The Alpha Female Guide to Survival

Women leaders are handicapped by an ancient culture that keeps them “one down” in their power position to men. If we dare to be equal to our male peers, we are shamed for it. This is not the message I was given as a child. The story I was told as a child was the Feminist Fairy Tale, that I could do and be anything I wanted to be and that I could have it all, and great career and a family. This was a lie. I want to help women outsmart the lie we are told as young girls and women

We have done “field work” our whole lives to understand the puzzling circumstances we found ourselves in as we navigated a predominant patriarchy culture in our careers. This book takes an anthropologic, economic, historical and health-impacts view of how we have come to understand that culture. We are not academic scientists or academic feminists; we were trained as scientists and we see the world through a scientist’s lens. We know that to understand the culture of sexism we need to understand the complexity of how that culture originates and motivates human behavior. We don’t believe that key biological differences between men and women are barriers to men doing what were classically women’s jobs and vice versa.

Women have thought the highest leadership positions, pay and honorifics would be available to them based on their talent as much as to the men. Women thought they would be full members of the professional teams, valued for their abilities as team players. Women have thought that gender wasn’t a professional issue at all. These expectations are the myth. Women are marginalized before reaching the top rungs of organizations. The double standard of the patriarchy culture is the 800-pound invisible gorilla in the room.

Women’s failure to flourish as leaders is not based on their performance; it is based on the power structure of the system. Competence is just a baseline requirement; promotion is a political game.