Creating Women's Networks: A How-To Guide for Women and Companies

Creating Women's Networks is a comprehensive manual for female employees who truly want to accomplish as much as possible in corporate America, and employers of either gender who honestly want their entire workforce to be the best that it can be. Based on a variety of extensive studies conducted over the past 15 years by Catalyst--a respected non-profit research and advisory group "dedicated to helping women achieve their full professional potential and showing businesses how to capitalize on those talents"--it examines successful women's groups that are operating today in companies such as Kimberly-Clark, Texas Instruments, Kodak, and Dow Chemical, and offers detailed instructions for both creating new ones and increasing the effectiveness of those already in existence. Filled with checklists, charts, breakout points, and first-person suggestions that turn the advice into a hands-on program, the book follows the life cycle of the very organizations it helps to define. The first section, for example, lays out all critical initial steps like understanding the company environment, building support, and actually getting underway. The second deals with ongoing maintenance, focusing on ways to keep the coalition on track and tackle challenges that inevitably develop. --Howard Rothman