Pete Heim & Susan Golant “Hardball for Women: Dangerous Misconceptions About Corporate Life”

In the modern world, more women are entering the workforce than in the past. In the past, many women were stay-at-home moms, but modern society has changed and more women are working. While some women leave the workforce after marriage, more and more women are choosing to stay in the workforce after marriage due to the increasingly unaffordable living conditions.

Beyond blue-collar jobs, women are also making significant inroads in professional fields that require specialized skills. It’s not uncommon to see women passing high school exams and becoming doctors.

However, women are less likely to hold senior positions in companies. There are many factors that contribute to this, and this book explores the reasons why many highly talented women are not being promoted to higher positions.

“Women’s Dangerous Illusions About Corporate Life”

This book is written by two authors, Pet Heim and Susan K. Golant. The original English title is “Hardball for Women”, but the Korean translation is “Dangerous Illusions about Corporate Life”. However, if you add “by women” to the title, you get closer to what the book is trying to convey.

Corporate life requires more than just the ability to get things done. In particular, the ability to be liked by your boss is another important factor. This is why people who have good skills in these social areas, even if they are a bit underpowered, get promoted faster in companies and land important positions. In the book, the author summarizes the following list of “behind-the-scenes rules of corporate life that smart but desk-bound women are missing”.

Men who know how to use power and Women who refuse it
Men who are team players and Women who want to be left alone to do their own thing
Men who are too busy networking and Women who are too busy working with their nose in their desk
Men find fun in internal competitions, while Women avoid them at all costs.
Men who take criticism in stride and Women who burst into tears at their bosses’ reprimands

“Men and women are fundamentally different.”

Men and women are innately different. They’re not different, they’re “different” by default. In the corporate world, men tend to adapt to organizations more quickly than women.

This book looks to childhood play as an example of how men are quicker to organize than women.

“Sports: a man’s game”

Men play sports. Sports are about collaboration, competition, and working together to achieve a goal. In order to do better, they learn to listen to their coaches or managers and learn to achieve their goals. In the process, they learn to define the concept of teamwork, which is naturally masculine, learn how to work together to achieve goals, and learn how to communicate within a team.

“Play: women’s play”

However, women’s game is called “play”. What we learn in playground games is the opposite of what we learn in sports.

They learn to play with each other as equals and get along with each other, but there are no goals in playground games. Without a goal, there is nothing to naturally pursue together. There is no teamwork, no organization.

There are no leaders, no authority. There’s no authority, so you don’t learn how to obey authority and how to work with an organization to pursue a goal.

The things we learn through childhood play will eventually show up in adulthood when we adapt to the workplace. This is the crucial difference between sports and play: men who are “results-oriented” and women who are “process-oriented”.

“Company life is a sport.”

In the book, I talk about corporate life as a kind of sport. The company is also a stadium. There are managers, owners, captains, star players, and prospects. There are rules of the game, and there are fouls that can get away with it.

For men, the rules of the game of “corporate life” are often well understood from their childhood play. However, the rules of “corporate life” are often misunderstood by women.

Therefore, the main idea of this book is that women need to understand and know the rules of “corporate life” in order to be successful. To be successful in the workplace, women need to be able to understand the rules, not just the ones you see on the surface, but also the ones you don’t see behind the scenes.

“Women’s Strategies for Surviving in a Man’s World”

This book offers practical advice on how to accept the reality of the situation and how to confront and cope with what women may perceive to be an unjust world.

This book introduces the strategies of women who are in a man’s world, but don’t have to act like men, and who are able to create results through feminine leadership that utilizes the strengths that only women can have.

Although the content is not much different from the general treatment, the book focuses on situations that women may encounter, so it is a good book for women who are going through a difficult time in their work life. Of course, the author of the book is a foreigner, not a Korean, and is based on Western culture, so it may not be 100% applicable to Korea, but the basic fundamentals of corporate life are not very different, so you can find many parts that apply to the Korean situation.

“Hardball for Women: Dangerous Misconceptions About Corporate Life”