What Works for Women at Work

Hardcover, 365 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2014 by NYU Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-4798-3545-4
OCLC Number:: 844308899

(1 review)

An essential resource for any working woman, What Works for Women at Work is a comprehensive and insightful guide for mastering office politics as a woman. Authored by Joan C. Williams, one of the nation's most-cited experts on women and work, and her daughter, writer Rachel Dempsey, this unique book offers a multi-generational perspective into the realities of today's workplace. Often women receive messages that they have only themselves to blame for failing to get ahead—Negotiate more! Stop being such a wimp! Stop being such a witch! What Works for Women at Work tells women it's not their fault. The simple fact is that office politics often benefits men over women. Based on interviews with 127 successful working women, over half of them women of color, What Works for Women at Work presents a toolkit for getting ahead in today's workplace. Distilling over 35 years of research, Williams and Dempsey …

An essential resource for any working woman, What Works for Women at Work is a comprehensive and insightful guide for mastering office politics as a woman. Authored by Joan C. Williams, one of the nation's most-cited experts on women and work, and her daughter, writer Rachel Dempsey, this unique book offers a multi-generational perspective into the realities of today's workplace. Often women receive messages that they have only themselves to blame for failing to get ahead—Negotiate more! Stop being such a wimp! Stop being such a witch! What Works for Women at Work tells women it's not their fault. The simple fact is that office politics often benefits men over women. Based on interviews with 127 successful working women, over half of them women of color, What Works for Women at Work presents a toolkit for getting ahead in today's workplace. Distilling over 35 years of research, Williams and Dempsey offer four crisp patterns that affect working women: Prove-It-Again!, the Tightrope, the Maternal Wall, and the Tug of War. Each represents different challenges and requires different strategies, which is why women need to be savvier than men to survive and thrive in high-powered careers. Williams and Dempsey's analysis of working women is nuanced and in-depth, going far beyond the traditional cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approaches of most career guides for women. Throughout the book, they weave real-life anecdotes from the women they interviewed, along with quick kernels of advice like a "New Girl Action Plan," ways to "Take Care of Yourself", and even "Comeback Lines" for dealing with sexual harassment and other difficult situations. Up-beat, pragmatic, and chock full of advice, What Works for Women at Work is an indispensable guide for working women. - Publisher.

4 editions

GG reviewed What Works for Women at Work by Joan C. Williams

Review of 'What Works for Women at Work' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

As a journalist who became a transactional attorney, I've spent my whole life in mostly-male careers. While I experience overt gender discrimination much less often than I did 20 years ago, more subtle bias is still a huge problem, especially in the tech industry. An example is the common situation in which a company has almost no women in senior roles and talented women somehow don't get promoted beyond the mid-level manager mark -- yet the CEO insists there's no problem because personnel decisions are always "merit-based," despite a lack of discussion around the gendered conditions that color how "merit" is viewed and who is given the opportunity to display it. This book gets right to the heart of where this problems originates. By breaking unintentional gender bias down into four specific manifestations, the author provides specific, relatable situations and strategies for addressing them. Unlike "Lean In" and their ilk, …

As a journalist who became a transactional attorney, I've spent my whole life in mostly-male careers. While I experience overt gender discrimination much less often than I did 20 years ago, more subtle bias is still a huge problem, especially in the tech industry. An example is the common situation in which a company has almost no women in senior roles and talented women somehow don't get promoted beyond the mid-level manager mark -- yet the CEO insists there's no problem because personnel decisions are always "merit-based," despite a lack of discussion around the gendered conditions that color how "merit" is viewed and who is given the opportunity to display it. This book gets right to the heart of where this problems originates. By breaking unintentional gender bias down into four specific manifestations, the author provides specific, relatable situations and strategies for addressing them. Unlike "Lean In" and their ilk, "WWFWAW" places the blame where it belongs -- on the system, rather than on the individual -- but still provides useful guidance for how to work within those systematic problems... and maybe even help to change them. I would highly recommend this book to any of my female colleagues, and all men in leadership roles.