Yesterday, six of us went to a Thai restaurant to celebrate the end of the last audit. Celebratory dinners seem to have become a tradition.
The food was flavoursome and the conversation was extremely stimulating. I was surrounded by five of the most intelligent, experienced and wise people I know.
Yet, the discussion made me feel… sad. Critical thinking, such a driver and tool for scientific and social advancement, makes me sad.
Those older and wiser than me explained why our company, despite the progressive field we work in, does not encourage innovation and change. It’s our systems, it’s the nature of the consulting industry. Where time is exactly equivalent to money, it is a battle to even allow time to think further than one financial year into the future.
Don’t tell me that, please. Don’t warn me of frustrations and barriers I haven’t yet faced. Don’t disillusion me about this company that I love working for.
The women at the table railed against society’s ingrained culture of gender discrimination. “Joan,” they assured me, “Sex discrimination is definitely alive. We see it all the time, women not getting the same opportunities as men.”
“Even in our company?”
“Even in our company.”
To which I could only protest in bewilderment, “I’ve never, never experienced discrimination. I’m getting paid the same as the male graduates, surely. I’m have the same responsibilities and privileges. I’ve experienced nothing but support being a woman in engineering.”
“Ah, but look at management. Look how male-dominated it is.”
“Isn’t that historic? Isn’t only a matter of time before there are capable women in these roles? And who’s to say women even want to be in these roles?”
Oh, I know the arguments about how business is built around the male culture. To succeed, you must be aggressive. You must be ruthless. For women to succeed in business, they must be more… like men.
Is that fair?
Maybe that’s what my dinner companions meant. Maybe they’re demanding not female representation in management for the sake of numerical equality. Maybe they’re demanding a change in corporate culture so that women can contribute in their more empathetic, multi-tasking, communicative, no-sense-of-direction way.
Woe. Woe.
Assertion: the management of your company is primarily male because the company was founded by males.
Justification: People are probably more likely to trust the fate of a company they own to one of the same sex, thus the higher positions in your corporation have probably been passed from males to males since it first began.
A company started by one or more females would probably have female dominated management. However, there are probably relatively few existing large companies started by females, because 1) females tend to (not always!) be less ambitious / less power-hungry than males, and 2) the dates of origin of many (most?) large companies today predate the empowerment of women.
Of course, I just guessed that your company was started by males, but I think that’s a fair assumption for the two reasons given above 🙂
I think it’s not so much of sex discrimination in our western world these days, but of whom is the right person for a particular role.
Sadly, females have many “career-grave-digging” personalities. For starters, they take everything so personal. Take the five intelligent, experience and wise women that you had dinner with as an example. They immediately assume that it’s sex discrimination because women do not get the same amount of opportunities as men. Opportunities do not come to you, you have to create your opportunities, so no point whinging about it.
Other problem with females is the bitching and gossiping. For example, if a female reach the top of the ladder, other females will bitch about her instead of being supportive. “Oh, she must have slept her way to the top”, they will say. Or simply, “did you see the way she dressed?”…
Another issue is females like to be liked. They want to be popular, to be liked by everyone. Often, you are less likely to be at the top if you are the nicest person in the office. It’s often a dilemma between making the right decision and being a people’s person.
At the end of the day, do you really want your company to be managed by someone who behaves like a woman?
I have to admit that sex discrimination still happens, but we shouldn’t let that be an excuse to stop us from our goals and dreams. To whinge about how sex discrimination is the reason why we women can’t reach our goals, is like giving up before we even start the climb.
I not saying that we women should behave like a man in order to succeed. I hate it when a woman who claims that she is a feminist, takes it personally when a man opens the door, offer to pay for a drink… etc, and then at the end of the day start whinging why no man dares to approach her.
We should embrace the fact that we are women, instead of whinging that we are women. If we feel that we are not given enough opportunities, we should take a long hard look at our personality and behaviour first.