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Women in senior management
Posted on March 21, 2007 by (un)relaxeddad
A little follow-up to my Blog Against Sexism contribution, courtesy of Rebecca’s Pocket. Figures from the Economist about the number of women in senior management show that the Philippines (50%!) puts the UK and Germany to shame. Japan, meanwhile, remains stubbornly recidivist at about 5%.
What can we do? Go and find women to work for. Much more fun than men, anyway.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: glass ceilings, sexism, women in senior management
Can I tell you a secret? Women bosses suck! Really. All the women I have worked for are so inconsiderate and men are surprisingly more understanding. I wonder why.
Let me see. I’ve had several women bosses and several male bosses. I’d say that I’ve formed a pretty satisfactory working relationship with two of the women (a fierce Korean woman in the first instance) and my current boss who I admire tremendously. Both of them, however, pretty much go against stereotypes. But I’ve never managed to really get on comfortably with the men I’ve had as bosses. Like you say, I wonder why?
I prefer women bosses. I think male energy is more comfortable with a woman boss than with the competitiveness of male boss energy. Or maybe it’s just me.
I’ve had good bosses of both genders, but women don’t have a lock on good-bosiness. My favorite boss ever is a man. What made him better than the woman I work for now? Weeeelll, I’m not sure this is the only thing, but the fact that he was a father (and grandfather) and she isn’t a parent does seem to impact their management styles. He was super family-friendly (as was a female boss I had - one who is a mom) and very flexible. This woman (a workaholic) doesn’t seem to get why I wouldn’t want to work more than the 16 hours a week for which I’m paid. Or why meetings that run until 6:30 pm are a problem (Ada goes to bed by 7). I fear her disappointed face when I say I won’t be coming in for a meeting on my day off. Not so much that I come in, but still.
Irving, I think for a particular kind of man, that’s definitely true. Is for me, anyway. Though perhaps in general, one is more inclined to think more positively of the other gender.
Nonlineargirl, that sort of thing is so infuriating - part-time workers really get short-changed in all sorts of ways beyond that kind of pressure as well. Supermum tends to find that social events have been arranged without her, big team meetings can happen on her days off and so on. Doesn’t happen so much since she got a boss with kids of their own, mind.
Yeah, working for a woman is much more fun if you want to go into a stressful roller coaster of mood swings. Don’t do it especially if you are a man.
I have worked for two female bosses, the first was a mother of 2 who loved playing the pointing game. When something went wrong she was looking for someones head, instead of figuring out how to resolve the situation. Do to her bad management she lost very valuable employees and at the end she still didn’t know why the CEO let her go.
The second boss was a single woman, a nicer one at the beginning, little did I realize that she was just doing this because she was farely new at the company and didn’t want to burn bridges. After a while she let her mood swings take over and she had made my life miserable. She spoke nicely to me but behind my back she complained to a VP. It’s like she expects that by acting pretty people forget how much of a bitch she has been with them. This caused me to resign from the company do to stress.
Women bosses use their beauty or femininity to manipulate men in the workplace so that they get what they want. Guys who drop their guard during negotiations with a beautiful female counterpart are suckers. I have seen how easy it is for a woman to negotiate especially if she is attractive or has an attractive voice.
Men can sometimes be bad but the majority have woken up to understand that you cannot treat employees like crap and then smile back at them and hope that they don’t leave you. A boss should learn to value their employees and to leave their emotions out of the office.
I did debate without myself about approving this or not. But it’s a response to a post I put up so I’ve put it through. “Guys who drop their guard during negotiations with a beautiful female counterpart are suckers.”
Oh boy.
I think you really need to re-consider how you relate to women. Otherwise, I think your comment speaks for itself.