Wisdom Born of Pain

Behind the celebrity appearances, the casual elitism, and the endless studies and statistics lurks a genuine cri de coeur. But Myers writes in a breezy, "come-on-now!" style that undercuts the seriousness of the issues she wants to talk about. The book is a lexicon of catchphrases. So a study of women's leadership styles produces "further evidence that there is more than one way to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan." The president of MIT, presented with research confirming that women there got lower salaries and smaller labs and office space, "had a kind of head-slapping, I-could-have-had-a-V8 moment." (What does a vegetable drink have to do with salaries at one of the nation's leading research institutions?) Women's domestic responsibilities are "the mother of all obstacles to women's achievement." Maybe so, but there has to be a better way of saying it.

Why Women Should Rule the World does give occasional, tantalizing glimpses into the Clinton White House and its boys'-club machinations. Voters who hope to find inside dope on Hillary Clinton will have to look elsewhere; she gets a couple of brief mentions, none of them enlightening, although Myers feels that the then-First Lady did not rush to offer support when Myers needed it.

And she did need it. Shatter a glass ceiling and you may get cut, as Myers found out. "Mine is a cautionary tale," she tells the reader. "I had the same responsibilities -- but less authority. And fewer of the trappings of power -- the office, the rank, the money -- routinely accorded to previous press secretaries."

Having worked on Bill Clinton's campaign, Myers was no political ingénue, but she brought less experience to the White House press room than some of the men who preceded her there. "And too often, that became the justification for limiting my role, which in turn guaranteed that I'd be less effective," she writes. "The circular logic (and its very real effect) was infuriating, and at times I struggled to control my anger. I'm still not sure what I could have done to change things."

This is where the reader wants to shout: Why play nice? Why not harness that anger? Too many women have fallen into the good-girl trap for too long. Maybe it's true that we pay a greater price than men do when we get mad in the workplace. But letting them hamstring you -- and "they" can be male or female -- is no way to get ahead in life. ·

Jennifer Howard, a staff writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, is a former contributing editor of Book World.