Forget the old boys club, a new kind of underground networking world is here and it’s for women only.
Journalist Pamela Ryckman, author of the new book The Stiletto Network, said that women-only groups are spurring billions of dollars in transactions and leveraging friends into power in industries ranging from television and film to banking to non-profit groups.
“I walked into a room of 50 of the nation’s most powerful women and it struck me immediately that they defied the age-old stereotypes of high powered ladies in the workplace,” Ryckman told the Cyclists on Monday’s show. “They were not wearing the blue and gray pinstripe suits that we see, in fact they were in fashionable dresses and shoes and hairstyles and they were interacting in a very feminine way.”
Calling themselves Babes in Boyland, Chicks in Charge, or Harpies, these groups are accomplishing huge practical results by just getting together for dinner.
“These women have created the most downloaded app in the history of Warner Brothers,” Ryckman said. They have also “overseen the largest high-yield bond deal in 2010, and they have created the signal most successful fund raising pilot in the history of the Red Cross all as a result of these groups.”
From CEO’s to moms launching a business these women are using the networks to not only make money but to mentor and support the next generation of female business leaders.
“After 40 years in the workforce there are enough women in positions of power with their own self made wealth who are willing to take chances with that wealth.” Ryckman said. “At the same moment in history we have all of these young women starting their own companies who really don’t see that there is anything they can’t do.”
Abby Borovitz