. That's a big motivator. The gang offers strength in the fight -- and enough protection to take on larger issues.

A woman living in a man's world identifies with the underdog every minute of her life. Work for this particular woman is a matter of personal history. It's a chance to correct wrongs done to her parents, who had to hide things about themselves in order to be accepted. "I was raised by an unusual mother," she says. "She has a huge hunchback. She said that it never bothered her because it was behind her. And, all his life, my father hid the fact that he was Jewish. I didn't even know that about him until after he died. It was stunning to me that he kept such a secret. He kept it because he was afraid that the discrimination that he faced as a child would affect his work as an adult. I hated the pain that my parents endured. I wanted to redeem their suffering. I guess that's the selfish part." The nonselfish part: "I believe that I have huge gifts to offer. And if I have women to inspire me, then I'll use those gifts. If I create a loving environment, then I'll be able to do big things."

Is there a downside to working exclusively with women? "We don't meet a lot," she says. "If we did, we'd probably start feeling as if we didn't have enough personal space. And the male head of our operations, who's located in another city, has to keep us disciplined. Otherwise, we would chat too much."

The greater danger to her group: hostility from men. "They're extremely jealous," she reports. "Our team organizes an annual women's dinner, which nearly 100 women from our firm attend. The men in the firm occasionally hear about it, even though we don't advertise it. One time, at a restaurant where we were holding a meeting, I ran into one of the men. He said, 'If the head of the firm ever did that -- held a dinner for men only -- there would be a war.' And I responded, 'Men have been doing just that for centuries. Do you know what we women talk about at these dinners? We talk about St. John Knits and our children's schools. We talk about things that we can't really bring up at work.' Our team knows how hard it is for women, especially mothers, to succeed. The men? Most have wives who help out with things at home. I can't complain to them. They don't understand me, just as I don't understand Mandarin."

But the greatest threat comes from the organization. Companies as traditional and blue-blooded as X are famous for neutralizing anything that poses a challenge to the status quo. "Our boss understood how to market our team: Just build it, and don't say anything about it," says the girl-gang leader, who views the team not as an option but as an imperative. "Look, if I didn't love what I'm doing and the people I'm doing it with, I'd go home and be with my kids."

Do men have anything to fear? History says no. "It has been argued that perhaps there has never been a fully and pervasively matriarchal society," says cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, "a society in which women have dominated at every level, as men do in some patriarchies."

But the organization may have something to fear. The very definition and practice of leadership as X knows it could soon change -- a threat posed by female leaders who are not beholden to male leaders, who learn to make their own rules, who earn their chops by dint of their own strengths, who prove to themselves that their way is the best way. Girl gangs have their own brand of leadership, one that differs from the prevailing culture at most existing companies. They pose a shock to the system -- a shock that enables them to take charge.

What can women -- and men -- do to encourage the new leader-ship that these gangs engender? They can realize that women are the only hope for reforming the institution of leadership in the United States. Men need to invite women onto their boards. Women must invite women onto their boards. We should lobby to get women to remove investment dollars from companies whose boards aren't at least 50% female. We should resist the integration of female teams.