When asked to cite a philosophical role model whose wisdom becomes the foundation of a professional path and a personal inspiration, relatively few people would cheerfully nominate Niccolò Machiavelli, the Renaissance-era diplomat and writer whose book “The Prince” has become infamous as a user-friendly guide to unscrupulous and deceitful political behavior.
But for NPR reporter Stacey Vanek Smith, “The Prince” is a must-read for business women seeking to establish a presence in their field. Smith”™s new book “Machiavelli for Women” was the subject of a recent webinar sponsored by WSHU-FM, the public radio station based at Fairfield”™s Sacred Heart University.
She freely admitted her recommended reading will catch many women by surprise. “Machiavelli does not have a reputation for being particularly woke,” Smith said. “He has a reputation for being deceptive, manipulative, the-ends-justify-the-means, which he didn’t actually say.”
However, Smith noted that she tapped into the unlikely historical source after covering business and economics for more than 15 years at NPR, where she kept noticing the story of gender pay disparity always popping up without ever reaching a level of equality between men and women.
Women make about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, she said. “For Black women, it”™s at 63 cents. For Latino women, it’s 55 cents. Those numbers have basically been frozen for 10 years.
“If you think about how much our economy has changed over 10 or 20 years as far as the different industries that have come up ”” and knowing that women were going to law school and medical school in much higher numbers and breaking into new fields all the time ”” the fact that (the number have remained essentially unchanged) was very strange to me.”
Adding insult to injury, she added, was the fact that within the corporate world “CEOs are 80% male and 90% white, and those numbers have also not changed in 10 years. And the numbers are even wider and even more male for Fortune 500 companies. The more money a company has, the wider and more male its management is.”
Smith acknowledged that the Renaissance connection to the current dilemma was not her idea.
“I was talking to my editor about it ”” Karen Marcus at Simon Schuster,” she said. “She’s wonderful, and she said, ”˜You know, it’s almost like women need Machiavelli.”™”
Smith recalled reluctantly reading and not enjoying “The Prince” while in college, but coming to the book later in life gave her new insight into the analytic strategies that Machiavelli advocated for the gaining and retaining of power.
Smith pointed out that her book addressed several issues that impact women”™s advancement within corporate ranks, including gender discrimination. She admitted this is repeatedly a case of unspoken sentiments that women are not up to the tasks of their male counterparts.
“People usually don’t say, ”˜Well, listen, you know, I”™d love to promote you, but you’re a woman and I’m a misogynist,”™” she quipped. “It’s much subtler than that ”” ”˜I feel like, I don’t know, it just seems like Frank’s a little more ready than Francine and just I have a better gut feeling about him.”™ It’s there that discrimination comes into play.”
Smith added that Machiavelli stressed self-empowerment over diplomacy, although she acknowledged change doesn”™t often happen quickly and effortlessly.
“A lot of times, these situations can feel sort of airless,” she stated. “I wanted to give people options. The workplace is hard for everyone. My point is the reality in the workplace is the reality that we have to deal with, so let’s work with what we’ve been given. This is how we’re going to go forward and here’s an idea of how to do that.”
Smith stressed that many contemporary readers might find Machiavelli”™s every-person-for-themselves attitude to be “really uncomfortable,” but she shared a personal experience where she wished she practiced what she is now preaching.
“I did find out at one point that a male coworker was making a whole lot more than I was and he had less experience,” she recalled. “And what did I do? I went into my boss’s office and kind of yelled and cried. I did get a raise as a result of that, but I really wish I’d handled it differently.
“It wasn’t that it was not a valid response,” she explained. “It was a valid response, because I never should have been in that situation in the first place. And that was a very minor example of the kinds of things people experience at work. But the question is: What’s your ultimate goal? My ultimate goal was not really the money it was part of it ”” I really wish I had thought more carefully about how to use that, and that is what I tried to emphasize in the book.”
