ix and a half years and forty million dollars later, we had interviewed thousands of kids, invented a narrative world and a diverse cast of characters, published eight CD-ROM games, produced a wildly successful website, and built and lost a company. The "girls’ games movement," launched in 1996 by Barbie Fashion Designer, stimulated a retail feeding frenzy and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. It also opened a public debate that set feminists at each other’s throats. In its three-year life, Purple Moon claimed the high moral ground, offering diversity, personal relevance, and respect for girls as its central values. But the company's destiny was nasty; it rocketed from a spectacular launch to sudden bankruptcy, finally to be gobbled up by Mattel for a bargain basement price.

The players in the drama were diverse – earnest researchers, nerdy rich guys, lesbian separatist designers, businesswomen with barracuda smiles, strident feminist reporters, Barbie, Rockett, and several million little girls. The people who worked at Purple Moon elevated the experience to something considerably more ennobling than its pathetic ending would suggest. Most of us were hard-working, talented, and devoted to creating media that would honor girls. But even while we did remarkable work, gender politics gnawed away at the company from within and without, and that still haunts me.

In our research about girls, we explored the social complexities of girlhood and the recurring themes of affiliation, exclusion, secrets, and self-esteem. Our understanding of these phenomena formed the core of the Purple Moon’s fantasy world and drove the design of its characters. In a remarkable case of recursion, these themes showed up again and again in the social dynamics of the companies involved, as well as in the feminist response to our work.

We tell ourselves a story about how women are more "collaborative" than men. In our business dealings, especially in a female-dominated workplace, we value consensus, and we sneer at hierarchy and order. Yet what often happens in reality might be described as an excess of "democracy." Everyone must agree, everyone has a vote, and everyone must feel good about it all.

The feminist ideal of collaboration is not a great recipe for getting things done. On the contrary — without a clear authority structure, a faux-flat organization forces people to resort to the underworld secret alliances and covert operations in order to exercise personal power. Such an organization can expend far too much energy on the complexities of its emotional and political life.

Power does funny things to women in business (it does funny things to men, too, but that is another story). Males and females organize themselves socially in strikingly different ways, and we achieve social status among our peers through different means. Straightforward male status hierarchies don't provide great models for women in business. Certainly, some women become excellent managers – fair, accessible, decisive, nurturing, and productive. But others fall prey to several recognizable dysfunctions; for example, the Victim, the Handmaiden, the Male Impersonator, the Queen Mother, or the Best Friend.

The Victim, I think we all know. This person complains endlessly about her powerlessness, but she will not participate in the decision-making process through "established channels," nor will she propose alternative structures. She whines. The Victim depletes the energy of those around her by demanding an endless stream of condolence and emotional attention.