Mixed messages on dating and 'leaning in'

March 13, 2013

(Are they leaning in, or back?)

I was listening to the Slate DoubleX podcast at the weekend and towards the end DoubleX and New Republic writer Noreen Malone made a good point. To be fair, it's one I first heard from my friend and former Marketplace colleague, the ever observant Stacey Vanek-Smith, a few months ago. As the wider world becomes more aware of Sheryl Sandberg and her book 'Lean In' it's worth echoing what Stacey and Noreen have said: when it comes to advice, women's dating and work lives clash. In the world of dating, 21st century advice is still to lean back, not in (unless the date is going really well) and let the man take the initiative in everything. Women are advised that no matter how far we may appear to have come, the man must be allowed to take charge. Don't call him, let him call you. Don't bug him. Don't talk too much. Don't offer to pay. (I regularly flout all this advice. Hmm...) So is it surprising that women do not - in general - conduct themselves at work in the more confident manner Sandberg advocates? I'm only on the first chapter of 'Lean In' but I was interested to note that as a young woman, Sandberg thought getting married was the achievement to end all others. She turned down her Harvard mentor Larry Summers' advice to get a fellowship abroad because it didn't mesh with her determination to land a husband ASAP. The idea that getting married should be a top priority came from her parents, who had stressed it throughout her youth. Most women, even in the educated, privileged world I mainly operate in, still harbor this exact same belief, even if they may not always articulate it. Anyway, it makes sense to me that part of the reason putting themselves forward in a work situation may seem distasteful to so many women, as it did to me for ages, is linked to the decades-old messages we receive on finding a mate.

Changing the subject, this is a great piece by Elizabeth Yin of LaunchBit on being a female company founder vying for venture capital dollars in Silicon Valley. From being called a 'meek Asian woman' to being mistaken for the catering staff at events, the indignities mount, and female readers' jaws drop. I'd love to have her on the show.

Do women have a marketing problem?

March 8, 2013

Perhaps that’s a blasphemous thought to voice on International Women’s Day, but it’s something I think about a lot as I try to sell The Broad Experience, not just to the usual suspects, people who are deeply interested in 'women's issues' but to what I think of as normal people - everyone else. It’s been on my mind even more since I watched the documentary ‘Makers’ last week (subtitle: ‘Women Who Made America’). It was three hours in all – no small commitment.  I found it fascinating and inspiring. You can watch lots of great short videos featuring women from the film here – women including Sandra Day O’Connor, Condoleeezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Sheryl Sandberg and many others. The Irish-American housewife whose life of domestic abuse was changed after she began reading smuggled copies of 'Ms.' really stands out for me.

I was especially interested because I didn’t come to this topic of women and work through being a feminist. I didn't know much about the women's movement growing up, didn't think twice about the roles men and women played in society, and by the time I was going off to university, the whole thing seemed totally passé. We were beyond that stuff (or so I thought). To this day I haven’t read any feminist theory (it's on my list), and until I moved to the US I don’t think I realized such a thing as ‘gender studies’ even existed. I don't even like the world 'gender', and I'm not the only one. When I was doing research for The Broad Experience last year I got some feedback from a few friends discouraging me from doing anything that focused on women, because they found the whole topic of gender a huge turnoff. I was discouraged from using the word 'women' in the title of my show for the same reason.

I understand. The subject of women's rights has overtones of worthiness that I wish it didn't. It's become something scholarly and serious. And it is serious, particularly when you think about all the women in the world who don't have any rights at all. But somehow it's become something everyone else (i.e. not the people specifically interested in this stuff) groans at when they hear about it - medicine to swallow rather than an interesting topic for intelligent people to engage with. I speak as someone who for years thought of it as such. I came to be interested in this area through a combination of reporting I did for Marketplace, and experiences I had at work - experiences that made me realize I was behaving one way, men were behaving another, and men were getting what they wanted while I was still waiting for a tiara to land on my head (see episode nine for clarification).

I think the idea of women as victims is part of what makes the topic offputting to so many, myself included. [NB: I am NOT implying that women all over the world are not victims. They are. I am talking specifically about the small world of college-educated women in white-collar jobs, because currently the show is aimed at those people.] Perhaps this is why I’m not ashamed to say I support Sheryl Sandberg with her ‘Lean In’ efforts. While I realize there is still plenty of institutional bias remaining at companies and within society, bias that stubbornly refuses to budge, the inner me revolts against dwelling on that too much because I’m driven enough to think I can make at least some kind of difference in the world (and this comes from a natural pessimist). I hate the idea of sitting still and dwelling on the fact that I may be a victim. It's so completely disempowering. Be assured that I have been in work situations that lent themselves to that mindset. Situations where others felt sorry for me but I did not, because I chose to see the situation in a different light rather than wallow in the unfairness of it all. Feminism has for many, I think, become synonymous with the idea of women seeing themselves of victims of an oppressive system. But I don’t think young women see themselves that way at all (you could argue, of course, they haven’t had time to be mangled by the system yet). My perception of women in their twenties and early thirties is that rather than reflect on how hard things are, they want to do something about it instead. 

I'd love it if 'women's issues' - at least the non-medical kind - didn't even exist in another 50 years.

[If this post's tone rankles, go to the show's Facebook page to read the reaction of one listener, and my response.]

Are female bosses evil? Really?

March 4, 2013

I once had a female boss from hell. It is no exaggeration to say she made her underlings' lives miserable. Not every day - much depended on her mood (and her alcohol intake at lunch), but many days you could feel the poisonous atmosphere hovering over the room about five of us occupied. You didn't have to be a psychologist to tell this woman was extremely insecure. She had landed her position because of, shall we say, connections with a certain male executive in another part of the company. She rose from secretary to manager very quickly without any chance to learn the ropes. She was, at heart, a good person, but once inside that roiling cauldron of politics and power plays that was the office, she was horrible, undermining people, but mostly women, at every opportunity.

So when I read this piece in The Wall Street Journal it rang bells. It also left me depressed because of all the stereotypes it brings up. According to the article, 'queen bee syndrome' is alive and well and women are still being bitchy to other women on a regular basis, in some cases deliberately wrecking their careers. This is the opposite of what Catalyst, the non-profit that promotes women in business, reported when they released a study last year stating that queen bee syndrome was false (though naturally they would want their study to reach that conclusion). The Journal piece echoes my conclusion about my former boss: that insecurity is at the root of this problem.

But maybe at least some of this is in our heads. The WSJ article points out a few things that may be part of the reason why women bosses get such a bad rap. I will touch on this in my next show, but it's worth stating here: women judge women bosses more harshly than they judge male ones. Both sexes expect certain 'caring' behaviors from women, and when they don't manifest themselves, we don't like it (see under Mayer, Marissa). Another point the piece makes is that some women do not listen to a woman boss the same way they do a male one. We are so used to drinking society's Kool-Aid about what men and women should be and do that we ourselves don't even respect a female in a leadership role.

I believe women in senior positions at work do tend to be more insecure than men in the same positions because of all the things we talk about on The Broad Experience: centuries of social norms telling us we shouldn't have power and don't know how to handle it, subtle or not-so-subtle messages from our families, and continuing ambivalence to us in the workplace itself. 

But what about the male bosses who have driven you nuts with their conniving and petty insecurities? And what about the great female bosses, like the ones who changed my (sexist) mind about the species? Thanks to Louise Chin and Ruth Shapiro of the Museum of Modern Art, who restored my faith in female managers by being fair, firm and, in Ruth's case, giving me a much needed telling-off one day. She taught me a lesson I needed to learn about not squirreling out of tricky situations with customers (thanks Ruth). And hats off too to Lynn Bolger of APL Digital, which was quite a frat house in the late '90s. Lynn always kept her sense of humor and sanity while surrounded by testosterone, and treated everyone fairly.

What we surely need for 'queen bee syndrome' to go away is workplaces (i.e. people) that genuinely treat everyone the same, and a society that deems it acceptable - no, encourages, women to excel at work as much as in any other area of their lives.

Sheryl Sandberg and the politics of leaning in

February 22, 2013

I was up earlier than usual today and read this New York Times piece on Sheryl Sandberg's plans to revolutionize women's career progress at about 7a.m. It already had several comments then. As I type, seven hours later, the count is up to 500.

Sandberg really gets people talking.

She's also beginning to polarize people. I'll be honest: most of the reason I started The Broad Experience is because, like Sandberg, I believe women are really good at sabotaging ourselves at work without even realizing it. I have done this time after time. I made career mistakes that I had no idea were mistakes. If you'd told me even five years ago that talking up my achievements at work was a good idea, I would have been horrified. How vulgar! Good work, I had always been told, spoke for itself. There was no need to hammer on about how wonderful you were. 

Wrong. If you don't underline your achievements to the people who matter, don't be surprised if you're passed over for promotions. I believe everything Sandberg says about 'leaning in', speaking out, etc. In short, I am a recovering career mess. But she makes some people's blood boil. For one thing, all this advice is coming from the mouth of a multi-millionaire who has tons of household help and had an elite education. What about 'earthbound women', as the Times' writer, Jodi Kantor, refers to us? The other thing is that many are angry that Sandberg appears not to address the other side of women's (lack of) progress in the workplace: government policies, corporations themselves and the existing old boys' clubs that would like nothing more than for everything to stay the same. Thre are lots of comments on the Times piece by women who claim they've done everything right but still can't get where they want to be. This piece by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in the Harvard Business Review takes a frustrated swipe at Sandberg.

I can see how Sandberg's 'Lean In circles' could also raise eyebrows. Here's a quote from the Times article:

...“Lean In Circles,” as she calls them, in which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success. (First assignment: a video on how to command more authority at work by changing how they speak and even sit.)

Having reported on the way women speak, I know how polarizing anything to do with changing ourselves can be. As far as many women are concerned, women should not have to change a thing about ourselves: society, instead, needs to get used to us. Despite being 51 percent of the population, we're still not society's default setting. Men and male-run companies, these critics say, need to adapt to the female way of thinking and acting. (But that quote reminds me to book Harvard's Amy Cuddy for the podcast as soon as possible.)

I disagree. Yes, it's aggravating and unnatural to have to adapt ourselves to the male way of doing business. But business has been male for hundreds of years. It will not change overnight, no matter how much 'soft skills' (bleurgh) are said to be a vital part of our new world. We can't just sit here and hope the male mindset will suddenly alter and adapt itself to us. The business world will become more feminized, but only when more of us are running it. For more on making male management more aware and appreciative of the way women *tend* to think and do things, check out Caroline Turner's work at Difference Works. She appears in episode 9 of the show on ambition and power.

I have tried to book Sandberg for The Broad Experience, but this week her publisher declined my request for an interview, claiming her slate was full. So instead I plan to convene a panel of women to discuss the book and use that debate as a podcast in itself.

Another aspect of this, of course, is that so many women are out there juggling away like crazy but are virtually unaware of the Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter debates. They don't have time to be aware of them. They're just trying to get through their days, dysfunction and all.