The women sit around a table, coffee mugs in hand, seemingly oblivious to the camera taping their discussion. They talk all at once until one voice overpowers the others and gets the floor. As the speaker winds down, they jump in all at once again, voices colliding.
There are hoots of laughter, interspersed with intense discussion. They agree and disagree with equal fervor, rib and praise each other in equal doses. Respect has never been this mutual.
”Ladies, the tape is rolling,” a male voice says. ”Please continue to talk.”
You try to picture them, these ”ladies”-as the camera man calls them-in aprons splattered with cookie batter or folding bed sheets or proudly inspecting meat loaf. The image never materializes.
These are not ”ladies”; these are the affectionately self-titled Old Goats, women who are a tribute to their gender. Even in this kaffee-klatsch setting of couches and a coffee table in a production studio in the Loop, the camera reveals warm but not soft faces.
Their briefcases are stacked neatly outside the room. Their secretaries are fielding calls in their absence. Administrators are covering for them in meetings. And their histories, which they`ve come together in this room to remember on videotape, are discussed collectively-as in ”us” and ”we,” not ”I” and ”me,” even though each merits a hefty list of firsts for Chicago women.
They are taping their memories of founding the Chicago Network, a group formed in 1979 of the most highly-placed women of achievement in the Chicago area. Next year the Network will commemorate its 10th anniversary, and the film will be a part of the festivities.
The camera pans to Jean Allard, a partner with Sonnenschein Carlin Nath & Rosenthal; to Sheli Rosenberg, vice president and general counsel of Equity Financial and Management Company; to Eleanor Petersen, founder of Women and Foundations, former president of Donors Forum of Chicago; to Susan Davis, a vice president at Harris Bank; to Diann DeWeese Smith, vice president for communications and development at Mt. Sinai Hospital Medical Center; to Betsy Plank, assistant vice president, community affairs, for Illinois Bell; and to Sue Gin, president of New Management Ltd., a real estate sales, leasing, management and development firm.
Those are just titles. For decades, Allard has been recognized as one of the top woman lawyers in Chicago. Rosenberg, her younger counterpart, was the first woman to head the Chicago Council of Lawyers; she also was the first female partner in the law firm of Schiff Hardin and Waite. Petersen is a national figure in philanthropic organizations. Davis, who formed the Chicago Finance Exchange and the Committee of 200, is the quintessential national networker. DeWeese Smith, former director of the YWCA`s Loop Center, is a noted feminist and social activist. Plank is nationally recognized in public relations. Sue Gin, a partner in two Halsted Street restaurants and owner of an in-flight catering service, is one of Chicago`s most creative
entrepreneurs.
Missing from this group of Network founders is Colleen Dishon, associate editor of the Chicago Tribune and the first woman on the masthead of the newspaper. Dishon cut back her Network activities in 1982 when she was promoted to executive features editor. She says she ”misses the energy from these spirited and independent women,” but worries that a conflict of interest could be perceived.
Individually, the Network founders and its members represent the core of the most brilliant and influential women in the work force of this city. These women, in launching a network, became the foremothers of women entering and achieving in Chicago`s business world. Many of them unceremoniously opened board room doors, at times surprising their male colleagues but rarely themselves. Ten years ago, few of these women knew each other. Few were recognized outside their own arenas.
The purpose of the Network was to form a solidarity, to broaden contacts and to establish an ongoing meeting of peers.
In the beginning there was not much thought given to organization. They were too busy. They simply wanted to share with their equals. ”We spent all our lives doing for everyone else,” says Susan Davis, who added facetiously: ”This group was going to be for us, and `we don`t have to do nothing.` ”
Those unadorned goals remain in place. Dinner meetings are limited to five times a year. The Network publishes a membership directory with office and home phones still mandated for the exclusive use of its members. They still abide by the unwritten law that if one Network member calls you, you return the call, and as soon as possible. And they still hire each other, promote each other, hail each other`s achievements, comfort misfortunes. In the end, they have developed friendships so tight they amaze themselves.
”The primary call together was for the camaraderie that didn`t exist in the work world because of the sparseness of female colleagues,” says Rosenberg, who now chairs the Network. ”We were just responding to a need at that point to meet women having similar experiences.”
What began as a small group of friends meeting over dinner or wine in one another`s living rooms has grown into a formal organization with a membership that has risen from 100 to 185.
The Chicago Network itself is one link in a worldwide network of super-achieving women through the National Women`s Forum, a group of blue ribbon networks in 11 cities, formed in 1981, and the International Forum. In fact, this week the Chicago Network is hosting the sixth annual International Women`s Forum at the Chicago Hilton and Towers Wednesday through Friday. The International Forum is an umbrella organization that includes 19 national women`s groups and 9 international women`s groups.
The forum is, in the minds of many Chicago Network members, the epitome of the concept of networking: establishing contacts that literally stretch across the world.
The Network takes great pride in being at the forefront of groups that have sprung up since the late 1970s on the heels of forums established in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.Its own beginnings were humble.
It evolved out of an idea for a news magazine, to be called Woman News and designed for working women. In 1972, the forces behind the magazine idea- Susan Davis, Sheli Rosenberg, Toni Dewey, then co-owner of an ad agency, Mary Houghton, president of the Shorebank Corporation, Colleen Dishon, who created the editorial concept, and fellow journalist Lois Wille (now The Tribune`s editorial page editor), and others-raised $100,000 and developed a prototype. They pre-sold major advertising contracts to large corporations such as Sears Roebuck & Co., recruited top writers, such as Ellen Goodman, and produced a 55,000 direct mail package to prove there was a market.
Davis spent three years trying to raise $2 million. But in the end,
”because it was all women and because (investors) felt there was no proof that the working women`s market existed back then, they were too scared to finance it.”
The project was scrapped, but the women missed each other.
By 1976, Dewey had been hired as public relations director of Motorola Inc. (Within two years, she would be promoted to corporate vice president and director of public relations and advertising, becoming the first woman officer elected to the company.)
”I remember I met Susan walking down East Lake Shore Drive,” says Dewey, ”and I was buried in my new job and just loved it, but I found I missed the support we had given each other in the Woman News project. We missed the nourishment really.”
The two invited friends and colleagues to Dewey`s house for dinner in June, 1977. The sparks of intellect and talent were flying, says Dewey. ”We were literally on a high,” she remembers. ”And it has never changed. Every time we met. Even 15 years later.”
They began to call themselves the Old Girls Network. ”We even learned how to drink like the `old boys network,` ” says Rosenberg in jest. (Later, the Old Girls began to call themselves the Old Goats to distinguish themselves from newer members of the Chicago Network.)
It was Eleanor Petersen of the Old Girl`s Network who suggested forming a larger group. Long a civil rights activist-she had organized women to picket Marshall Field & Co. in an effort to display black mannequins in their store windows and include black child models in their toy catalogues-Petersen saw a parallel between blacks and women and the benefits of organizing.
”I had known what happened to people when they got to work together,”
she says. ”And I had known how isolated these women were in their professions. I suggested: `Why don`t we reach out and gather together other outstanding professional women throughout the city?` ”
