Damned If She Does, Damned if She Doesn't: Rethinking the Rules of the Game That Keep Women From Succeeding in Business

Lynn Cronin and Howard Fine. Damned If She Does, Damned If She Doesn't: Rethinking the Rules of the Game That Keep Women From Succeeding in Business. New York: Prometheus Books, 2010, 272 pages, $19.00 softcover.

In this lively account, consultants and husband and wife Cronin and Fine present a critique of five game rules of business that assure men success but keep women from succeeding, including being a team player, cultivating mentors and advocates, demonstrating commitment to the job, bonding with coworkers, and prudently challenging the power structure. The authors set out to explore why these seemingly gender-neutral rules favor men but disadvantage women. They begin with a summary of the present state of affairs of working women, indicating that women have made great strides but remain few and far between at the highest levels. Their numbers at the top seem to be stagnating with no improvement in sight. The authors argue that, "If not much progress has been made, maybe we need to change how we are looking at this problem" (p. 1 1 ), which in their view means shifting the focus from women as responsible (if only they could act more like men!) to considering that the "problem with male/female relationships in corporate America is embedded in the protocols of business" (emphasis added, p. 13).

The first three chapters set the context of these business protocols. Chapter 1 ("Still Stuck on an Uneven Playing Field") provides an overview of the inequities between men and women and the stubborn disparities in their achievement. A widening gulf between male and female perceptions of the problem is also described here. In Chapter 2 ("Solving the Wrong Problem"), the authors argue that both men and women are busy trying to resolve the incorrect predicament. Most men do not have conscious prejudices against women, and yet they correctly observe that women remain few at the top. The problem, they conclude, must be their make up (e.g., their biology or "wiring"). For women, the idea that misogyny underlies every...