Rachel Sklar can trace the reason why she’s now sitting in a 9th-floor office in the Financial District to a meeting with a group of women over drinks at Tom & Jerry’s, the popular Noho watering hole for the tech set.
It was the spring of 2010, and at the time she was covering the media industry for Mediaite, the Dan Abrams-owned news and opinion blog. New York magazine had recently published an article about 53 rising stars on the tech scene — and she wasn’t happy with the piece: not because of how her fellow female tech-preneurs were represented, but rather how they were underrepresented.
“It was represented as 90 percent men, photographically, quoted,” recalls Sklar, 41. “So I sent an e-mail to 20 women saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”
From that gathering came “TheLi.st,” an informal online community and e-mail listserv that has grown over the years and is aimed at bolstering women working in the tech space. In late January, a 10-episode Kindle series, “The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Women,” was born out of conversations on TheLi.st. The final episode drops Tuesday, and a print run of the serial is slated for release in August.
Rather than career guides that all too often skew toward what Sklar’s co-founder (and close friend) Glynnis MacNicol calls “cold and dry,” “The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Women” represents a diversity of age and experience, in the form of 10 easily digestible first-person essays clocking in at around 5,000 words each.
In the series, readers will find essays ranging from how one burnt-out entrepreneur effectively mapped out her exit strategy to why one young woman refuses to reveal her age in the workplace to the importance of paying your own way for events that can further your career or ability to network — even if your employer is unwilling or unable to do so. Both Sklar and MacNicol contributed stories.
“One list, one book, one movement, one impetus is not going to speak for all women in all circumstances all over,” explains Sklar.
In recognizing the value of their own stories, women are able to tap into the most powerful part of their identities or experiences, says MacNicol: “That can be framed for someone else to read and take seriously on a level that really promotes it as a valid, respected way that we live now.”
Indeed, MacNicol’s own storytelling process is a lesson in the importance of owning one’s success rather than merely chalking it up to sheer luck.
“I gave my essay to a friend to edit, and he wrote back and said, ‘Just to be clear, you deserve all the success and you worked really hard for it, and I don’t want you to lose track of that in this essay,’ ” she recalls. “You have to tell people, ‘Don’t be afraid to share your success in the way you deserve to.’ ”
“If we don’t,” adds Sklar, “then we’re sending a message there’s something wrong with it.”
Underrepresentation of women in business publishing also played a role in the creation of “The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Women.”
“Just because the typical author of a business book looks like a man doesn’t necessarily mean it should be a man — or that there aren’t great business books by women,” notes Sklar.
To drive home that point, Sklar and MacNicol shied away from cover art that employed the stereotypical hallmarks of chick lit.
“It’s very difficult to have the word ‘women’ in the title and convince people that the artwork should not have a stiletto, swinging hair, skirt or a cosmopolitan glass on the cover,” says MacNicol, laughing.
“Or italics, softness or pink,” chimes in Sklar.
Theirs, however, does feature pink — “a punk pink,” clarifies MacNicol, 39. “TheLi.st is a little punk rock, in the sense of creating ourselves in a space where we definitely have this sort of boys club for women.”
It’s the rise of so-called “boys clubs for women” — such as Lean In, the movement to inspire and support women that was founded by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg — that’s also helped boost the profile of books like “The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Women.”
It’s a welcome change from the past, say MacNicol and Sklar, when women would ascend in their careers and find themselves the only female in the boardroom, lacking a network or sense of camaraderie. “Men have enjoyed those networks for such a long time that I’m not sure it occurs to them what the absence of them would be like,” notes MacNicol. “Professional women are just coming into a world where they’re seeing the ability to create them and the benefits of doing so.”
That’s also thanks, she says, in part to the connectivity offered by the web — and sites like TheLi.st and series like “The 10 Habits of Highly Successful Women.” “I think the Internet . . . provides the ability to create that sense of support and networking in a way that you couldn’t so easily before,” she adds.
It provides an open space for women to discuss less talked-out, more insidious manifestations of gender discrimination in the work force: women being more likely to be perceived as pushy than men, for example, or contributing an idea in a meeting that goes unheard until a man suggests the same thing.
“You now have the ability to walk into a group of 300 women and say, ‘Am I crazy?’ as opposed to walking into the bathroom after a meeting or calling one person on the phone,” observes MacNicol.
“That’s in our invitation to people [to TheLi.st],” adds Sklar. “This is a place where you can ask, ‘Am I crazy?’ and they will tell you, ‘No, you are in fact not crazy.’ ”