Underestimate Falon Fatemi?

Go Ahead Make Her Day

- Paul French

Name a movie about a businesswoman.

Rest assured, even if you can’t do it off-the-cuff, they do exist. On Forbes’ website, there’s even a list, odd-numbered and short as it is. Chocolat, for instance, receives top billing here among other rom-coms like 1987’s Baby Boom and 2007’s Waitress – titles that don’t exactly match the gravitas of, say, The Wolf of Wall Street or The Godfather.

These lighthearted flicks also don’t feature businesswomen so much as they feature women who happen to be involved in business. There’s a difference. For example, when you watch Marlon Brando in The Godfather, you’re not just getting a character; you’re getting an archetype – a single portrayal so potent that it’s also a model for our culture’s idea of the subject in general (a mob boss, in this case). Just think how many times you’ve seen Brando’s tics repeated in other mafiosos throughout popular media. Is there a female equivalent of this? Let’s rephrase: Is there a female equivalent of this where our heroine works as something other than a secretary, waitress, or an escort?

Prominent columnist and business leader Falon Fatemi argues that there is a problem when it comes to the representation of women as power-holders in the professional world. As the founder and CEO of the sales and marketing intelligence platform Node, Fatemi has come face to face with the biases of Silicon Valley, which, as she discusses, has its own archetype of success: that of the lone genius. It’s “a reclusive (usually white) male…with an engineering degree from Stanford or MIT, who builds his world-changing company through sheer genius and force of will,” she declares in her popular column for