Taking charge...

"When women think of power as dominance, they really hate it. When they think about power as the ability to do things, they love it. Because women love getting stuff done."

~Margaret Heffernan, author of How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules of Business Success
(More magazine, September 2007).

Because I'm a Type A or "alpha" female, I have to remind myself on occasion that I am a human being and not a primate living in the wild (see: Bonobo). I don't have to assert my power outwardly to prove that it exists; it simply exists because of the work that I do and there's no need to feed or focus on it. Besides, I've gotten better results using reason and insight than from playing a few rounds of "Mine is Bigger Than Yours."

The bottom line: If you spend more time focusing on titles and what or who you're "in charge of" than you do on your job performance and results, you're setting yourself up to fail.

Introduction to Skirt! Rules...

skirt! Rules for the Workplace: An Irreverent Guide to Advancing Your Career is a real-life perspective on getting ahead in the workplace, with a humorous approach, for young (or not-so-young) women who want to know what they can do to close their own wage gap and break through the glass ceiling.

Look how far we’ve come: In this country, women can vote, drive cars, walk in public unaccompanied, run for office, run companies, and wear whatever the hell we want while we’re doing it. But it’s not far enough, baby, as long as there are women out there who have so few options that they take jobs that require them to perform the same tasks as their male counterparts, plus fetching coffee, stocking the office fridge, wiping the counters, and wearing pantyhose so no one has to be offended by a bare knee, all for approximately 70% of the male colleague’s salary.

Though women make up almost half of America's labor force (U.S. Department of Labor), only seven Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs or presidents, and 90 of those 500 companies don't have any women corporate officers (Catalyst.org). Young women are asking, “What can we do to make a difference?” skirt! Rules for the Workplace: An Irreverent Guide to Advancing Your Career has the answers—not for pulling off a one-woman revolution, but for each woman to make a change where it matters: At her job and in her bank account.