The Male Mind at Work: A Woman's Guide to Winning at Working with Men Book

I'm giving this book the dreaded 1, because I don't think I can recommend it to anyone. It's not very engaging as a demonstration of non-fiction writing, I don't think women attempting to understand men will take much from it, I don't think men (like me) who are interested in women's takes on men will get much from it, and perhaps most damning of all is the citations section of the book, which is not long and certainly not long on research.

The book is the result of 52 interviews with executive-level men, some women, and a bevy of what appear to be pop psychologists, but cited as if they're authorities. The issues raised in this book are the age-old ones. The recommended actions are (admittedly) sensible.

But what is critically lacking is exactly what one would hope to get from a book that includes "The Male Mind" in the title. That is, you get very little of how the male mind works. The 52 interviews are interesting in their own way, but I did not see in the book any interview scripts that she was using or even outlines of the topics that she interviewed these men about. Since their quotes are taken without other context (besides the context that the writer uses them in), they're one step up from meaningless.

Further, I'm suspicious that these executives are honest or self-aware enough to come out and say correctly the first time what their real opinions and experiences have been. The author is often guilty of putting words in the subjects' mouths and of dismissing their testimony because they could not come up with perfect examples of what they mean on the spot. She regularly contradicts the opinions of the men in the interviews, making us wonder if she really understands the male mind at all. For example, one executive said that he felt women were mean sneaky and conniving than men are, but when put on the spot to come up with an example, he was at a loss. The author then went on to conclude that he was wrong and unreasonable and mindlessly accepting stereotypes about women. He might have been all of those things--or he could have just been unable to think up a specific example on the spot.

And worst of all, she's dismissive of the complexity of her subject to an alarming degree. To this author, men are all different, except that they're pretty much all upset that they're not professional football players. She has two lenses through which she can view men--one is the true-but-tired sports metaphor ("Boys compete in sports as kids--that's why they relate to everything as a competition and use terms like 'The finish line is in sight.'") and the other is the rough-and-rowdy insulting-to-bond-with-each-other image of frat boys and schoolkids calling each other pussies and wimps.

Even other well-known masculinity tropes (such as hero/protector) are missing from examination. I was almost dumbstruck when the book ended without the author even mentioning that men feel that work is 'going to war' to protect their families, or that they might tend to treat women differently because they feel protective and possessive of them.

The objections to the implied completeness of the book come easily to mind. For example, wouldn't it be appropriate in a book on this subject to consider that perhaps most organizations are fashioned after the preferences of their founders and early leaders, and that most entrepreneurs are men? Why wouldn't a man design his organization in a way that he feels comfortable with running it? I worked for a company that was started by a woman, and it was very flat and egalitarian. That was her prerogative, and it worked for what she wanted her organization to do. It's not the way I would have organized the company, but I didn't start it and run it. But the author seems to imply that men will co-opt whatever organization they can get into to drive the women out. Not true!

My last complaint (for this review, anyway), is that the author infuriatingly accepts standard complaints from women at the workplace without challenging the reader to entertain a new view. She readily agrees that men only see women in the way that they view their mother or sister or wife. After numerous chapters backing up the idea that women are excellent detail managers and often keep details tidy with regular reminders to their untidy male counterparts, she should have challenged the reader. If you're constantly on your coworkers' cases about small details, you're treating your coworkers like children and inviting comparisons to an overbearing mother. Though the author laments the "narrow band" that women have to find between being detail-oriented and being a nag (among others), she does not challenge the reader to consider that the presence of feminine sensibilities in the workplace also pushes men into an uncomfortable narrow band of behavior in which they must be assertive but cooperative, ambitious but egalitarian, etc.

She is especially fond of the baffling idea that "men are threatened by strong women." I could find very little support for this idea in the interviews the author conducted aside from a few who implied that maybe some other men feel threatened. The author seems to be reading her own conclusions into the interviews. Maybe we think of what it means to be "threatened" in different ways. The threatened men at work popularized in Anchorman are, in my experience, very hard to find in the wild. It's true they don't want to lose to women, it's true that they may be unsure of how to treat them, but to say that they're "threatened" means that men are scared. Scared of what, exactly? Losing a job? Missing a promotion? Even if women are treated preferentially to those rewards, those rewards have long been given away for unfair reasons anyway. It's an accusation that doesn't ring true, but it's used with a heavy-hand throughout this book.

Okay, I'm done.