First Friday Book Synopsis

Cheryl offers: I subscribe to HBR for obvious reasons; it’s one of the most insightful professional pieces of business literature published. There is seldom an issue that doesn’t contain something I want to keep in my library of reference material. In the May issue entitled “How to Keep Your Star Talent: Engage your top performers, manage your Millennials, and coach tomorrow’s leaders” on the cover, I was all ready to dive in – that is, until I saw the graphic on the cover.  If you haven’t seen it, let me describe it for you. There’s a person in the center with flowers, gifts, money, stock options, and prizes being handed to them, only them is a him. All I could think about is, here we go again, reinforcing stereotypes. Since when is the only “Star” talent one gender? I’m not advocating it be either/or (male, female); I’m advocating for a way to portray both equally (and).  Surely the folks at HBR with all their talented contributors could figure out how to make that picture happen! So, while looking inside for who would receive my letter expressing my displeasure, I was shocked to see the names of 39 women as compared to 17 men on the Editor page, including a female art director! How can this be, I ask? As Maddy Dychtwald’s new book, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform the World for the Better points out, women make up 51% of the workforce and last year women graduates exceeded men in every category of college and professional degrees. The valedictorians at Notre Dame and West Point are both women this year. How HBR could arrive at the graphic for their article with the overwhelming data advocating for a more inclusive picture of our future is a mystery to me. This time, they’ve gone too far and in the process, they lost me, maybe many more.