Drinking From a Different Well: How Women's Stories Change What Power Means in Action by Annette Simmons

Drinking From a Different Well: How Women's Stories Change What Power Means in Action Reviews

• 
  Alexander

  Annette Simmons’ new book is titled Drinking From a Different Well: How Women’s Stories Change What Power Means in Action. Like any solid piece of nonfiction writing, the title encapsulates the entirety of what Simmons’ book not only will entail, but also will specifically argue for. It’s that kind of conciseness that immediately makes you think, regardless of topicality, you’re in competent and assured hands. Like the title would have you suggest, Drinking From a Different Well is a love letter to the modern-day, competent woman. Someone who is empowered because of her differences to men, not in spite of them. With equality, Simmons argues, comes something of a redefinition with respect to words like ‘authority’, ‘power’, and ‘leadership’. “The differences between what men and women can do are minor, if they exist at all. But men and women are not the same when it comes to our preferences. Just as we prefer different kinds of movies, it also seems that we prefer to use power for different kinds of goals,” Simmons writes, in decidedly plainspoken manner. “Second, we don’t want to overstate what are slight gender differences. If we were to plot women’s and men’s movie preferences along a continuum from ‘all about relationships’ to ‘all about blowing (s***) up,’ the bell curves would mostly overlap, except for the extremes.” It’s an exciting and unique articulation on the merits and potential of true, enriched gender equality. With women in positions of power, society’s notion as a whole on premeditated outcomes, tactical strategies, and backed approaches will shift seismically. It’s the kind of argument that trumps the current sociopolitical climate rising on the right, blasting terms like ‘Feminazi’, ‘woke Feminist’, and ‘snowflake’ out of the park once and for all. Like any great change agent, Simmons doesn’t stoop to such lows. She never attempts to justify herself or her sisters the way many other capable feminist figures have in the past. She simply lays down the facts - straight and narrow. With more diverse people in the room, and with that more diverse perspectives, everyone wins. In a world that grows increasingly more complex thanks to technology, innovation, economic fallibilities, and questioning of our institutions, Simmons essentially makes the case now more than ever is a time for equality in a sustainability-think sense. Everyone is needed in the room because, simply put, everyone - regardless of specific personhood - is needed in the room. It’s time to lay down bias, one’s sword and shield, and one’s institutional norms for the sake of the greater good. Traditionalism, in effect, has become the antithesis to success. “The implicit assumption that women who are ‘irrationally’ averse to loss and harm and are therefore weak or lacking talent has predictable consequences. The highest power positions continue to be held by those who risk, win, and enjoy adversarial competitions,” Simmons writes. “It also ensures work is increasingly designed to encourage competition and is game-ified to the point that peers become opponents. The long-term result is that major decisions are less likely to result from a collaboration between multiple points of view and more likely to result as a privilege awarded to whomever successfully dominates or silences alternative points of view.”
• 
  Cathryn Wellner

  Women are expected to be care takers, to put the needs of others before their own, and then they are denigrated for doing those things that keep them from adopting masculine definitions of power. So board rooms, executive offices, and political campaigns are still dominated by a masculine paradigm of success. The cost to both women and to men whose feminine aspects are more developed is enormous, to people and to the planet.
  
  Annette Simmons takes on the patriarchy's version of power in a book that uses women's stories to show how women do, indeed, drink from a different well. The waters in that well are what the world needs, if we are ever to bring about more just and equal societies. Women and men whose view of the world incorporates power-with rather than just power-over have the capacity to bring about the transformations that can affect economic, political, business, and social structures, to the benefit of everyone.
  
  Bravo to Simmons for drawing deeply from that different well. Her book has the potential to change lives and alter structures. Put this one on your list to read and share widely.