Episode 22: The Mean Girls edition

July 8, 2013

A decidedly un-mean Michelle Villalobos

When I started The Broad Experience I never intended to do a show about how nasty women can be to eachother at work. The whole topic seemed to perpetuate negative stereotypes, plus, wasn't it already covered breathlessly in magazine articles onine and off? But after writing a post that defended female bosses, I heard from a listener who'd read it. She said she'd had nothing but bad experiences with women supervisors at work. She had eventually left that profession entirely (academia), and told me there were just too few women at the top, and the ones there were, were fiercely - and nastily - competitive with one another, and with more junior colleagues like her. There's also quite a bit of evidence (see below) that women at least perceive that they're being treated badly by other women at the office.

So here it is - the Mean Girls edition of The Broad Experience. As usual, we dig deeply into this topic (including a discussion on the evolutionary origins of female competition) rather than skim the surface and repeat the same old clichés. I interviewed Miaimi businesswoman Michelle Villalobos (above), author of The Stiletto in your Back - the Good Girls' Guide to Backstabbers, Bullies, Gossips and Queen Bees at Work. You can listen right here or download the episode either from the SoundCloud app or from iTunes. Feel free to comment on the episode below and share it on Twitter, Facebook etc. using the 'share' button. 16 minutes.

 Show notes: This Wall Street Journal piece on 'queen bee syndrome' cites quite a few interesting studies, one of which claims that 95 percent of professional women say they've been undermined by another woman at some point during their careers. This 2009 post by the Workplace Bullying Institute claims women target other women for bullying more often than men target women (we all seem more comfortable attacking our own sex). To counter all that negativity, here's a post by Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang claiming most senior women are 'fairy godmothers' rather than queen bees. 

Episode 21: 50 Shades of Em and Lo

June 24, 2013

Em (left) and Lo (right)

"We have the independence and freedom of being freelancers but without the fear and horror of being out there on your own."

- Em and Lo

Entrepreneurs - and sex and relationship writers - Em and Lo began working together at Nerve.com in the late '90s. They left the mothership to form their own 'sex writing empire' (or close enough) in the mid 2000s. Many entrepreneurs are advised to take on at least one partner. These two women did that, and the partnership is still going strong many years (and four children) later. In this show they talk about the advantages of working with a partner, how they suffer from some of the afflictions common to professional women (they may be able to talk openly about sex, but asking for more money from an editor is another matter), how a brand like theirs has to evolve as they, and their kids, get older, and why their music teacher's husband can't look them in the eye. 15 minutes.

Their latest book is - ahem - 150 Shades of Play.

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Episode 20: The Man Show

June 10, 2013

Martin Davidson

"There are times I think women get unfair advantages in the workplace...and it’s interesting because there’s an intellectual part of me that understands the research and reality in which there’s bias...and then there’s another part of me that goes, 'Hey, what’s going on here?'"

- Martin Davidson, professor of organizational behavior and leadership, University of Virginia

Mike Otterman

This week, it's The Man Show. I realized it had been a while since I'd featured any men on The Broad Experience, and it was time to change that. So I rounded up three guys who spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between the sexes, particularly when it comes to the workplace: organizational behavior professor Martin Davidson, sociology professor and author Michael Kimmel, and Mike Otterman, who runs the Men Advocating Real Change (MARC) initiative at Catalyst.

Michael Kimmel

We talk about why men won't be honest about women at work when women are in the room, whether women-bashing on the internet really matters, and men's evolving roles as caregivers and full claimants of paternity leave. Weigh in below - do you think it's feasible for more men and women to talk about these things together or does everyone have 'diversity fatigue'? Hit the 'share' button at the bottom of the post to share on Facebook, Twitter, etc. 17 minutes.

Show notes: I mentioned in the show that I'd read some interesting articles lately along the same lines as the things we just discussed.

The Business Week piece 'Alpha Dads' - Men Get Serious about Work-Life Balance' by Sheelah Kolhatkar focuses on a few guys at consultantly Deloitte in Toronto and what they're doing to be less full-on at work, and more present at home.

'Apparently I am Destroying Civilization' is a post by blogger Mama Unabridged (which I saw thanks to a tweet by Anne-Marie Slaughter) who is a female breadwinner with a stay-at-home husband. 

The Good Men Project - "what enlightened masculinity might look like in the 21st century" - takes on all sorts of man-related stuff from a non-GQ persepctive.

MARC - Men Advocating Real Change - is an online community where men can discuss men, women and workplace equality.

Episode 19: Women, work, and sex

May 28, 2013

"Women are absolutely captivated by their professional success, at the expense of their marriages." - Evelyn Resh, sexuality counselor and author

I never thought I'd be doing a show about sex. It didn't seem, at first blush, to factor into the topic of women and the workplace. But then I found out about sexuality counselor Evelyn Resh and her book Women, Sex, Power and Pleasure, and I thought again. Before I came across the book I was reading a few biographies and memoirs of and by powerful women. Often, by the time I got to the end of a book or article about someone's whirlwind existence, I would have one niggling thought: "I wonder if they ever have the time or energy for sex? If not, what kind of relationship do they have with their spouse?" According to Resh, many professional women's sexuality has gone into retreat and they're in all but sexless partnerships. She wants to change that. Tune in for an enlightening show not just about sexuality but women's difficult relationship with pleasure and enjoyment in general. How many of us regularly tell ourselves, "I don't deserve it?" 23 minutes.

Show notes: This piece about women's sexuality came out in the New York Times Magazine recently. As you can see from the comments, it's generating a lot of interest. Everlyn Resh (below), like many of the commenters, is against using drugs to get women to feel sexy again. Her book is Women, Sex, Power and Pleasure.  

This study doesn't focus on conservative women and sexuality - though I too have heard about said elusive study - rather it focuses on 'housework and sexual frequency in marriage.' I guess you could link the two things (traditional housework roles and more conservative women, that is).

Your thoughts on this show are welcome - post a comment below.

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Episode 18: The power of image

May 13, 2013

"I have people that come to me saying, 'I haven’t made partner in my law firm.'  And I have to say to them, 'Do you wear that much cleavage at work? Because if you wear that much cleavage at work, I'm not surprised you haven't made partner.'"

- Mrs. Moneypenny

Our appearance has an affect on the way others see us, whether we like it or not. Most successful women spend a significant amount of time thinking about the image they present to the outside world. Some even dare to flout expectations occasionally (see Hillary Clinton, below). And while there may be endless emphasis on women's appearance, it's not as if men don't have to worry about this too. The power of image runs deep.

This episode features Financial Times columnist Mrs. Monepenny (alias the impeccably turned-out Heather McGregor) and chemical company engineer Amy Johnson (right - forget the hairdo and makeup), with a fleeting appearance from McKinsey and Company's Joanna Barsh. 12 minutes.

Show notes: You can find the US version of Heather McGregor's book, Mrs. Moneypenny's Career Advice for Ambitious Women, here.

This is the column by Financial Times fashion editor Vanessa Friedman that got me thinking about this whole topic of appearance, and wondering why Sheryl Sandberg didn't touch on it in Lean In. It's called 'Sheryl Sandberg's Mistake'. 

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Episode 17: Female in Silicon Valley

April 29, 2013

"In this one particular conversation I had with an angel investor...he responded, ‘Well, I don’t want to say the wrong thing and call you a meek Asian woman, but I wonder how you will lead a group of about 100 people?’" - Elizabeth Yin, co-founder, LaunchBit

Raising money for a startup is a tough proposition for any entrepreneur. Elizabeth Yin (left) and her co-founder set out more than a year ago to raise a first round of funding for their company, LaunchBit. Along the way, they became more conscious of their gender than they'd ever been before. 18 minutes. 

In part two of the show, we meet Janne Sigurdsson (above), an Icelandic director at Alcoa, the mining company, who talks about how much work her employer has done to make the firm more appealing to women. Smelters aren't known for their allure, but Alcoa upped its female workforce by more than three percent during the recession.

And we meet a couple of executives from Coca-Cola, who explain what the beverage behemoth is doing to make life better for women inside and outside the company.

Show notes: Elizabeth Yin wrote this piece for Women 2.0 about her funding experiences, which prompted me to interview her for the show. This piece from The Verge is also very revealing about just how hard it can be for women business owners to get male investors to take their ideas seriously. 

You can read more about Catalyst's honoring of Alcoa here and Coca-Cola here. Oxfam's Behind the Brands report came out in February.

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