And yet, plenty of outposts of traditional femininity can still be found in corporate America. Many executives are still openly emoting, laughing and hugging each other, dressing themselves in pink shirts and cashmere sweaters.

Of course, they're all men. General Electric's Jeff Immelt is soft tissue compared with Jack Welch. Disney's Bob Iger was promoted to replace the heavy-handed Michael Eisner. One of Iger's first jobs as Disney C.E.O. was to repair relationships Eisner had busted up. The co-presidents of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelreid, named in 2006, epitomize the supposedly "female" affiliative approach to business. Bill Gates, whose career was ripped from the pages of Lord of the Flies, now preaches a "creative capitalism." Mort Zuckerman, meanwhile, has a style bordering on Oscar Wildean flamboyance.

You could say that the past 10 years have shown us how unbridled aggression damaged or destroyed businesses like Enron and Tyco. Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl is the title of a forthcoming book from publisher HarperCollins by the popular investment pundits known collectively as Motley Fool. Their spokesman, Chris Hill, says the book was inspired by the fact that men are manic and aggressive traders who transact 45 percent more trades than women; meanwhile, Buffett, the era's greatest investor, creates fortunes by making as few trades as possible. He puts a lot of time and effort into researching each one, studying the characters of the founders and creating relationships that will last for years.

Where Wall Street's drug of choice used to be cocaine, today it could be estrogen. A hedge fund broker working at SAC Capital in Connecticut sued his boss in late October for allegedly demanding that he take estrogen to become a more successful trader. The case was sealed when it moved to arbitration. A spokesperson for SAC refused to comment.

Psychologist Carol Gilligan notes the irony of this theory. "Emotional intelligence is all the rage these days, but not so long ago, women were told they could never be trusted to be intelligent because they were so emotional. What men have done is to seize on the women's movement, in particular on some of the insights that came from the study of women, and adopt them as their own," says Gilligan.

It figures, doesn't it? Women are turning their backs on femininity just as it's becoming a big profit center.

I wondered what Anne Jardim has to say, three decades later, about the mess she's caused: All these managerial women dressed up with no place to go.

Just before their enormous success with The Managerial Woman, Hennig and Jardim founded Simmons School of Management, the only M.B.A. program in the U.S. designed specifically for women. (It is now awaiting accreditation.) Jardim has been mulling over the new ways in which sexism manifests itself in leadership circles. She says the problem is that women are not seeing things from an insider's point of view. Instead, they're fighting the same old management battles over and over.

"It's different for the leadership jobs, where everyone shares the same level of technical skills, and the choice for promotions began to be made behaviorally," Jardim says. "Decisions are made based on the boss asking, 'Who is most helpful to me? Who can I trust to stand at my back? Who is loyal? Who is going to further my interests, because I will further theirs?'

"Women tend to go at these things from a mind-set of emotional equality. We are equality builders: We don't want to be better than; we want to be as good as. But men—and anyone who succeeds—come to this as a hierarchical struggle. It is always competitive," says Jardim. "Competition is more pronounced at the top, because the men who win these positions are self-selected at the highest levels. They are always thinking, 'I've got to dominate, I've got to beat you, and I've got to show that I've won.'

"Look at the status symbols in these jobs—the quality of the office, the number and variety of perks. They're the heart of the great-man syndrome. It's repeated from huge corporations to very small ones.

"Women go into top jobs thinking that hierarchy is foolishness: Let's clean this up. And we lose," says Jardim. "Circular organizations are great when everybody is doing more or less the same thing and can help each other out. But they are not useful when you get into producing anything of complexity. In a hospital, for example, there is no room for egalitarianism. A doctor would not take time away from his work to help the cashier. But good doctors can be a symbol of both authority and compassion."

Women taking pride in their authority—maybe that's the only thing missing. Once that comes, look out. Poof—no more sexism.