When I hear (usually) women speak about Hilary Clinton “grabbing for power” as a candidate for president, my reaction is: “Well, Doh! What do you think a presidential campaign is supposed be -– a Tupperware Party? What ARE you girls thinking?”

Then I remember how girls think. It isn’t pretty. Girls . . . and the women they become . . . remind me sometimes of the Japanese Salarymen: pound down the nail that dares to stick out. Or the curve-buster in school: don’t show you’re smart or you’ll ruin the grade curve for all of us who didn’t bother to study. Dress like we do. Talk as we do. Play only with us. Make us look popular by hanging around us as if you actually liked us.

So, how do these women think Hilary Clinton should run for president? Should she just play the nice demur little girl, the way they do, and say “Oh, no, I really wouldn’t want all that responsibility. It would mean sacrificing the time I so love to spend with my family. But, hint, hint, hint – I really really want to be voted Ms. Popularity!”

Should she “Assume the position,” crying or feigning weakness in hopes that some Prince Valiant or Prince Charming will come to her rescue and marry her into office? Oh, wait, didn’t we actually try that already?

But, those who are making all of the noise about Ms. Clinton trying to “steal power” beg the question – steal power from whom? Perhaps, it’s the Journalist Women Authorities at Vogue or Cosmo who don’t like the idea of sharing the media limelight with any other woman in leadership. Who actually is willing to sign her name and stand behind the accusation that Ms. Clinton is “grabbing power?” It’s all rumor and innuendo -– gossip in the all-girl vernacular.

No Woman Journalist will stand out and sign their name to that accusation -– it’s so much more fun to toss out comments like these as asides at New York cocktail parties. That’s the hallmark of jealous fems. You know them. You grew up with them. You probably endured their tiny-minded green-eyed venom as a teenager, yourself. Some things never change. Especially “Those Girls.”

Tori Johnson has teamed up with Linda Babcock to advocate on behalf of women taking control of their lives – or at least the salary negotiation portion of their lives.

Ms. Johnson did a Good Morning America Behavioral Lab experiment where observers watched men and women negotiate for salaries, based on exactly the same resume, the exact same script – but men AND WOMEN observers gave the job to the men as the more likely to succeed. When women were scripted to be more assertive, they were considered pushy and the B word.

“When asked to explain their responses, the evaluators who were more critical of the woman applicant than the man told me that they're people with opinions just like you and me.”

In other words, these hyper-critical evaluators hid behind the lemming group mentality – everybody does this so it must be OK. Except Ms. Johnson knows that the end result of these destructive cognitive biases is discrimination in the workplace, a 25 percent lower differential in salaries, and chronic poor negotiating behavior on the part of women. Ms. Johnson calls the spade a spade: women are as guilty of this bias and prejudice as men. And that may be the most debilitating bias of all.

“Women -- and men -- must acknowledge that we are all guilty of such biases, whether intentional or not, and must decide that the buck ‘starts’ with each of us. If we catch ourselves thinking, ‘Oh, isn't she demanding and pushy,’ or ‘Isn't she quite full of herself,’ we must call ourselves on it and commit to thinking again. Hold yourself accountable.”

Cudos to Ms. Johnson, whose web site: WomenForHire.com has some very interesting discussions and advice. Finally: women expecting women to take control of their own lives. How original.

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Notes:

Paycheck Politics: Why Are Women Still Uncomfortable Negotiating for What They're Worth?
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3805400&page=1

Paycheck Politics - Video
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3806340&affil=wtae

Men vs. Women at the Bargaining Table
Many Times Females Settle for Less Than Their Male Counterparts
By Tory Johnson, September 26, 2007

How Avoiding Negotiation Hurts Women
University Experiment Examines Why Women Negotiate Differently Than Men
By Linda Babcock, September 28, 2007

Unequal Pay for Women: April 24, 2007 - Video:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3071892

Take Control: How to Negotiate Your Salary: Men Are More Than Four Times More Likely to Haggle Over Pay Than Women by Tory Johnson, April 24, 2007
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/TakeControlOfYourLife/story?id=3074877&page=1

Is The Wage Gap Women’s Choice? Research Suggests Career Decisions, Not Sex Bias, Are at Root of Pay Disparity, May 27, 2005
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=797045&page=1

Kelly Spors (smalltalk@wsj.com), the Wall St. Journal’s adviser to women entrepreneurs, responded to a letter from Hunting in Cleveland who asked, “How can I find a mentor in my small town?”

Ms. Spors suggested that Cleveland go hunting for mentors among women’s business organizations or small business development advisers. She tells Cleveland to study what the protégé “can gain from the relationship [with a mentor]”, how the protégé “needs somebody with experience in your particular field” or how the protégé is “just seeking someone who relates to [her] ordeals.”

Unfortunately, it seems we’ve forgotten, “What exactly IS a mentor?”

We’ve transformed the meaning of the mentor-protégé relationship, especially for women, into some combination of Mommy and Me Classes, Sage on the Stage Coaches, Girl-Talk and Psychotherapy. Today, the question is what can the protégé get from the relationship? What can she “take-away” and who is the perfect woman-seer-crone-wisened-yo-momma who could give her just what she wants and needs?

Protégé used to mean someone with talent -- with unique and valued skills which, if honed properly, might actually improve the quality of the profession or art. A protégé was someone who respected and understood that masters existed who were far, far better, wiser and more talented. The protégé aspired, through practice and refinement of her craft, to emulate those who came before. The basic concept was that the protégé had to have some talent worthy of development. A protégé was not Everywoman. She was somebody worthy of the attention.

Today, protégés are just hungry wannabes. Most of them aren’t talented. They’re noisy whiners. Many of them really only want a baby sitter who’ll listen to their moaning about ordeals: How practice is hard. How work is hard. How life is hard. This whining is happening in the most egalitarian time of our economic history, when substantive opportunities exist for women, when educational choice abounds, and when resources are far more abundant than ever before in our memories.

A mentor once meant someone who was a seasoned professional or an accomplished amateur. A mentor was someone who became tops in the field. Today, mentors are anybody, regardless of competence. A mentor, today, is anyone who will pay attention to someone junior. You didn’t certify a mentor – their scarcity was due to their having perfected their skill, competence or achievements. If they chose to work with a protégé -– and it was THEIR choice, not the protégé’s -– it was because the mentor could benefit from their relationship.

Teaching was one way a mentor chose to further refine their skill or talent because by teaching one understood the skill better and could explain it better. The mentor benefited from the relationship as much as the protégé because the mentor was invigorated intellectually by the interaction with someone who shared an understanding of that skill or talent.

Today, corporations have “mentor programs” where they force employees to work with underlings regardless of competence on either side. These are not producing more people with highly refined talents or skills -– they are as wasteful as they were in the past when we called them “baby-sitting the newbies.”

As you read the articles supporting the Top 50 Women in Business, does this happen to you? You’re cruising along, enjoying the headlines and stories about today’s accomplished women executives and entrepreneurs when – suddenly – you feel your neck yanked to the side as if your scarf got caught under the tires of your car. “Queen Bee Syndrome” is the cause of this jerking: the brief and ever so subtle mention of this catty comment pops up out of nowhere in an otherwise professional article. Back the cart up, Nellie: what was that? That was the “Damned if you do” part of feminist journalism where the woman writer attacks women in leadership by innuendo.

You keep reading, trying to fathom what DOES she mean by that? Does she support the point with evidence or facts? Does she elaborate? Explain? Of course not, because just dropping that phrase should suffice to remind all women who aspire to leadership that they will be painted with this heavy coat of negativism if they dare rise to the top without giving more credit than is due to underlings.

You return to the article, trying to focus again on how the women did it and how you, too, actually might learn something from their experience. Then -– again suddenly -– there’s the other jerking on your neck, pulling you back under the tires. This time it’s the “Work Family Balance” challenge – the other half -- the “Damned if you don’t” part of feminist journalism where the woman writer reminds all women that their first priority should be the babies, the hubby, the house, the parents, and the family. It’s never anybody else’s priority -– just a woman’s: you would never read this paragraph in the middle of an article on male corporate leaders. Dropping these hints are part of the women journalism’s predictable programming us to believe that if women in leadership aren’t focused on personal matters, then those women somehow should be considered “Less than a real woman.”

We’ve been reading this same article for 20 years now. It may no longer have the title “glass ceiling” as it did way back then, but all of the hints, the subtlety, all of the feminist snobbery and innuendo are still there, packed in-between the two Damn You’s!

But where are the Editors? Where is the Writer’s Professional Conscience that is supposed to be sitting at the mark-up table asking the tough questions? Where is the man or woman with the sharp pencil or delete key? How is it that a so-called professional editor allows these games to be played in today’s marketplace? Where is the individual with the intelligence to insist on data, facts or supporting proof of the slur: if or whether “Queen Bee Syndrome” or women’s private lives are relevant to how accomplished women achieved positions of leadership to the left of us, to the right and straight ahead?
And if there is no reasonable support for the innuendo, then remove the slur from today’s articles.

It’s time we started to realize that a woman journalist is not a business professional and certainly not a leader – all she really is doing with this style of writing is standing on the sidelines, selling eye-lash liner ads for the paper. Too bad –- such potential.

Business case studies about women directors who serve on public company boards are few and far between. On the other hand, articles abound on a host of feminine issues unrelated, at best, to how women actually earned those director roles and what they bring to the board room.

Biographies of women directors provide living studies of how diverse talent addresses problems from unique, new perspectives. People with different experiences solve problems sometimes in unpredictable and often more effective ways. The women on corporate boards in today’s 21st economic marketplace show us what creative solution-building looks like.

Each woman studied demonstrates a valued “take away” or lesson from her life experiences. These are not your mother’s tales of sacrifice, suffering and woe, or an inevitable confrontation with impossible odds. Their stories are not even about your sister’s feminist activism or revolt. Tremendous change has resulted from the insightful leadership, institution-building, and collaborative decision-making of today’s woman corporate director.

These are modern women, working in the contemporary economic marketplace. They know the financial and strategic challenges facing business in this global economy. These are women who lead. They are unsung leaders who are not afraid to speak their peace. They are comfortable in their own skin, not wall-flowers waiting to be invited to the ballroom dance.