'Scary' female bosses: are stopping women from having what's theirs:
The trope of tough female bosses may be putting women off from trying
to break what's left of the glass ceiling but Radhika Sanghani believes
there's a simpler solution
I've always wanted to be a female boss but there have been a few
times when my ambition has wavered. That hasn't come from a fading
desire to do the job, but from the fear of what it means to give
everything up.
Meryl Streep as the formidable Miranda Priestly in ‘The
Devil Wears Prada’ |
One look at pop culture's depictions of female bosses and you'll know
exactly what I mean. From The Devil Wears Prada to The Proposal and
Damages, women in charge are portrayed as irrational, manic workaholics
whose private lives and personalities are destroyed by their work.
The horror stories about real life women chiefs just add to the
'scary lady boss' stereotype. There are the famous examples of Anna
Wintour and Margaret Thatcher, but we've all heard the urban legends of
the woman who went back to work a day after having her baby and the one
who worked so much her husband left her and she lost custody of the
kids.
With extremes like this, it's no surprise a Harvard Business School
study found tough female bosses may be scaring women off from joining
their ranks. From their 'ruthless' attitudes to poor work/life balances,
young women are getting turned off by these powerful lady bosses.
But they're missing a crucial part of the puzzle - which is that
these female bosses probably aren't any worse than their male
counterparts. It's just that the 'ruthless ambition' that's so normal,
even admired in men is distorted into an unattractive 'bossy aggression'
for women - either by the media or societal norms. And don't forget,
there are still so few powerful women in society (compared to men) that
we often end up fetishising the ones who have made it and magnifying
everything they do.
Younger women, who are already burdened with a desire to 'be liked',
become the unwitting victims of this fetishisation. They see the 'bossy
bitch' criticisms that women heading up companies are subjected to and
inevitably compare it to the praise men receive for doing exactly the
same thing. Often these young women end up deciding to emulate the men
instead. A recent study shows women are increasingly adopting the
hard-drinking habits of male colleagues - to the point where it's
decreasing their life expectancy - and friends have told me they've
regularly joined in with chauvinistic banter that accompanies such
boozing just to fit in.
But the secret to true female success does not lie in copying men. If
women do well enough, yes they may end up joining the male ranks above
the glass ceiling, but more often than not, that doesn't happen. Instead
as women gradually accrue more power, they realise they're still
receiving different feedback to their male colleagues.
Then many start to fear the scary boss trope again, and fall back
into the mind set of avoiding the top table.This needs to stop. Not only
does this defeatist thinking damage individual women's lives, it's not
actually true. The Harvard researchers pointed this out when they said
it's possible some women are "overestimating the negative consequences
of power".
Anna Wintour has a reputation for being a tough boss |
In other words, we women are over-thinking it. It's something I was
guilty of back when I watched The Devil Wears Prada as a teen and
panicked about sacrificing my fiancé for a dream job (I was single and
at school).
Younger women are guilty of over-analysing too. New analysis from
Oxbridge Applications has found boys are twice as likely as girls to be
accepted on courses like maths and law.
They blamed it on girls being 'too self-critical' and
'over-rehearsing' interviews.This 'perfectionist' attitude is something
girls tend to pick up at school, and it can burden them right through
university admissions all the way up to hitting the glass ceiling at
work.
I've only managed to ditch mine in the last couple of years - but
already I'm less worried about being 'liked' and seen as 'aggressive'.
The reality is that everyone in the workplace has to do things that
mean they can't be liked by everyone - especially bosses. That's just
part of the job, and though women get a harder time of it with the
'scary bitch' trope, the only way it will ever change is when we see
more female bosses infiltrating the male-dominated upper ranks and doing
it on their terms.
I, for one, plan on being one of those bossy women. Now who else is
with me?
(This article was originally
published in Telegraph UK) |