(FORTUNE Magazine) – Longtime readers recall--rather stridently, actually--a discussion that started last spring in a column called "Can Women Do Business Overseas?" (May 11, 1998). It prompted such a tsunami of responses that I took it up again in the fall ("Overseas, U.S. Businesswomen May Have the Edge," Sept. 28). That in turn brought so many sharp comments from the trenches of international business--from men and women both--that I promised to return to it at a later time, which would be now.

Let's start with this, from a reader named Dr. Melsa: "It mystifies me how you can say that U.S. businesswomen have 'the edge' overseas. I am a Turkish woman working for a Dutch company in Japan. Nationality has no significance. Moreover, I am considered the toughest member of our management team. There are even rumors that I finish a two-liter sake bottle every night! (Here, being able to tolerate alcohol is a sign of strength.) The truth is that I am a petite woman even by Japanese standards and rarely drink at all. But the legend helps me in my work." She adds: "I would strongly discourage categorizing any management qualities as 'feminine' or 'masculine.' This will work against women in the end. A manager should be judged by all the qualities needed to do the job. Japanese men understand this perfectly well." Better, in fact, than some American men, if my mail is any guide. We've all heard tales of how retrograde the Middle East can be, where women are concerned. But consider this, from a reader named Beth: "I lived in Kuwait for 12 years, and for six of those years I had my own importing business. Then I came 'home'--but you know what? I'm going back to Kuwait, because I feel much more comfortable with the 'sexists' I met there than the ones I meet here." Beth lives (or used to, anyway) in Monticello, Iowa.

An interesting area of ambiguity, briefly touched on (so to speak) in the earlier columns: To what extent can sex and business mix? The mail has run half and half between women who feel uneasy about it and those who, well, don't. Writes Jadwiga: "I could really identify with some of the problems you mentioned. On many occasions, after signing contracts [as VP of international market development], I received private invitations, also letters, flowers, and expensive gifts. 'Keeping a sense of humor' [as an earlier reader suggested] did not work. We have to draw a line between business and pleasure." But Michele, European marketing director for a high-tech firm, takes a different view: "Europeans are much more natural [than Americans] in their working environment. Americans have become really uptight. Stepping away for a while, I think we need to swing the pendulum back! Go back to common sense!" Ah. If only one person's common sense were not another person's multimillion-dollar lawsuit....

Many thanks to all the readers who pointed out that the real key to success is much the same everywhere: Pay attention to your customer--or your would-be partner. Arlene Isaacs, a New York City career coach who specializes in helping people master international assignments, notes that American managers--male or female--too often suffer from cultural blindness. A typical scenario: You, a hotshot of either sex, show up alone in Tokyo to meet with the head honchos of a prospective joint-venture partner. You don't know how to say "hello" or "thank you" in Japanese, you don't have a proper business card, and you plop yourself down in any old seat at the conference table. Pretty soon your counterparts won't look you in the eye, and before you know it, you're on the plane home and the deal is off. How did you blow it? Probably by not knowing enough--or caring enough--to learn the basics of the culture you were flying into. Sayonara, baby.

One way to avoid such a debacle: Get yourself a book by Roger E. Axtell called Do's and Taboos Around the World (Wiley, $15.95). This is a concise and occasionally hilarious country-by-country guide to such matters as meeting protocol, business gift giving, and what to do with unfamiliar foods like sheep's eyes and fried scorpions ("Slice it up into tiny pieces and quickly eat them"). Axtell notes that the U.S. too has foods others consider weird: "In parts of the Far East they customarily eat dog, which prompted one Asian visitor to stare at an American hot dog and comment, 'We eat dog... but not that part.'"