![\"trojan-purse\"](\"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/trojan-purse-210x300.jpg\")
This ten-foot high wooden purse on wheels was part of a week-long art festival in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Happily for me the artist, Ethan Crenson, was on hand the day I came upon it, conducting dialogues with curious passersby.<\/p>\nThis ten-foot high wooden purse on wheels was part of a week-long art festival in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Happily for me the artist, Ethan Crenson, was on hand the day I came upon it, conducting dialogues with curious passersby.<\/p>\n
Why a \u201cTrojan\u201d purse? Was it filled with some kind of subversive material? No, Crenson told me. It was empty. The idea was that everyone could project their own feelings or ideas into it\u2014anger at capitalism, the political system, whatever. I didn\u2019t ask him why he\u2019d chosen to make it a purse\u2014probably because my own imagination immediately supplied a rationale.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Betty Lehan Harragan\u2019s wonderful book Games Mother Never Taught You: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women <\/em>was published in 1977, at a time when the first generation of women were trying to rise through the ranks in corporate America. It was a primer for these would-be executives, who found themselves baffled and frustrated by a set of mysterious rules of the game that all the men knew to follow. They played their positions and scored, while the women fumbled and dropped the ball. Aside from revealing these unspoken rules, Harragan offered brilliant advice to enable women executives\u2014whose mere presence was then an unsettling anomaly in a corporate workplace\u2014to avoid inadvertent behavior that would disturb men even more.<\/p>\n Of course many feminists of the seventies had no interest in the corporate boardroom, but learning how the system worked enabled us to use it to pursue our own objectives. I worked for a book publisher, and Harragan’s explanation of the male perspective on asking for a raise was a revelation to me. They expect<\/em> you to ask, she said. And ask for a lot<\/em>\u2014they don\u2019t get mad, they respect you for it even if they say no. I screwed up my nerve, followed her scenario exactly\u2014and got myself a raise that allowed me to work part time and write my first book. (I didn\u2019t even have to negotiate\u2014they just said yes! I should have asked for more.)<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what other projections Ethan Crenson heard that day, but I\u2019ll bet there were a lot of them. Like a womb, an empty space has a generative power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This ten-foot high wooden purse on wheels was part of a week-long art festival in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Happily for me the artist, Ethan Crenson, was on hand the day I came upon it, conducting dialogues with curious passersby. Why a \u201cTrojan\u201d purse? Was it filled with some kind of subversive material? No, Crenson told me. It was empty. The idea was that everyone could project their own feelings or ideas into it\u2014anger at capitalism, the political system, whatever. I didn\u2019t ask him why he\u2019d chosen to make it a purse\u2014probably because my own imagination immediately supplied a rationale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,40],"tags":[146,42,145,147,140],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-social-issues","tag-corporate-women","tag-feminism","tag-public-art","tag-women-at-work","tag-womens-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"book](\"http:\/\/stephaniegolden.net\/writing_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/519vpv3xYQL-180x300.jpg\")
One of her cautions: never bring your purse into a meeting or business lunch.<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>Men, Harragan explains, unconsciously equate a woman\u2019s handbag with her womb, and seeing it in a business setting disorients them. A purse is acceptable when a woman is present as a sexual\/reproductive object. But the message it telegraphs in a business setting is fatal to her attempt to be accepted as one of the team.<\/p>\n