WRITING IN THE TELEGRAPH, KAREN ROBERTSON REVIEWS A NEW BOOK WITH A BOLD CLAIM

You may have to start thinking like women to be successful in the emerging world order—especially if you are a risk taker and long-term planning for you means nothing more than carrying around some condoms in your wallet. These are the submissions in a new book, The Athena Doctrine. It says we’re witnessing a seismic shift in terms of what values drive success, morality and happiness. According to authors John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, an increasingly social, transparent and interdependent world is the death knell for values traditionally considered to be ‘masculine’—decisiveness, aggression, resilience, pride and analysis.

Now what is required to create the kind of future we all want to live in are—yeah, feminine traits—listening, collaborating, flexibility, and sharing the credit and your feelings. The authors spent nearly two years travelling to 13 countries, 26 cities and speaking to 64,000 people. More than half of the people consulted were dissatisfied with the conduct of men in their country—reckless risk-taking, inequality. In fact, two-thirds of the 64,000 polled felt that the world would be a better place if men thought more like women. If you’re wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do to cultivate feminine mind-set and be successful, the authors have supplied a list:

1. long-term planning

2. expressiveness

3. reasonableness

4. loyalty

5. flexibility

6. patience

7. intuitiveness

8. passion

9. empathy

10. selflessness

But Karen Robertson does not think this New York Times bestseller is very helpful or that its subject is a useful conversation. She asks if it’s not reductive to apportion values and attributes by gender and accuses the authors of “semantic hand waving” for listing traits as gender specific and then turning around to say “… ‘feminine’ values don’t belong to one gender”. “Never mind a world where men think more like women—how about one where we all just think? End of.”

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