Whistleblowing: What's Gender Got To Do With It?
by Connie Glaser
Best-selling author and keynote speaker Connie
Glaser is one of the country's leading experts on gender communication and women
in leadership . Exploring communication differences
between men and women, Connie offers corporate seminars on effective communications
and overcoming barriers to leadership.
Is it significant that the prominent whistleblowers to emerge from the three
great organizational scandals of recent years were women?
Actually, there is evidence that suggests gender does play a role. Coleen
Rowley had worked for the FBI for 21 years when she appeared before the Senate
Judiciary Committee to testify that the agency had ignored pre-911 warnings
about terrorist activity in the U.S.
Sherron Watkins, Enron's vice president for corporate development, testified
before a House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee that her company had become "the
poster child of corporate abuse."
And Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom's vice president of finance, alerted the company's
board to an internal phony accounting scheme that ultimately led to the largest
bankruptcy filing in the nation's history.
These brave women were named Time Persons of the Year two years ago.
One prominent theory of women as whistleblowers is that of the insider-outsider. "Women
aren't part of the 'good ol' boy' system, so they don't risk being pushed
out of the network," says Kris Kolesnik, executive director of the National
Whistleblower Center in Washington.
"What's important to them is doing their job, not protecting their
buddies."
Adds Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher, Ph.D., author of The
First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World, "Women
aren't as sensitive as men to status in the workplace. And when you're not
as committed to the hierarchy, you can see the ramifications a little better."
In fact, Fisher believes that, thanks to social conditioning, women may
be natural whistleblowers -- because of the way they think and how they learned
to play as children.
"As young boys, men jockey for position in the playground and learn
early on to give and take orders," she explains. "If boys don't
like the rule, they leave the game. Girls, on the other hand, play in leaderless
groups, not hierarchies, and choose games with far fewer rules, which change
if someone gets upset. Subsequently, as adult, women aren't likely to play
by the rules if they don't think the rules are right."
According to Fred Alford, author of Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational
Power, another factor that makes women statistically more likely to speak
out and fight for what they believe in is that they typically have one foot
firmly planted in another world: the family. This, he says, connects them
to a different way of thinking. "In fact, when they bring that model
of ethics into an organization, it must put a lot of women through hell."
University of California professor Judith Rosener believes that "women
tend to see things in a much bigger context than men do.” In her e-book
Ways Women Lead, Rosener notes that women also tend to see the implications
of the decisions -- such as who will be hurt -- in contrast to men, who tend
to think about whether they will make money or get caught.
"Not that men are more crooked," she adds. "They just don't
think about implica-tions in the same way."
Nancy Evans, co-founder and editor-in-chief of iVillage, agrees. Speaking
at the Women’s Trailblazer Conference sponsored by the Business womens
Network, she remarked, "Women tend to be straight talkers and sensible
problem-solvers, and they raise the flag if something doesn't add up.”
Reprinted from "What Queen Esther Knew: Business Strategies from a
Biblical Sage" by Connie Glaser and Barbara Smalley. Copyright 2003
by Connie Glaser. Permission granted by Rodale Inc., Emmaus, Pa. 18098.
