The research for this book began when I was collecting material for a seminar I wanted to present for women who wished to climb the corporate ladder into senior positions. Most of them knew they had the ability to go further, but couldn t find a way to break out of their low-level status and be taken seriously enough to obtain promotions into supervisory or management positions. These smart women often reported to men they d personally trained for their upper-level positions, but somehow they were never considered themselves for those positions. This book is written for women who ve hit a dead end in their pink-collar ghetto positions or who are on their way up the corporate ladder and need some help in their climb. It s also for women who are returning to the workforce and are entering their second careers.
Many women spend their entire lives in a pink-collar ghetto position.
They simply don't know the rules for effective participation, or the correct method for climbing the corporate ladder. This book identifies some of those rules. My research involved interviewing over seven hundred managers to find out why they weren t promoting more women. Six hundred and ninety-five of these were men, which reflects the prevalent custom of male dominance in the senior ranks of business. Companies were at liberty to have any of their managers attend the interviews, but only five women attended the interviews.