Women’s Vulnerability Brings Secret Strength to Business

By Dr. Nancy D. O’Reilly, Psy.D

Women will really love this idea: We can actually feel womanly without guilt.  Get ready to embrace your feminine vulnerability. Women’s special gifts––relational intelligence, holistic perspective, seeing connections among things, web thinking, admitting mistakes––just may save the world!

So says Dr. Birute Regine, a developmental psychologist who received both her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in human development from Harvard University. I interviewed the impressive Dr. Birute recently. While researching the critically acclaimed book she co-authored: The Soul at Work: Embracing Complexity Science for Business Success, Dr. Birute realized that women were poised to lead in the 21st century. She also noticed that the successful male leaders she had interviewed all embraced a “feminine” style of leadership that valued the quality of relationships in the organization.

Dr. Birute decided to learn more about women leaders. She contacted women like the former Prime Minister of Canada, Kim Campbell; former CEO of PBS, Pat Mitchell; novelist and environmentalist Barbara Kingsolver; Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnston from Texas; as well as doctors, lawyers, teachers, dancers, successful entrepreneurs, and more.

Not Sperms with Perms

Her resulting book Iron Butterflies, released in 2010, describes women who have brought their feminine skills and gifts into the workplace. Women once tried to fit into the male-dominated workplace by wearing padded shoulders, suits and ties. Dr. Birute calls those women “sperms with perms.” I’ve also heard them called “Honorary Men.” Like the mythical Amazons who cut off their breasts to be better warriors, those women cut off their feminine side to achieve success. The successful businesswomen were not like that, nor were they “shape changers,” a term describing traditional women who satisfy and support everyone except themselves.

“That’s not to disparage either type,” Dr. Birute says. “I have been both. But women who used these styles often found themselves saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I have everything I’m supposed to want and I don’t feel satisfied.’” She tells the story of Deborah, who was from a poor family in the Bronx and built a successful company called Umbrella Plus. She had jewels, cars and homes, but she fell into a soul crisis of depression and paralysis for several months.

As a psychologist, I know that these moments of pause are so important, a cocoon phase. “It’s an opportunity to find balance and connect with a more authentic self,” Dr. Birute agrees. Deborah pulled herself together, won the Avon entrepreneur award, and claimed her feminine side along with the street-wise kid; she accepted all that she was and turned into an Iron Butterfly.

Dr. Birute was surprised to discover that all of these successful women embraced their vulnerability with a profound openness. A traditional male-dominated culture uses power over others, so vulnerability shows weakness and allows others to diminish you in order to elevate themselves. “But these women showed me that by accepting and addressing their own vulnerability, they could also allow it in others,” Dr. Birute says. “They made vulnerability a new strength.”

Take, for example, the vulnerability of making a mistake. These women admitted it openly (“Oh, I just made this terrible mistake…”). If you can’t admit a mistake, then one mistake covers another mistake until finally there’s a crisis. If, instead, you create a trusting environment where people can admit mistakes, then everyone can learn. A woman who connects to her vulnerability recognizes her interdependence and shared humanity. It’s a more cooperative and collaborative environment.

Women Need Solidarity With Each Other

“This is the revolution that is hidden in plain sight,” Dr. Birute says. This is really big exciting news. Women are doing this in all sectors but they don’t realize that other women are doing it, too. It’s really a movement, and we need a sense of solidarity with each other.

“When Iron Butterflies gather and start talking about these issues,” Dr. Birute says, “we can figure out how to collaborate with each other, which is a pretty complex thing to do.” I’ve noticed that you can put five or six women in a room and as you walk out the door you have a plan in place that you can execute. To me, working with women like this is the most phenomenal, exciting thing I’ve done.

All of the women Dr. Birute talked with were mentoring other women, which is one of the most valuable things we can do. Above all we need to support one another. When I worked for my doctorate years ago, I was surprised by how many women tried to make me feel guilty for leaving my children. I told them, “I’m doing this to provide an example for my daughters that they can do anything.”

But it’s getting better. “My daughter’s boss is really supportive about her having children,” says Dr. Birute. “I don’t think women in previous generations experienced that at all.” Today women have many supportive organizations, and Fortune 500 companies have shown that promoting women into leadership is good for the bottom line.

Part of Dr. Birute’s mission is to bring understanding to the young women who say, “I’m not a feminist.” Dr. Birute would counter with, “How do you think you got that job if not for feminism?”

Feminism became identified with “bra burning,” which historically stemmed from a planned PR stunt that ran afoul of fire regulations and never actually happened. Really, feminists just wanted equality in the home, opportunity in the workplace and a voice. Women leaders can use their feminine power to make the world a better place. As more female leaders collaborate we can create a workplace that is more caring and also more productive.

“If you’re one of those bridge builders, a collaborator, then I urge you to fully embrace those gifts,” Dr. Birute says. “If you’re in a leadership position and you see those qualities coming out in someone else, reward them. We need to make women’s style of leadership more visible. I have stories of leaders who were doing amazing work, but because it was interactive and behind the scenes, nobody recognized the skill it required.”

Women bring people together to work toward a collective answer. “Once we connect those dots,” Dr. Birute agrees, “it’s going to be awesome!”

While she urges you to patronize your local bookstore, you can learn more about her book and her retreats for awakening your inner iron butterfly online at Ironbutterflies.com

Remember: A woman’s Iron Butterfly is already within her; she just has to awaken it.

Scroll to Top