A few weeks ago, my aunt – a boss-lady single mama, occupying a senior managerial position – told me an interesting story. She was up for a promotion and her boss (also a female) was the one who had put her up to the top executives at the company for the promotion. Everything was going well, until my aunt received word that she won’t, in fact, be receiving the promotion. My aunt was taken aback and asked her boss why she hadn’t gotten the promotion: “Members of the executive board sarcastically told me that my department was far too saturated with female managers.” Her boss went on to say that one of the executive board members even went to ask her if there weren’t any qualified male managers who could occupy the position, and he accordingly asked her for a gender-based recommendation.
My mouth naturally dropped in awe. If having too much of a gender was enough of a premise to decline someone for a position, shouldn’t old white men with beards be gone by now? Yet, here they are.
What happened with my aunt did have an advantage to it though: it was point blank sexism. I think, however, that most sexism isn’t so easy to spot. Indeed, nothing has come to teach me how difficult sexism is to spot than being a female manager.
For example (I predominately like relying on personal narratives because I like to believe that we as a society need to listen to women’s personal narratives without dismissing them as trivial individual stories, while we celebrate male narratives as indicators of universal truths) there are three particular male employees of mine who completely dismiss me, blow me off, and are incapable of accepting any specific criticisms.
I did not get it. I personally just thought they were rude individuals. This of course was true up until I was alerted by several co-workers (who have worked in the company for years on end, and who have accordingly known these three individuals for much longer) that I am being treated this way because well, I am a woman.
I went back and reflected; I realized then and there that their rude behavior was not only quite specific to instances when I would correct them, it was also a very specific kind of rude. It is a kind of rude that does not cuss you out, but simultaneously possesses a demeaning attitude. It is a kind of rude that reacts to professional criticism with extreme levels of anxiety, and a general doubt in your capacities. It is a kind of rude that calls you out for being “far too detail-oriented” (aka an irrational wench) and proceeds to treating you accordingly. Seeing this, I conducted a little experiment: I had one of the male junior managers provide the exact same thing that I provided. What happened was amazing: the three employees accepted the criticism and took the exact same course of action that I had recommended.
Now, between my aunt’s story and my own, lies a world of difference, but the moral is the same; men presume female bosses are unfit and would much rather have a male boss, and/or presume that there is obviously a more qualified male who can do the boss job better.
All that being said, I think the biggest challenge has as to be in recognizing sexism for what it is and calling it out; in other words, dear female employee do not let anyone (including that voice inside your head) tell you that your overthinking. You know and you can tell when a male co-worker is mistreating just because he has certain opinions about women. Do not deny yourself the capacity to hear your own story; you are a boss woman, not some sort of constant irrational over-thinker who just wants to play victim.
Remember, if it looks like sexism, if it sounds like sexism, then it must be sexism.
