Amazon.co.uk Message

Amazon.co.uk: What's the story behind Sex & Business ?

Shere Hite: There's a new interface between men and women at work. More and more women are working in traditionally male roles and the established way that men and women have always related is being overturned. We didn't grow up thinking, "yes, there's this whole spectrum of relationships at work between men and women"--we're having to adjust our attitudes. In the last ten years, the situation has changed dramatically, it's been a big problem for us to change as rapidly in our thinking.

Amazon.co.uk: How did you get interested in writing about business?

Hite: The way we define sex has to do with the psychosexual identity we learn as children. A lot of us would like to change the way we relate but find it hard because these patterns keep re-emerging in our lives. What's happening now at work is that lots of people, whether they want to or not, are projecting onto their workmates questions like "is that an appropriate sex partner or not?". When that happens, it's very hard to behave in a businesslike manner and it leads down lots of cul-de-sacs in your career. You can't really make good decisions if you can't see clearly. So sexuality really applies in that sense to the workplace. You see the most obvious manifestation in terms of the sexual harassment lawsuits that are getting more and more prevalent. Some people say, "oh well, that's only in the US, you know how those Americans are". But in fact international corporations are no different. Sometimes perhaps men could profit from learning new ways to relate to women.

Amazon.co.uk: So Sex & Business is about teaching new ways of behaviour?

Hite:

It's important that men don't think it's a book for women or that it's a book that's going to say to them, you're terrible because of sexual harassment, you should shape up. It's not like that. Everybody points the finger at men--but I mean for women too, we often find that the only way to get ahead at work is to be flirtatious. I think you can find a spark but you don't have to go to sex to enjoy it.

Amazon.co.uk: Is there a danger of losing the spark by analysing every minutiae of our conduct?

Hite: I'm not trying to say that the workplace should be unisex or should be asexual which is what a lot of corporate chiefs are saying. I think the French model where there is a lot of semi-flirtation, even between people of the same sex, should be maintained and probably expanded. But A doesn't have to lead to B.

Amazon.co.uk: Can people change such deeply rooted behaviour and learn new patterns of thinking?

Hite: Well I think there are various levels to it. At its simplest, I've used these brain change exercises which people will be able to read like computer commands to try and get their thinking right. On the other hand there are layers to the book that are not simple at all. There are theories here that I have developed over 25 years which I never dreamed would be applicable in this kind of a case. The workplace is now more important to our lives than our private lives. We're spending the most productive hours of the day in it. And for most of us it's like 12 hours a day, 6 or seven days a week. The workplace is really where we're developing the new relationships that society can then use in other ways. It's really wrongheaded when corporate CEOs say "well, we have no sexual harassment in our company because we don't let anybody relate as if they were male and female, we forbid dating in our offices," People will date whatever.

Amazon.co.uk: Did you find that's what corporation's were saying?

Hite: Oh, most of them. Most of them have that policy--men and women shouldn't be dating in work.

Amazon.co.uk: When it happens how do they deal with it?

Hite: Various things. A lot of them move the employees. They try and separate them. Only in Spanish Telefonica, the CEO, who was single said, "no, we try and keep the couple together because we think they'll work better that way, that they'll enjoy coming to work." Pretty enlightened.

Amazon.co.uk: What prevents more companies thinking like that?

Hite:

I think there are two problems. They're afraid of people creating fiefdoms in the office. But the fact is people create fiefdoms all the time. People who don't know each other create their little power thing. Corporate chiefs argue that a couple could form a kind of block, which is no more true than of people in general. The second deeper reason, goes back to my work on the family. I think that corporate chiefs, like families, work on the principle that there should be "no sex in this house." My feeling is that there's an underlying sub-strata to our psyche that isn't psychology, but it's deeper than that. My work has been trying to clarify this kind of sub-strata for a long time. In The Hite Report on the Family, I was explaining that when you're born you're given somehow this idea that nice people grow up, get married and have children. A lot of people have tried to change their psychology in the past 20 years and keep finding that they hit this solid bedrock. I think we have to become conscious of the fact that we're being influenced by these ideas. Corporate chiefs say to me things like "well there's a tragedy for women that in their thirties they kind of drop out--it has something to do with choices in their personal lives and having children." Corporations really have to change their policy, because women cannot be integrated, especially into upper management by any other means.

Amazon.co.uk: How is it that corporations are being so slow on this?

Hite: You know in the case of Ford here in Dagenham? White men were hiring white men and there seems to be this kind of cloning mentality that you pick somebody like yourself because you think that's what should be there. What is should be. That's part of it. Another thing is, when I asked that question to CEOs, most said, "well, we should have them [women]," but they didn't. One said, "yes but if we have a woman on the board, it changes the atmosphere. We can't talk to each other anymore." I wanted to know how it was when they're all alone, I'm dying to know. On the other hand, when I interviewed the head of Abbey National the other day, I asked about their experiences integrating women into management, and he said, "yes, there were some transitional moments but pretty quickly everyone just got on with it." The whole of society has made such a fetish out of gender because it has always wanted more reproduction. This is still working its way out. And now, we're trying to overcome being too genderised. A lot of people over the last 20 years have tried not to take it so seriously anymore.

Amazon.co.uk: Do you think Sex & Business can address the bedrock in people's psyche?

Hite: Yes, I really do, because people feel that there's a problem. They want to progress in their lives and they feel that something's blocking them. I think people are ready to understand it all and to try and change all they can. Even corporate executives who think, "isn't this fun, it's all a men's club", are getting a little bored with it all and see that the future really is that women are going to work too. The sticking point is still this thing about sex. People don't know how to handle it at work.

Amazon.co.uk: Is it possible to impose an external code of behaviour on people when it concerns something as deep as their fundamental outlook?

Hite: Well, if companies want to address the problem of sexual harassment, they could use the book as a way to get employees to see the new manners. I'd prefer if people really understood and thought it through for themselves. What we want is a new landscape of behaviour, there shouldn't be one new rule. It should be something that we're all involved with now--that's the exciting part of it.

Amazon.co.uk: Did any of the CEOs you worked with particularly interest you?

Hite:

Yes, one of the breakthroughs for me and my understanding was a man who used to be head of Alcatel, Laurenz Fritz--he's now a minister for industry in Austria. It's funny, when I asked CEOs, "is there sexual harassment in your company? Are you promoting women to the board of directors?", many just kind of closed down. Laurenz Fritz told me a story of how at Alcatel a few years ago, he noticed that there were five men on the board of directors and he thought, "well, it's time we have a woman on the board." He mentioned this to the other men and they all looked at him like, "Oh, he's got a girlfriend". He was really shocked. He could see the writing on the wall, so what he did was get a headhunter, to find the candidate, he wanted no involvement in it. When they found the perfect applicant, they were to bring her to the board and he would meet her, just like everybody else. One person from the financial sector told me, "well, we saw when they put a woman head of Pearson, all the publicity it got, I don't want to appoint a woman because then I'll have to go through that." This is the problem. They're just going to have to be heroic.

Amazon.co.uk: Did you find anything that really surprised you while you were researching the book?

Hite: One of the age old stories is if you give sexual favours, can you get ahead? Should you do that to get ahead if you get tired of waiting ? Does it work?

Amazon.co.uk: And what's the answer?

Hite: You have to read that part!

Amazon.co.uk: When you approached the organisations featured in your book, global corporations, you must have found massive cultural differences defining their attitudes?

Hite: It seems to depend very much on the personality and attitude of the CEO. The thing is, I think CEOs should really use their power a little more than they do and think more seriously and carefully about these issues. I mean most companies don't have a policy on this, they're just letting things happen. Now that some of the companies in the US have been sued for sexual harassment, they're starting to try to put into place some kind of think-tank, but the latest I heard, they've started this pledge idea, "if I start to date anybody in the corportion, I will let the head of my division know." I mean how do you define when you're dating? That company had been sued and this was their answer to it and this is not going to be the way to solve it. Most companies have seriously not thought through these issues. Sexual harassment will be an issue as long as people have insecurities and feel they need more power.

Amazon.co.uk: What do you enjoy most about your work?

Hite: I like ideas. I like working on them. When I started working there wasn't a public issue about something called rape or sexual harassment. For me the hidden side of all this is the issue about men. I think I'm about one of the few feminists, if not the only one, who's spent so many years researching on men and trying to understand the whole idea of sexuality from men's point of view. Generally there's a kind of acceptance-"well, that's how the lads are"--but men don't see it that way. One of the deeper layers of the book is about the traumatic time for men at puberty and all that bullying that goes on in school. There is a terror of the male group which demands conformity. In corporations, the same syndrome is there so even if men don't agree with the whole thing, they don't say. Some of the counselling I've been doing has been with male executives who want to speak on a one-to-one basis. They have issues like their problems with men in authority and whether or not they'd like to be CEO and whether or not they feel that to be CEO you have to be a straighter guy than they are. This is a big issue.

An Office Affair

Your Recent History