Are Women Indeed the Fairer Sex?

Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins. FBI agent Coleen Rowley. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

All were close to high-level wrongdoing, all willing to tell. In the recent months of high-profile scandals, these whistle-blowers have exposed misdeeds in some of the highest-stakes cases in the country, and because all are women, many have speculated that gender might have had something to do with it.

There’s no question that as women have come into positions of power, they have gained unprecedented access to information about the workings of their organizations. Some people believe that when they come face to face with impropriety they react with an inherently stronger moral and ethical sense than men do.

Pointing to research by Harvard’s Carol Gilligan showing differences in how men and women look at ethical issues, UC Irvine professor Judith Rosener says women have already brought a different ethic to the workplace. “Women see things in a much bigger context than do men,” she said. In her e-book “Ways Women Lead” (Harvard Business School, 2002), she observes that women tend to be more interactive in their leadership. For instance, women consult a lot of people when they make decisions; men consult a small coterie of people.

Women see the implications of their decisions, such as whom will be hurt, in contrast to men, who tend to think about whether they will make money or get caught, Rosener said. “Not that men are more crooked. They don’t think about implications in the same way.” It’s no coincidence that the whistle-blowers exposing some of the most significant examples of government incompetence and corporate greed are women, says Anita Hill, the Brandeis University professor who, in confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, charged him with sexual harassment. In an essay for the New York Times, Hill observed that both Rowley and Watkins rose through the ranks of male-dominated institutions to become insiders. At the same time, they remained outsiders with outsider values, she suggested.

Those “outside values,” in contrast to the established corporate culture, cause them to speak up, Hill reasoned, and their status allowed them to be heard. What had been glossed over within became front-page news.The memo Watkins wrote in August to then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay detailed improper accounting and management practices that would later confirm the source of the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history.

FBI agent Rowley’s May letter to two U.S. senators and the staff of a congressional committee described a “climate of fear” in the FBI and named officials who had brushed aside warnings about suspected terrorists before the Sept. 11 attacks.

And just last week, it was revealed that Edmonds, hired as an a FBI translator in Washington, D.C., after the Sept. 11 attacks, had written letters to federal and congressional officials detailing her suspicions about a linguist colleague. The colleague, she said, belonged to the Middle Eastern organization whose taped conversations she had been hired to translate for counterintelligence agents. In addition, the colleague had had “unreported contacts” with a foreign government official who was also a subject of surveillance. The FBI confirmed those allegations, which, says Steven Kohn, Edmonds’ attorney, reveal flaws in the way the FBI is handling its investigation of the attacks.

Those who agree with Hill believe the tension between insider status and outsider values is an ongoing phenomenon that will only increase with the numbers of women in positions of authority. Others say it’s only incidental that women have blown the whistle in these cases. “Ethics and integrity are not entirely the province of women,” said Charmaine Yost, a board member of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative public policy organization. “Women do not have unique standing as saints.”

Meanwhile, the women whistle-blowers might be making some men nervous. Some fear a backlash against promoting women. “There is this perception that if girls get into the good old boys’ network, they will tell tales out of school,” said Marguerite Schaffer, president of Executive Women of New Jersey. “It goes back to the schoolyard. If we hang out with the boys, we might tell somebody what they’re doing.”

‘Doing Their Job’

In any given week, roughly 35 would-be whistle-blowers call the National Whistleblower Center in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit advocacy organization aiming to protect the rights of employee whistle-blowers in both the private and public sectors. About half the callers are women, and nearly 70% are government workers, said Executive Director Kris Kolesnik, a former investigator for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the Defense Department.

Hill’s “insider/outsider” theory makes sense, he said. “Women aren’t part of the good-old-boy system. What’s important to them is doing their job, as opposed to protecting their buddies. Guys tend to be like pack animals. It’s why male whistle-blowers tend to be loners.”

So far, however, national experts have seen little correlation between gender and the motivation for whistle-blowing. However, retaliation against women is more personal, they said.

“What you will find in all cases, no matter whether it’s the FBI or the Department of Defense, is the key defense in a whistle-blower case is to attack the whistle-blower,” said Kohn, who represented Linda Tripp, among other whistle-blowers, both male and female. “When they’re looking at a female, they go straight for certain things: marital status, children, and appearance. In a male, it’s performance-based, usually about promotability.”

In general, he said, the attacks are made by detractors in an off-the-record way, he said, citing comments about Tripp, whose evidence showed that President Clinton had lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Unlike her, Watkins and Rowley were reluctant whistle-blowers. (Both declined to be interviewed. Edmonds was unavailable for comment.) The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee investigating Enron came across Watkins’ memos and she testified under subpoena. Because many Enron executives have left the organization or been fired, “she came away scot-free,” Kolesnik said. “But if they had more time, they would have done what every organization does against a whistle-blower: mounted a case and done the old rumor and innuendo routine on her.”

Similarly, he said, Rowley, a lawyer in the Minneapolis field office, wrote her letter after FBI headquarters had rejected her office’s search warrant request for a suspected terrorist and indicated to a reporter that Rowley had concurred. “She wrote that letter to set the record straight. She was concerned it was going to snap back at her,” he said.

What’s more, as a representative of co-workers in the field who were also upset with headquarters, Rowley was no loner, he said. “She had moral backing.”

Often portrayed as a “Midwestern mother of four,” Rowley, 47, is a veteran attorney who should not be mistaken for an “insider/outsider,” Kolesnik said. “She’s a player.”

In response to Rowley’s expressed worry over retaliation, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told senators that he would “absolutely” make sure that Rowley is spared any reprisals. Mueller also wrote to Rowley, assuring her that her job is not in jeopardy. Kohn said whatever the agency’s new thinking may be, it didn’t apply to Edmonds, who was fired after repeated warnings to keep quiet about what she knew. “It’s an indication of the real mentality on a grass-roots level,” he said. “There still is the culture of not embarrassing the FBI and not reporting misconduct that has gotten the bureau into so many problems.”

Women on the Rise

As more women rise to power, Hill figures, women’s opportunities for whistle-blowing will increase, as will their chances to “shape institutional standards from the top,” she wrote.

Some even suggest that big disasters might have been avoided if there were more women at the top. to clean house. Those like Schaffer, who say women are no more saintly than men, however, point to Nancy Temple, the former legal counsel for Arthur Anderson whose advice, a jury concluded, tacitly encouraged the company to obstruct the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into the Enron collapse. The linguist Edmonds accused of having connections to a group under surveillance is also a woman.

Men need not fear that women colleagues will tell their secrets, Schaffer said. The fact that the big whistle-blowers are women doesn’t mean that all women are whistle-blowers, said Schaffer, a partner in her own law firm.

“It just means that when women are confronted with a situation that requires whistle-blowing, coming clean, they’re not afraid to do it,” she said. “In high-ticket situations, women are inclined to see the forest for the trees.

“There may be women nurturers and women who inherently have a higher ethical sense, and I’m not sure where that comes from. We do ask more questions. If given the answers, we also understand black and white and gray. And sometimes gray is OK in the business world,” she said.

The problem with sweeping theories about what women do in positions of power is that there still aren’t enough women who have risen high enough to test them, she said.

Yost, of the Independent Women’s Forum, said that having children intrinsically connects a woman like Rowley to “larger values.” But while it is important for women to bring their concerns as mothers and women into the workplace, women do not have a corner on integrity, she said.

What Rowley and Watkins have done is culturally important and should be commended, she said. “But I don’t think the fact that they’re women will be of enduring significance. Isn’t that what we’re going for anyway?”