The 'Old Girls' Club

Last week, a group of undergraduate women gathered in the Murray Room to hear female Boston College alumnae speak about their experiences in the business world as part of a program called "Beginning the Journey: Leadership Skills and Career Advice."

I did not attend.

Not because I didn't believe this to be a well-designed and potentially very informative event, and one that I credit the Council for Women of BC for facilitating, but simply because I don't plan to look for a job.

This is not to say that I don't plan on getting a job that is competitive, high-paying, and accompanied by a comprehensive health insurance package. But the whole exhausting, mundane process of crafting a résumé, circulating it to companies, attending career fairs, and going on rounds of interviews with no guarantee of success, sounds totally unappealing.

This is why I plan to rely upon an ancient social institution that some may refer to as the "old girls' club."

This is a network of well-educated, well-connected women dedicated to furthering the careers and perpetuating the success of women exactly like themselves. They constitute a deep-seated national and international professional, social, and cultural clique of sorts, and they're always looking to help an up-and-comer.

I will probably meet one of these women at a seemingly neutral social function. She'll be a friend or distant colleague of my mother's and will chat with me politely, at which point she will discover that I am a senior at BC. She'll be impressed and, noting what a fine person my mother is, will offer me her business card in case I "ever need anything."

I will send her my résumé and she will agree to give me an interview, even if it isn't a top executive's role to interview wet-behind-the-ears college seniors. Her firm will eventually hire me - not so much because of any of my qualifications, above-par though they may be, but because of her insistence.

I will begin working at her firm, performing reasonably well, and the other, older women in the office will include me in their social circle. In the evenings after work we will go to "our club" for drinks.

We will play golf and squash and slap each other on the back and call one another nicknames like "Stretch." The older women will show me the ropes and introduce me to other, influential women who can help me advance my career, saying they really think I'm "going places" and talking about my professional development in terms of being "groomed."

As part of a major corporate merger it may be suggested that I marry the young son of the other company's CEO, just to keep everything "in the family."

We will be captains of industry, leaders of our communities, realizations of the American vision of "real women."

We will never acknowledge our participation in this elite network, crediting its benefits to our own excellent education, our preordained successe to our own hard work and dedication. When outsiders question this system, using the unhappy intellectual vernacular of the quaint university activist, citing words like "equality" and "opportunity," we will listen patiently, then exchange meaningful glances and turn inward toward our circle.

We will wonder why it is so hard for them to understand that we're just good women, helping other good women like ourselves get ahead.

Somewhere, well-educated young men entering the workforce will look for other, older men just like themselves to give them their first opportunity.

They will look for a gendered network to help them out, to put the proverbial hand on their figurative shoulder, to usher them into a world not only prepared for but eagerly anticipating their arrival.

They will become aware of distinctions other than the names of the universities emblazoned upon their diplomas.

Some will come to see themselves as advocates for change, demanding rights for their gender and pushed to the fringes where they can't interrupt the lives of a placated mainstream too much.

Others will try to beat the system, studying harder, getting up earlier, trying to stay 10 steps ahead to show the boss not that they're better, but that they're just as good.

Some will become disillusioned and discouraged. They will stare with dismay at a towering, egomaniacal system that has thrived for many centuries and wonder what they can possibly do to avoid being overrun entirely.

Their fathers, having faced similar, even greater challenges 30 years earlier will pat them on the shoulders knowingly, wishing they could pass on improvement instead of wisdom, and tell them with a sigh what every young man needs to understand, if only for his own good.

Eventually they'll have to realize that it's just an old girls' club.

Kathryn Dill is a Heights staff columnist. She welcomes comments at kdill@bcheights.com.