12. The nature of power and women's apparent lack of it, is a constant topic throughout the literature. There are several comments worth making:

a.) Power is definable in many ways, the simplest appear to be:

• power is the ability to accomplish work. This involves moving a load or payoff, through space and time, by the expenditure of energy.

• power is the ability to give (or not give) rewards and punishments as defined by the persons receiving them.¹

According to these definitions, the person who controls the most energy; moves the largest payoff the longest distance in the shortest time; and/or who controls what rewards or punishes us and thereby gets us to do the work. has the most power over us.

b.) Power is an abstract concept, even in physics. It is a concept used to explain something which doesn't actually exist in the work of concrete reality. In psychological terms, it is an intervening variable -- an assumption about what is going on inside a closed black box which cannot be examined directly. In this respect it is like learning. As an abstract concept, power tends to be illusory, to exist mainly in the eye of the beholder. Most of us rarely pause long enough to behold our own power, so we assume that we have none while others have it all. This is the illusion. As a person with power (and we all have it), I can make another person or object move by two methods:

• I can apply pressure to overcome resistance -- the push method

• I can create a vacuum which will move the person or object to fill that vacated space -- the pull or carrot-on-a-stick method.

If I pull while the other person is pushing, who is to judge which of us has the more power. Women have long assumed that we have no power. This is not true. We have power which we have not yet recognized, acknowledged, or exercised. While it is possible we will never have enough power to overcome all resistance to our progress, we do have some. Thinking powerless leads to powerless behaviour.

c.) There are at least five types of power in social situations some more basic than others. If the leadership of any group has certain powers, then the subordinates or followers also have certain powers. In comparison these are:

^1. R. Beckhard, Organizational development: Strategies and models. (N.Y.: Addison- Wesley, 1969).