Sheryn MacMunn's Blog: Sheryn MacMunn Wrote Here - Posts Tagged "office"
Working Women
Wall Street Journal published an interesting article last week provocatively titled The Tyranny of the Queen Bee about the challenges of having a female boss and being a female boss. I've had some experiences working for Queen Bees and the character of Alessandra definitely fits the mold. She yells, cajoles, takes sides and works well with the men - even though she doesn't like them.
Reading the article reminded me how confusing and frightening it can be to have a difficult boss. Let's face it; we all work to support ourselves even if we are doing something that we love. My heart went out to the woman 'Erin' in the article who works at a magazine. Her boss confides in her one day then screams at her the next. When we are forced to deal with someone's bad behavior, especially our boss', the feeling of powerlessness is horrible.
Then the article describes the flip side which is having a woman subordinate who doesn't respect her female boss the way she respects the men. I remember having an assistant who would tell me about her personal problems. It was annoying because I could never have a simple conversation with her or give her something to do without hearing a litany of her issues. Plus she wanted my advice on very personal subjects which I couldn't give. I remember telling a male co-worker about the situation. His advice was to tell her 'I'm not here to be your therapist. Just do your job.' Well, I gave her a nicer version of that message and guess what? I got in trouble for being mean. I found it so interesting that I was much nicer than my male co-worker would have been but it still wasn't enough. And let's not forget the kind of woman who uses sabotage to advance her career. We've all met them. Some, unfortunately, make it really far up the ladder but they never seem really happy.
Then there is the other half of our gender, the male boss. They are not perfect either but there seems to be fewer studies focusing on male bosses and our feelings about them. I’d like to see a study about male bosses and their feelings on female workers. Male bosses can certainly be tough. The article suggests that men are equally hard on both men and women but I have found that men will build alliances with men before a woman. A friend of mine went for a job interview and the male interviewer only discussed her child care situation. He kept comparing my friend, a successful salesperson, to his wife and concluded that since his wife can barely manage their two kids, he couldn't see how my friend would be able to do the job. My friend, by the way, has been the #1 salesperson at her company for 5 years straight.
I’m happy to say that my current work situation is amazing. The entire company consists of a young workforce where the women are equally empowered and the executive staff is almost 50/50 women to men. I hope that by the time my daughters get to the workplace the issues in this article will be minimal (and they get paid the same as men). In order to get there, however, it's important that we think and talk about the issues presented here. You can check out the article here and feel free to leave a comment below: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001...
Reading the article reminded me how confusing and frightening it can be to have a difficult boss. Let's face it; we all work to support ourselves even if we are doing something that we love. My heart went out to the woman 'Erin' in the article who works at a magazine. Her boss confides in her one day then screams at her the next. When we are forced to deal with someone's bad behavior, especially our boss', the feeling of powerlessness is horrible.
Then the article describes the flip side which is having a woman subordinate who doesn't respect her female boss the way she respects the men. I remember having an assistant who would tell me about her personal problems. It was annoying because I could never have a simple conversation with her or give her something to do without hearing a litany of her issues. Plus she wanted my advice on very personal subjects which I couldn't give. I remember telling a male co-worker about the situation. His advice was to tell her 'I'm not here to be your therapist. Just do your job.' Well, I gave her a nicer version of that message and guess what? I got in trouble for being mean. I found it so interesting that I was much nicer than my male co-worker would have been but it still wasn't enough. And let's not forget the kind of woman who uses sabotage to advance her career. We've all met them. Some, unfortunately, make it really far up the ladder but they never seem really happy.
Then there is the other half of our gender, the male boss. They are not perfect either but there seems to be fewer studies focusing on male bosses and our feelings about them. I’d like to see a study about male bosses and their feelings on female workers. Male bosses can certainly be tough. The article suggests that men are equally hard on both men and women but I have found that men will build alliances with men before a woman. A friend of mine went for a job interview and the male interviewer only discussed her child care situation. He kept comparing my friend, a successful salesperson, to his wife and concluded that since his wife can barely manage their two kids, he couldn't see how my friend would be able to do the job. My friend, by the way, has been the #1 salesperson at her company for 5 years straight.
I’m happy to say that my current work situation is amazing. The entire company consists of a young workforce where the women are equally empowered and the executive staff is almost 50/50 women to men. I hope that by the time my daughters get to the workplace the issues in this article will be minimal (and they get paid the same as men). In order to get there, however, it's important that we think and talk about the issues presented here. You can check out the article here and feel free to leave a comment below: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001...
Sheryn MacMunn Wrote Here
I'll answer questions about FINDING OUT, share thoughts on my new novel, and give you a glimpse of what it's like to write a novel with a full time job, a husband (who thankfully cooks and does laundr
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