Sex and Business: Shere Hite

At 57, Shere Hite is still controversial. Standing before Imperial's Management School students, the willowy blonde with thick black glasses and a quietly spoken persistence, delves into the findings of her latest book, Sex and Business.

It's almost 25 years since the Hite report presented the classic case for the clitoris based on unique research, yet still people are frightened to credit her with her discoveries. She remains a household name - but many households don't realise it.

A total of 45 countries now have the Hite report. Two years ago China published it for the first time. This year, the Chinese government produced a sex education booklet for schools, using drawings of anatomy from the Hite report without crediting the author.

"An hour long television programme also used a lot of material from my books without crediting me," she explains. "I'm still too controversial. People like to use my material but not say who it's by - they feel insecure."

Inequality at boardroom level
Her latest findings about inequality at boardroom level expose the possibilities of good working relationships while warning of the dangers of prejudices which still float beneath the surface.

"This book is very important to me. It's an area in which women are having the most difficulty not getting ahead. We can't call having two per cent of women as heads of business progress. The sticking point is social attitudes which create the glass ceiling."

Sex and Business draws on research carried out within 10 major corporations, including interviews with their chief executives. Shere, who wants to give a series of regular courses on gender and business to the Management School, focuses on unspoken problems that arise when men and women work together and introduces measures employers can take to prevent them.

"Most people have experienced the opposite sex as mother or father. Very few grow up thinking they may have long term friendships with the opposite sex but for the first time, men and women are trying to be equal while working in executive positions in long term relationships which aren't sexual.

"This offers the chance to create something quite different in offices and not project old images and cliches onto others. It has also been a learning experience for me. Many chief executives said women were the way of the future and seemed to mean it. However, most didn't have a policy about including women at top levels and preferred to see them in terms of a private life only."

Women, says Shere, have changed enormously in the last 25 years. The majority who want to be in business, want to start their own. Perhaps they don't feel confident enough to take the power at the head of major institutions.

"The social system is stacked against women but part of it exists in people's heads. Should we become more like men, more aggressive, more hard or should we take female qualities and use them at work instead?

"Women today would like sufficient income and rewarding jobs but it's an area that very little has been written about. The business book area is dominated by men's self help books as if women should be like men or invisible as if a situation didn't need discussing.

"Women want to have their own value system and power but it takes a long time as there's a lot to go against - three centuries of witch burning and psychological hangovers from bucking the system for instance.

"Still, the atmosphere is changing - women today are making it but it's down to individual struggle and strategy. It's like at the end of apartheid in South Africa when a lot of people felt something was wrong and needed to change."

Ambition
Shere's own life has been one of constant change. From wanting to be a composer until she was 14 to being persuaded by her grandfather to study instead, she questioned everything. At the University of Florida, she received a BA degree in history and later her MA. She moved to New York to begin work on a PhD in history at Columbia University for two years, took leave of absence and completed it later elsewhere.

"One history professor told me you do not study history to find out why, but how. I got a book on battles. I wanted to understand why we'd got to where we were. How just wasn't good enough."

Today, Shere has individual newspaper columns in 10 different countries. She dismisses press reports that get things wrong. The predicament maddened the man who first highlighted human sexual behaviour. Shere has since worked with his co-workers.

"Alfred Kinsey died with a card index of inaccurate stories on his bed. You could spend a lifetime or drop dead trying to correct media mistakes. I haven't the time. I'm better than a female Kinsey - thats what Gay Times calls me. I did four reports, Kinsey did two."

She remembers the sixties and seventies as a great time. "So many people felt they had the power to change the world and we were all in the same place - New York was a hotbed of activism and everybody believed in equality. We thought we could change everything in five minutes. "

In reality, it's taken a little longer. If anyone can help change perceptions of power in the boardroom or office, it's Shere Hite.