Customer Reviews

So Ordered: Making Partner the Hard Way

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Ann Hopkins didn't make partner at one of the country's leading accounting/consulting firms. It seems that the characteristics that enabled men to succeed in her field, and which enabled her to achieve goals like bringing in a large amount of new business, were seen by coworkers as negative attributes when displayed in a woman. And she lacked a few characteristics that people in her workplace felt that a successful woman should display, such as more emphasis on makeup and style. She sued, and eventually won. This book tells the back-story of that process from her perspective.

If you went to business school in the 1980's or earlier like I did, you were probably drilled six ways from Sunday on how to behave in corporate America to succeed. In many cases, the recommendations could be summed up as, "Do what this (almost always male) well-respected corporate leader did." Many women eventually found ourselves in workplaces in which that advice worked much better for men than it did for women. When a woman displays some of these traits and behaviors, she might be branded by some as that b-word, aggressive, rough, stubborn, too ambitious, even anti-social. Yet a male in the same department, in front of the same coworkers, can take a similar stance and be termed "a real go-getter", no-nonsense and someone who cuts to the chase and gets things done. It's called gender stereotyping, and it's against the law for it to substantively, negatively impact employment decisions such as hiring and promotions. It's also alive and well in business today. "The Hopkins case" set precedent around it that is still cited in decisions by various courts.

When you read this book, you get the impression that Ann Hopkins is exactly the person she is said to be. She's very straightforward in her communication almost to a "just the facts, ma'am," extreme. This book is not full of flowery prose. It reads more like an exercise in journalism. She holds people, including herself, to high standards and expects them to live up to those standards. She's maybe somewhat interpersonally naive due to being so focused on business objectives. She seems to be exceptionally smart, the kind of person most would expect to experience great success in business. And she's a believer in the idea that smart hard work should be fairly rewarded. Her efforts to hold Price Waterhouse accountable on that latter point, and the effects that the lengthy legal battle had on her life, made for interesting reading.

I liked the level of detail, because by context it said as much about how conscientious and thorough Hopkins is, as the content directly said. But I took away one star because I think most readers would say they could have gotten the point of the story in less time if some of it had been omitted.