Timing and Success

That old saying, “timing is everything,” holds truth. I was recently reminded of this when I read about Gail Collins new book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. I also saw her present on The Colbert Report, where she held up pretty well under Stephen Colbert’s funny but unyielding interviewing techniques. In 1998, I wrote Success on Our Own Terms: Tales of Extraordinary, Ordinary Business Women, which focused on women’s definitions of success and strategies women had used in Corporate America to succeed. I also presented my view that women had come quite a distance since 1960 and should feel positive about the progress they had made rather than just focusing on the fact that there weren’t more women at the top of the Fortune 500. At that time, I was pretty heavily criticized by some for making positive statements about women’s experience in the corporate world. So, maybe it was just too soon to say that or maybe Collins is saying it better — either way I hope people read her work and realize the great strides that women have made.