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This Guy’s Thoughts on Kim Lavine’s “The Mommy Manifesto”
By JLP | September 8, 2009
I’m going to do something a little different with this book review. I’m going to give you my thoughts (a guy’s perspective) in this post, and then I’m going to mail my copy of the book to long-time AFM reader, Beth. She’s going to read it and give us her thoughts (a woman’s perspective).
JLP’s Thoughts
I think I’m on an automatic mailing program from book publisher, Wiley. I received a copy of Kim Lavine’s The Mommy Manifesto: How to Use Our Power to Think Big, Break Limitations and Achieve Success
It’s a short read (thank the Good Lord).
I have to say as a guy, this book bugged me. The author comes across as quite angry at the treatment of women in society and she paints all men with a broad brush. Not all men are chauvanists just like not all women are mean. Yes, there are extremes and we are all aware of them. I also didn’t appreciate other generalizations the author makes in other parts of the book regarding men. I mean, if the her intent is for society to quit generalizing women, then shouldn’t she be leading by example when she talks about men?
The second chapter of the book is dedicated to all that’s wrong with the world and its treatment of women. Some of her statistics include:
• In the United States Congress, only 87 of the 535 members—or 16.3 percent—are women.
• There are currently 8 women governors in the United States. You guessed it: 16 percent.
Maybe I’m simplifying things but could it be that there are fewer women in these positions because there are fewer women candidates for these positions? I have never once considered not voting for a candidate based on sex or race. It has always been about what the candidate stood for.
It would have been interesting had the author done some comparisons with the past. Are there more women in these positions now than in the past? Are the numbers growing? If so, at what rate? But, that wasn’t the intent of this chapter. Rather, the intent was to make women angry. Some of her attempts at accomplishing that were misleading. For instance, on page 13 and 14, she talks about women on Wall Street. Well, I’ll let you read the author’s own words:
“This last year has seen the departure of three of the street’s most prominent female executives in the shake-out from an uncertain financial climate where it seems only the men survive; Zoe Cruz, former co-president of Morgan Stanley; Sallie Krawcheck, chairman and CEO of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management division; and Erin Callan, Lehman Brothers Holdings’ chief financial officer, have all lost their jobs.”
I’m not sure what happened to Zoe Cruz, but Sallie Krawcheck is now with Bank of America and Erin Callan took a position with Credit Suisse. Ms. Callan’s days at Lehman would have been limited because the company ended up going bankrupt last fall. Oh, and not only the men survived. Lots of male executives lost their jobs.
With chapter 2 out of the way, the book takes a more positive tone. The author tells women that instead of getting angry, they should aim to get rich. She then goes on to describe what’s going on in the world that makes it look like the tables are turning in favor of women.
Personally, I thought the most entertaining part of the book was the authors discussion of social media. She gives a nice rundown of both Twitter and Facebook. I have a Twitter account but never use it. I have decided to give Twitter more attention after reading Ms. Levine’s thoughts on the service.
What this book lacked was flow. I was reminded of Seinfeld’s “show about nothing” as I was reading this book. Yes there were a few good thoughts but the bulk of the book was either a complaint about modern society or was a hodge podge of unconnected thoughts. I think more attention to linking everything together would have served the reader better and made this a worthwhile book.
Those are my thoughts. Now we’ll see what Beth has to say.
Stay tuned…
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Topics: Books | 8 Comments »
September 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
At the company I work for, women get promoted very quickly (faster than men).
A minority female is like gold in large companies. At the same time, I’ve seen small companies that refused to look at you if you were not an Asian male. I think there is a bunch of ‘hidden’ discrimination and reverse-discrimination going on.
There is always some HR person looking at the gender or racial ratios and influencing hiring/firing/promotion decisions based on those numbers (in large companies anyway) to prevent lawsuits.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
BG,
My wife works for a big company and has been treated well. Of course she works hard and has sacrificed a lot.
One thing I failed to mention about the book is that Ms. Levine says that if a woman is unhappy with her job, she should quit and start her own company and that there’s never been a better time to do that (debatable).
September 8th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Whether or not you would vote for a woman, JLP, doesn’t excuse from from not moving down several rungs.
If women are 16% of officeholders, are they also 16% of candidates? (normalized for party affiliation, area demographics) etc. Are they statistically more or fewer? This would give better insight into whether or not people will “vote for women”
Futhermore, one can ask, even if they win even-steven a statistically normal number of times, why *aren’t* there more female candidates? Sure, perhaps fewer women want to run for public office. But I think to claim prima facie that there is no where on the *path* to candidacy for public office that discrimination (against anyone, for any reason) can happen is foolish. For the most part, people don’t just up and run for higher level public office – they work with and are encourage and supported by the local/city/county/state chapters of their political party.
I work in a research lab, and have never felt one whit less respect as a woman in a still-male-dominated environment. But that doesn’t explain why at every level from undergrad –> grad –> postdoc –> faculty the percent of women drops. There are many factors at play, and only ever using the simplest of surface descriptions (sexism! reverse-discrimination! women’s brains are wired differently! women want babies! men don’t want to work with women!) is cheap, both on the part of the book author , but also on your part.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Anna,
I don’t know the answers. Sure, there’s discrimination goig on that’s keeping some women from running for public office. Like I said in my review, I would like to see the history on the topic. All the author gave us was the here and now, not the progress (or regress) of women in politics.
I appreciate your thoughts.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Anna, are you saying there is a world-wide conspiracy against women in politics?
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm
because there is only one country that has more women than men in their parliaments / congress: Rwanda at 56%.
Or perhaps it is simply that politics is just not an interesting subject for most women and they’d rather be in nursing / medical profession.
We don’t see many female welders/metal workers, and we don’t see many male daycare workers. I’d rather weld steel (Tim Allen *grunt* here) than change diapers, and I bet you vice-versa… that doesn’t mean we are discriminating. That means that men and women ARE wired differently (though there are exceptions).
Women make up 51% of the population, yet only 46% of the workforce (in the US) — that right there should tell you to expect more men in most job roles. Add to it the huge concentration of women in the medical field and it is no surprise that practically every other occupation is male dominated. Are we supposed to assume that the medical field is discriminating against males? Of course not.
September 9th, 2009 at 12:37 am
To be a successful politician, you need to be a smooth lying too-faced bastard with enough connections to raise money. Not much to do with discrimination — we can’t vote for you if you can’t get on the ballet and we won’t vote for yo if can’t get on TV to sell your phoney baloney garbage.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:46 am
BG: no, I don’t think there is a worldwide conspiracy. I think that implies far too much active behavior.
Thinking about it, I think I have two main points:
1) Statistics often raise more questions than they purport to answer. Using any piece of statistical information without asking further questions about it leads to many erroneous conclusions.
2) I think people in positions of power choose people they like and appreciate to also try and place into positions of power – both in business and politics. I think you can be biased *for* a group of people without conversely being biased *against* another group.
And, in re: your comments on women in particular, well, I don’t think I have a coherent response. Your reasoning makes me pretty irritated, but my being irritated isn’t going to change any of your opinions.
However, if you’d like to read a good book that actually discusses a fair bit of the actually shown differences, both behavioral and physiological, between men and women, I would suggest reading “Sex and Cognition” by Doreen Kimura. Thanks.
October 24th, 2009 at 12:29 am
JPL, I appreciate hearing your thoughts. I have not read the book, but was interested in making the purchase only because she seemed to have a similar mission to my own. Now I can see clearly the difference between us. We both are looking to empower parents, but her focus is on “moms” and women, where mine includes men, and dads. As a business woman, I am all for embracing our feminine qualities as it relates to business and leadership, and I encourage it. However, I don’t see men as the enemy, and in all actuality I feel that for the first time in history, men are really transformiing. The family unit is more “balanced” that ever before with both parents sharing more equal amounts of responsibilities, more dads getting involved in their kids lives, more women going to work while dads are staying at home…if anything I believe that this revolution that Kim talks about is going to include both the sexes- not one more than the other.
Why do people think it’s neccessary to inspire one group of people by putting another group down?
It’s not that I am denying how women have been persecuted through history, but isn’t it more productive to celebrate how far we’ve come and how far we are going to go?
Not to plug my site…but I am very proud of the fact that we are “parents” joined by a common goal to provide for our children. Sure 90% of us are women, but men are more than welcome to join in, and the ones that have are wonderful contributers. They respect how we do things- perhaps more “girly” than other organizations, and the women appreciate that they make themselves comfortable. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I do feel that all of us are heading in a better place as far as equality and understanding.
Maybe we’ll get thier faster if we stop picking sides and blaming the other one.