Women's Networking Groups — Men as Interlopers?

As president of a women's networking group in Scottsdale, I have a unique vantage point about the invovlement of men in such groups. ABWA's Scottsdale Express Network has four brave male members, and I currently am courting a fifth, the reason being that I believe men do have a place in women's networking groups.

Much of the current conversation around gender education and training is heavily biased in favor of teaching men to better understand women. You often see the two combined as Gender & Women’s Studies. The pendulum has swung so far in favor of making sure that women’s needs are met that we’ve almost arrived at a point where we could seriously benefit from a course known as Gender & Men’s Studies. Can you imagine the uproar? But the same thing is going on in networking circles.

While it's true that men and women do business differently, as Robin Craig and Norma Ory of Package You can certainly attest to, we live in a world where both genders do business together. So how much sense does it make to completely eliminate the opposite gender from our networking experiences? Even businesses that have been traditionally seen as women's domain — such as skincare — are beginning to see an increase in male clients.

Perhaps the fact that I attended an all-girls parochial high school has affected my perspective on this. They told us that the girls would be more likely to participate in class if we didn't have to worry about the impression we were making on the boys. Although that may be true of high-school students, I am unconvinced that the segregation serves as we move into the business world, and I always welcome men to the table. For one thing, we need men's input for balance. We also need to keep on improving our communicaton and the way we do business with each other.

As with everything else in life, practice makes perfect.

The American Business Women's Association was formed in 1949 by one man and three women. What a remarkable thing if we could mimic those percentages in our membership.