Several women ad executives were skeptical that the new-business route would soon become a well-traveled path to the top of advertising's male-dominated hierarchy.

"My mother said they were just intelligent women protesting in the only way open to them against the stifling injustices of a male-dominated social hierarchy," said Pepper.

Nor are they asserting that they hit a glass ceiling installed by a male-dominated corporate hierarchy.

Surprisingly, he finds sexist villainy at the root: "The age-old female religious collective was being replaced by a male-dominated hierarchy."

They were a great source of anxiety because men saw them as tools used by the social inferiors to hijack power from the male-dominated hierarchy.

"The male-dominated hierarchy, they come from a place where you don't challenge their authority," he said.

Chimp society, however, is a male-dominated hierarchy based on power.

Though the film "scores some good points against the male-dominated hierarchy of the business world," Ebert is ultimately unconvinced by the Cutty character.

Democrats say they will make the male-dominated hierarchy of the state Republican Party an issue in the fall election.

Very few women have been able to penetrate the male-dominated hierarchy of most large corporations.