From lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff, to corporate executives, like Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, recent scandals dealing with politics and government have focused only on men at the top. But do these high-profile men accurately represent the gendered make up of corporate-government in the United States?

In this first in-depth look at the changing face of corporate lobbying, Denise Benoit shows how women who have historically worked mostly in policy areas relating to "women's issues" such as welfare, family, and health have become increasingly influential as corporate lobbyists, specializing in what used to be considered "masculine" policy, such as taxes and defense. Benoit finds that this new crop of female lobbyists mobilize both masculinity and femininity in ways that create and maintain trusting, open, and strong relations with those in government, and at the same time help corporations to save and earn billions of dollars.

While the media focuses on the dubious behaviors of men at the top of business and government, this book shows that female corporate lobbyists are indeed one of the best kept secrets in Washington.


 

Denise Benoit is an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Geneseo.

The Best Kept Secret [is] an inside-the-Beltway study of the highly paid professional women who have become the managers, directors, and vice presidents of corporate-government relocations departments housed inside corporations and business trade associations. This is a book that deserves to be read by those interested in the nature of work, gender, and inequality.

Just when we might think we have learned everything we possibly could about corporate lobbying due to all the recent scandals and exposTs, we now have the pleasant surprise of finding out from this highly original and fast moving book that corporations have yet another important and previously invisible way to influence government, through the growing number women lobbyists who serve as their eyes, ears, and persuaders in some of the most important policy arenas in Washington.

This in-depth analysis of corporate lobbyists offers evocative insights into how powerful women manage their jobs, families, and gender-in a formerly all-male world. Benoit's case study of the all-women 'Tax Alliance' is worth the price of the book.