Taking Charge: Every Woman's Action Guide to Personal, Political and Professional Success

How to empower women to take charge of their lives at home, in the workplace and the community is the theme of this clearly written self-help guide. Lester, executive director of Equity Institute, a non-profit think tank and leadership consulting organization, recommends a group approach, with the formation of small action teams, meeting regularly to provide a sympathetic circle of support. There are four major concepts, or highways, to be mastered on the road to success, according to Lester: getting centered, taking action, building alliances and creating a vision. Dividing each of these themes into mile markers, or chapters, Lester delivers her message of self-reliance with examples from her own and other women's lives and quotations from a veritable roll-call of feminist gurus, like Shakti Gawain to Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Each woman, we are told, has the option to sit in the driver's seat and moving ahead. At the end of every chapter there is a tool kit of exercises and suggestions for action team discussions. Lester's action team concept differs little from the feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, and her ""highway to success"" analogy is a tad overworked, but her book does manage to shine in its practical strategies for women to achieve recognition. (Oct.)