05/07/2024
I was reading this article and it made me think of all of the strong women leaders I know and it really put the finger on why our job is so much more difficult than a male’s. I always thought it was because I was always torn with balancing being a mother and wife with a sometimes 69 hour/ wk position at work, but I love that this article points out it is more systemic than that. Being a business owner who is constantly meeting with male architects, builders, and electricians, there are a whole set of challenges when being a woman operatint in a leadership position in this working world. Although it is 100% better than when Winona-Sox Rhame owned my business in the 80’s (“Oh look, John, a woman on the job site, how adorable!” 😣) we still have a lot of social confines that really make our job much harder than a male predecessor/ male equivalent in a comparable position. I love this excerpt from Cornell’s J. Lennard:
“Women seeking senior roles are caught in a double bind of ‘niceness’ (or ‘likability’) versus power and strength. The former is expected of women and we’re penalised more harshly than men for not displaying enough of it; but display too much and you’re ‘weak’, a doormat who will never make a good leader. Being too assertive on the other hand, displaying too many ‘masculine characteristics’, leaves women open to being seen as ‘aggressive’ and ‘pushy’. And guess what? We get judged more harshly than men on this too. So we have to adapt, flex our style, read the room.”
She continues to express that while this isn’t fair, and often infuriating, it is the world we live in until society can catch up to the era.
When women in leadership are put in a position to speak up about others underforming, falling out of protocol, etc, men usually judge it as “meddling,” “overstepping,” and yes, a lot of times “bitchy.”
So while I am glad our nation has equal opportunity and we have proven women can do the majority of men’s jobs (I ain’t carrying someone over a battle line 😆) we need to be more aware of how we approach women as leaders and set aside our prejudices when judging them as effective leaders.
Please tag a strong female business owner or leader below and give her a pat on the back!! Keep trucking, ladies! You’re doing a great job!
