The Working Week 91

This week Wayne talks to Pauline Crawford, founder of Gender Dynamics, about her recent article for Management-Issues in which she argued for a new blueprint for business that shifts the dynamic of the workplace from one that is inherently masculine to one where there is a more balanced collaboration of the masculine and the feminine within us all.

As Pauline explains, the model we have followed for business for the past 200 or so years has predominantly been a masculine one. Despite the ever-changing nature of work, men's roles in the generation of wealth and prosperity and in how decisions are made have changed very little.

For women, however, there has been a massive shift in the past 60 years. And while working patterns have changed the way women are valued and perceived, business has not always made the best of what is truly "feminine". Traits perceived as "feminine" (ones that tend to use the right side of the brain) – altruistic, consensual, people-oriented, emotionally engaged, open, co-operative and so on – have often been seen as "softer" or deemed less valuable than the "hard" elements of commerce, profit and loss.

With the effects of this aggressive, risk-taking, masculine mind-set now all-too obvious, Pauline argues that the recession gives us a chance to promote more consensual ways of working as a way to help us get us out of the mess we have got ourselves into. If we are going to manage our way to survival, gender communication and collaboration are what counts, and co-operation (rather than competition) is going to be essential.

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