Sally Helgesen first released The Female Advantage in 1990, at a time when women were beginning to fill executive offices around the country and many experts had begun to question standard top-down organizational models.
    Helgesen followed four women - including former Ford Motor exec and consultant Nancy Badore - as they went about their days. She paid special attention to how they returned phone calls, answered mail and dealt with the dozens of small tasks that make up a manager's day.
    Women, Helgesen discovered, have distinct advantages over men, in their ability to communicate, to prioritize and see the broad picture. As Barbara Grogan, president and CEO of Western Industrial Contractors, put it, "If you can figure out which one gets the gumdrop, the four-year-old or the six-year-old, you can negotiate any contract in the world."
    The four women profiled had developed circular, web-like organizational structures. By being in the center of the web, Helgesen concludes, women do not give up their power. Instead, their leadership becomes the "heart" of the organization, rather than its head.
    While other books written for women executives urge women to adapt to the traditional, sports team-based models, The Female Advantage presents this startling conclusion: That women who believe in and confidently make use of their own "female advantage" can create organizations at least as successful - and in many cases more successful - than those run by men.
    This book belongs on the shelf of every woman who aspires to a career in business, whether as an executive or entrepreneur. Helgesen's brave subjects, women who freely opened their lives to her scrutiny, serve as valued role models who show us we need not become men to succeed in a male-dominated world.