The Boss of You

We’re in the final stretch of our book edits, and one of the many items on this month’s to-do list was to finish off our resource guide. Typically we would do most of research for additional resources online and at our beloved local library, but there’s a municipal strike in Vancouver this summer which has meant library closures. And so, I found myself instead camped out in the Business section of a Chapters thumbing through texts I’d referenced in the past and books I’d heard lots about but wanted to check out with mine own eyeballs before recommending them. I spent far to many hours in the Leadership, Finances, Marketing and Business shelves with an every growing stack of books next to me and my notepad. After about three hours, as I was just getting up to leave I noticed that tucked away down at hobbit height below the “Personal Success Stories” section there was a women’s business shelf.

At first I was excited to see it there; I think it’s safe to say that I feel pretty passionately about women’s business. I was also excited to see copies of Michelle’s awesome book (which I not so subtly turned to face out from the shelf instead of leaving them spines out) and with some exhaustion, but great interest I sat back down with my notebook to go through some of the others that I thought could make good resources. Then it struck me. Were the women’s business books in their own kinda pink ghetto (for the record, I believe that every book except Michelle’s featured pink on the cover)? Why hadn’t I found any of these books in the leadership, marketing or HR sections earlier? Surely Michelle’s book belongs in the careers section. It’s not to say there weren’t any female authors in those sections, but any book that stated that it was specifically for women was housed here.

Now this is a bit of a sticky subject for me, as I truly do believe that as women we deserve our own business books. That we need them not only because I believe that many of us do business differently than our male counterparts, but because the traditional business book category also hasn’t really caught onto our existence in a lot of cases. There are few (or often no) case studies of women owned businesses in traditional business books for starters, and I could go on at length about the other ways those books make underlying assumptions that their readers are male. And, honestly I was thrilled to see a section of women’s business books growing. That shows me that we’re not the only ones noticing how many business gals there are out there, and I’m quite certain our book won’ t appeal to everyone, so I’m glad there are women taking other approaches. That said, I’m a bit bummed that we’re not considered worthy enough to also be shelves among the big boys. If I hadn’t spotted the shelf of pink covers as I left, even I — who was there to research business books — could have missed the entire section.

At this point, as we start to move past our first big hump in the editing process (full draft handed in this week!) it kind of makes me sad to think of my baby sitting down at hobbit height away from the rest of the kids you know? What do you think?