What is the distributional sector?

What is behind a woman's belief in the non-profit sector that she cannot survive in the corporate world?

• In my time in the HR sector, one phrase many women have often echoed seems quite common.  Most of them come from the non-profit sector, and admit shyly that they simply could not survive in the corporate world and that's why they stick to the (unrewarding) non-profit sector.  What mind set or life experiences leads them to this biased view of the working life?  Could they have suffered abuse?  Discrimination?  What? I've worked in both my whole life and have never witnessed their statement to be true one bit.

• Answer:

  It is partly low self-confidence from childhood training, partly justified by reality. I worked in the corporate world 50 years, one year for the US federal government (DOE), and one year for a state government (child welfare). I was struck by the larger percentage of smart women in management roles in the federal agency. I think it was because of organizational culture. Intra-organizational politics was more civil, less macho. The state agency was like a corporation, so women filled the bottom of the hierarchy as case workers. Most women who rose to corporate management got there by acting like men. But there were exceptions. I knew a few female managers who did not shed their femininity. A high profile examplar whom women can watch on YouTube is Marissa Mayer. Another exemplar from the ultra-masculine CIA is Valerie Plame. I think women who say they cannot make it in the corporate world are really saying they are unable or unwilling to act like men and are not artful enough to make it as women. I would encourage them to learn how. Corporate culture will not change until women change it from the inside.