/ 6 August 1999

The war of the web

Anthropologist Helen Fisher’s new book, about the future of women and work, has enraged feminists and men alike, writes Sharon Krum

Helen Fisher does not look like a revolutionary. When she greets you at her Manhattan office, the anthropologist who has had feminists and many men in the United States calling for her head smiles warmly.

The kindness is genuine; her message may be radical but she is softly spoken and polite, and this is what confuses people. How can this 53-year-old Rutgers University professor press so many buttons?

Very easily, actually, since she has dared to declare that biology is destiny, that evolution has a greater impact than feminism on women, and that in the next century we will revolutionise the world.

“Here we are, set to start a new millennium, women are pouring into the job market and I began to wonder what impact they will have,” Fisher says.

“I had no agenda when I began my research, but when I finished it, I saw the global economy is moving in ways that will need the skills particular to the female mind. And that blew my mind.”

For her new book, The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World, Fisher picked over hundreds of tracts in psychology, sociology, medicine and economics to form her theory that the hardwiring in female brains will have a dramatic impact on the working world.

Women’s ability to do five things at once, work in teams, build consensus and weigh options are all qualities Fisher believes developed via evolution.

They may have long held women back outside the home, but they are, she argues, finally going to propel them forward.

“The economy is changing so rapidly that the old order won’t work any more,” she says, the old order being the typical hierarchical chain of command found in every company, hospital, law court and school.

But Fisher believes in the technological revolution, hierarchies (which favour linear male thinking) will go the way of the dinosaur. Organisations will “flatten out” to increase profits and productivity, and people will work in teams or watch their careers go belly up.

“Cost-cutting and increased efficiency are driving many companies to slash their workforces. The global economy will become so aggressive that corporations will change the way they work.

“Data shows success comes when companies share information, empower workers, seek win-win solutions. These are all women’s talents.”

When Ford Motor Company flattened out its hierarchy in favour of horizontal networks, Fisher points out, it increased its bottom line by $2-billion.

The delicious irony for Fisher is that this “new” strategy comes courtesy not of Harvard Business School but of ancient cavewomen.

She contends that, as a result of our ancestors’ lifestyle, men and women developed two distinct patterns of behaviour: web thinking (women) and step thinking (men).

“For millions of years, men had to track and focus on dangerous animals, and those who did so successfully survived.

“Women, however, had to do many things at once – stoke the fire, pound the nuts, feed the children, tan the hide – and evolution selected those females.”

Fast forward to today, she says, and we have a highly developed male animal who can focus brilliantly on one thing at a time (which is why, she says, a man can’t have a conversation while watching sport) and a female animal who can multi-task (she can change the baby and talk on the phone).

“Because of evolution, women take in more details from the environment around them, weigh contingencies, generalise and synthesise.”

We also have a man who can focus, control emotions, jockey for prime position and compartmentalise.

But while these skills served men well in the industrial world, in the new world of e-mail, computer conferencing and virtual corporations, they will be secondary.

Only those who approach business from a team-playing, collaborative angle will triumph, Fisher says. Men who continue to operate on a win-lose basis will, frankly, lose.

Yet as for reaching the top of the tree in droves, well, Fisher has her doubts. Jobs like prime minister and chief executive are really step-thinking work (Margaret Thatcher was a step thinker, she says); women don’t aim for the pinnacle, because it subverts their nature.

“I am honest in this book. Women are not going to be everything because, as web thinkers, we are more interested in multi- tasking, balancing home with work.”

Understandably, when Fisher hit the radar, the dust blew up at once. Men accused her of male-bashing, feminists bristled at the idea that 21st-century women will still be bound by biology (even if the news this time is good).

`Feminism has certainly given us more flexible office structures and made men more aware of their responsibility in the home,” says Fisher.

“But I think feminism is a response to economic trends, not their source.”

Face facts, Fisher says. The only difference between cavewomen and modern women is high heels, a cellphone and e-mail – our brains are wired the same.

However, in the new economy, where information is hard currency, the organisations that fail to capitalise on female web thinking will lose out to those who do.

So where does this leave all the hierarchy- loving, single-focus, prey-stalking men?

Fisher laughs and tells them not to worry.

“The information economy needs women, but technology requires men.

“Men will continue to build a technologically sophisticated world and women will use that world.

“What we are headed for, instead of a male- dominated workplace, is a collaborative society.”