Tender Power: A Revolutionary Approach to Work and Intimacy

Shares the stories of successful women who have developed a feminine approach to their careers instead of copying male models of success

Cohen ( Making It Big ) favors "tender power" in the workplace: kindness, trust and concern for colleagues, rather than one-upmanship. She offers a reprise of how liberated women are succeeding in the marketplace, then presents interviews with entrepreneurial females, not all of whom agree with her claims for the efficacy of tender power. Cohen is firm in her belief that even difficult men can be won over to the ideal, with benefits to themselves as well as to women. What she neglects to offer, however, are specific suggestions on ways for busy workers, particularly those who are also wives and mothers, to realize the dream of mutual cooperation and true equality in the business world. First serial to Working Woman.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Yet another book dealing with the conflicts facing women in the workplace and at home. The author has nothing new to add and recycles the stereotypes of competitive males and nurturing females, of women conforming to male roles in order to succeed and losing their identities in the process. Her solution is "tender power," a strength based on cooperation rather than impersonal threats and decrees. Edith Gilson's Unnecessary Choices: The Hidden Life of the Executive Woman (LJ 3/1/87), Barbara Berg's The Crisis of the Working Mother: Resolving the Conflict Between Family and Work (LJ 4/15/86), and Judith Briles's Woman to Woman: From Sabotage to Support (LJ 2/1/88) are among the many works that offer a serious analysis of these issues. Cohen's epilogue states that tenderness is pink and powerful. Hard-working women will find this image offensive. Not recommended.
- Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.