Megatrends for Women

The wife/husband team responsible for Megatrends 2000 (1989) and Re-Inventing the Corporation (1985) furnishes another slick set of socioeconomic forecasts. Aburdene and Naisbitt offer women (and the men who come in contact with them) upbeat assertions on the increasingly influential roles that women are playing and will play in the world's affairs. Taking for granted the achievement of critical mass in venues ranging from elective office through the workplace, the authors argue that women are changing the world--and for the better, because the flow is toward caring, collaboration, and compassion, not female chauvinism or oppression. In their sunny- side-up inventory of the major forces women are harnessing, Aburdene and Naisbitt touch most of the obvious bases--business, education, family, fashion, health care, pay equity, politics, social activism, even sports. In their accessible and anecdotal text, moreover, they are as apt to tender jarring asides as conventional commentary--for example, characterizing organized religion as ``the most sexist institution in history,'' with the military a close second. They also include an over-the-top chapter on the revival of goddess myths in the West. For the most part, though, Aburdene and Naisbitt focus on mainstream issues that are of concern to men as well as women. An accentuate-the-positive audit that, though longer on breadth than depth, smartly documents potentially earth-shaking swings in the balance of female/male power. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Women's liberation, according to this relentelessly upbeat manifesto, has become an unstoppable movement, and women, though not yet fully liberated, are building a new social order. The authors, who previously collaborated on Megatrends and Megatrends 2000, contend that women in business are creating a new anti-authoritarian leadership style that empowers employees. They prediet an upsurge of women in politics and forecast that in the 1990s women will break through to top corporate posts and no longer follow clothing fashions. They envisage women's medical issues rising to the top of the nation's health-care agenda and claim that women are revolutionizing organized religion by reintegrating female values. Sprinkled with tidbits of useful information and highlighting entrepreneurial and professional areas where women may venture in the '90s, this often superficial survey is likely to be a bestseller. 300,000first printing;first serial to Glamour; BOMC and QPB alternates; Fortune Book Clubfeatured alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.