MEMBERS OF THE CLUB

Corporate insiders Driscoll and Goldberg (president of Driscoll Associates and the Avcar Group Ltd., respectively) assess the obstacles that women face in business and, based on interviews with women executives, recommend the best techniques for overcoming them. Well aware of the stereotypes women live with in business, Driscoll and Goldberg offer sound and practical—if, for some, perhaps compromising—techniques for dispelling stereotypes and joining ``the Club,'' the group of executives whose opinions and decisions affect the way people live. Attitude, the authors believe, counts greatly: aspiring women should give up negativism, male role models, and blame. Driscoll and Goldberg urge women to become visible, as well as valuable through ``rainmaking'' (generating clients and keeping their loyalties); to develop a specialty; to cultivate emotional detachment, autonomy, and ``personal currency'' through ``public club'' activities, such as volunteerism and civic work that contribute to corporate prestige. While corporate romance is to be avoided, feminine appearance counts, as does charisma. The authors also recommend that women break the barriers to international business; ``network'' by joining support groups of other businesswomen; be critical but available; learn to manage the media; and acquire public visibility. In place of a career, they say, women should acquire an ``MIT''—a combination of mission, interests, talent—and learn to balance the personal with the public, and family with business, and to encourage political action that supports domestic life. Heartening and useful—but likely to fall best on mature ears, and better suited to more economically opportune times. Still, cheaper than a power suit—and probably more effective.