Author: admin1

  • Women Need Solutions, Not More Studies

    Women Need Solutions, Not More Studies

    When women need career advice our first instinct is to look on the internet.  This is what I did a few years ago. 

    After a few hours of reading and skimming through internet articles, I stopped.  I was horrified by what I read.  My only thought was:

    If this is the career advice women are getting, it’s no wonder we aren’t advancing!

    I forgot about looking for my own career advice and dove into this new problem.  I kept reading and realized the articles could be divided into four groups.

    The first group and by far the largest, was what I called:

    The Feel-Good Group.   

    These articles, blogs, pictures and quotes offered an abundance of inspiration and empathy.  They let me know I wasn’t alone and other women were dealing with the same issues as me.  I felt like my frustrations were heard and shared with the world.  This group made me feel better as it inspired and motivated me.

    But then, after reading what seemed like hundreds of these articles, I still wondered what behaviors I was supposed to adopt or change in order to advance my career.  As an engineer and a business woman, I wanted actionable solutions.  However, The Feel-Good Group offered only inspiration.

    A collage of inspirational messages for women

    The second group had the opposite effect so I called it:

    The Feel Bad Group.  

    These articles and blogs made me feel like women are doomed.  It didn’t matter what I did, how I acted, or what I achieved, the male-dominated workplace was inherently unfair and would always hold me back simply because I was a woman.  According to them, it didn’t even matter if I worked for a female manager because they often treated women worse than men.  Reading these articles I felt more victimized and powerless than I actually ever experienced my hard-core male-dominated the workplaces.  From these articles I concluded that I should stop looking for solutions because my situation was hopeless.

    The third group of articles was summaries of research papers, so I called them:

    The Studies Group. 

    Written by various institutions and organizations these articles were basically long problem statements loaded with lots of facts and figures documenting all the ways women aren’t advancing and achieving parity with men.  I also noticed that the way the facts were sliced and diced led women to conclusions that were inconsistent with my real-world experiences.  I decided that many of these studies were worthless, not only because they didn’t offer solutions, but because they didn’t give me credible information I could use to derive my own solutions.

    For 11 months, I searched and read.  Then finally I was sent an HBR article that I was told belonged to the elusive fourth group:

    Solutions for Advancing Women. 

    I read the article with great anticipation, expecting the wisdom of the ages to spill off the page.  After reading it though, I wasn’t excited.  There was something about it that bugged me.  And I mean it really, really bugged me. Something about it wasn’t right but I couldn’t figure out what.

    Then, it hit me.

    “The Solution” to women’s career advancement issues could be summed up as: 

    Act like a man.

    Wow!  What does that advice tell women about their value in the workplace?!

    Graph showing how society favors masculinity. On the right is a woman with a pink glow standing on the ground, then a woman with no glow standing on a pedestal, then a woman with a blue glow standing on a higher pedestal, then a man with a blue glow standing on a higher pedestal and finally a man with a dark blue glow representing his deep masculinity standing on the highest pedestal

    I was disappointed that a year of researching and reading countless articles yielded no feasible and actionable solutions to advance women in the workplace.   However, there were a few things that stuck me.

    The first was that society’s perception of women hasn’t evolved. 

    We still believe in the stereotypes.

    We still believe women are more emotional than intellectual.

    So, when women have problem, just make us feel better, and – *POOF* – all of our problems magically go away.  In the old days we gave women Valium. Today we are given dopamine through social media feel good posts and bias confirmation.

    The second thing that struck me was that it seems we still believe that female traits are inherently inconsistent with workplace success.  

    Is this why women aren’t given actionable solutions? 

    Do we still believe femininity and workplace success are mutually exclusive?

    This made me question how many people, organizations, institutions and workplaces truly believe men and women are equal and of equal value in the workplace.  This goes well beyond just a gender bias:

    Is there a true belief that women and female traits are inherently inferior in the workplace?

    After thinking about all that, I was struck by another alarming thought: 

     Women are being played.

    It seems that many of the organizations, institutions and media aren’t as interested in advancing women in the workplace and society as they advertise.

    Why not?

    Because there is so much $$MONEY$$ to be made off of maintaining the status quo!

    It’s actually very simple.

    We know women are the largest consumer group.  And, if you read any article or book on marketing to women, it will tell you that to sell to women, appeal to their emotions. (Stereotype)

    The product the media and social media sells to women is:

    Emotional Responses. 

    A woman holding a picture of herself crying on her right and a picture of herself smiling on her right.

    If women feel bad, give them an inspirational message, so they feel better.  Then the next time they feel bad, they will return to the site again so they can feel better.

    To generate even more revenue, start generating negative messages so women will seek out the posts, images, a class, a training program or coaching that make them feel good.  By manipulating the cycle and women’s emotions they can generate tremendous revenue. 

    (Take an internet marketing course and this is what they teach.)

    In the years since I began monitoring how the internet uses women, there have been some changes. 

    Women caught onto The Feel-Good Group and want more than just empathy and inspiration.  We want to feel like we are intelligent too. 

    In response, the technique changed and the floodgates opened producing articles and posts that fall into The Studies Group.  There is a reason this is so effective. 

     You probably read a study that says women get more college degrees than men.  Therefore, the media knows it can make women feel good by reminding women that we are academically superior to men.   

    Now, most real studies are long, dry and boring. So, to appeal to women, there has to be an emotional element.  The facts must be sliced and diced to create an emotional reaction. 

    And the chosen the emotional reaction is outrage and an intense feeling of unfairness reminiscent of The Feel Bad Group.

    A prime example of this is the wage gap.

    We’ve all read many studies that cite that women earn 78 or 80 cents to every 1 dollar men earn.  Seeing these numbers, women are outraged! Our workplaces are discriminating against women! We are led to believe women that women earn 20% less than men for doing the exact same job.

    However, that’s NOT what the facts say.

    But to the media that doesn’t matter. It achieved its goal:

    It successfully sold Intellectual Outrage to women.

    The media could now produce countless programs, books, articles, videos and podcasts about the “unfair” wage gap WITHOUT providing any solutions. (Solutions would kill the revenue source.)

    www.123rf.com 24390717

    As women we need to get wise to all the ways we are being sold Intellectual Outrage without any solutions to the problem. 

    It’s everywhere! 

    We’re being conditioned to believe we’re acting out of intellect when we’re really being emotionally manipulated.

    Emotional manipulation then gives people power over us.

    It’s all a cycle to take advantage of women, not advance women.

    Don’t believe me?

    Conduct your own study.  Read through posts on social media.  Watch any “news” show that discusses politics. Listen to a podcast.

    Monitor your own response.  Is it emotional?  Then ask yourself:

    Where are the solutions?

    Empowered Women Aren’t Emotionally Manipulated

    They Seek Solutions

    To learn more, watch these YouTube videos:

  • Everything I Needed to Know About Bullying I Learned in First Grade

    Everything I Needed to Know About Bullying I Learned in First Grade

    If you haven’t figured it out from reading my articles, I believe in women standing up for themselves.  I believe women can stand up to anybody and to institutional power.  After thinking about why I feel so strongly about this, I realized I learned this powerful lesson in the first grade.

    My first grade teacher was mean and a bully.

    To this day I can’t tell you her name because I never really knew it.  I always called to her Mrs. Poo-Poo Head.

    Within the first hour on the first day of school she made very clear that she hated boys and blonde-haired girls.  Reading through the attendance roster, she rearranged us to let us know who she favored and who she didn’t.  My friend Shelly, who was a sweet blond-haired girl was removed from her desk in the front row and sent to the desk closest to the door.  The teacher then moved two brunette girls up to the front and made it clear that they were her favorites. 

    All the boys were sent to the back rows.

    I was a redhead with curly hair and freckles.  After she informed me that redheads are the devil’s children I was moved to the back row, next to Gino, the boy she despised most of all.

    She demonstrated her hatred of boys every day. 

    When we had to line up to go somewhere, she typically called for the girls to line up first with her two favorites at the front of the line.  Shelly and I took our places at the end. 

    If boys jumped the gun and lined up at the same time as the girls she humiliated them.  Her favorite punishment was to put bows in their hair and make them walk around all day with the bows.

    As the last girl in line, I tried to make the boys sit down before they were caught.  I was scolded for helping the boys and sent to sit in the hall as my punishment.

    In those first months of school I was sent to sit in the hall about once a week for helping the boys or speaking out that something was unfair. 

    I remember a spelling bee where the final 3 were myself, another girl and a boy.  When the boy correctly spelled his word, our teacher told him he spelled it wrong.  I spoke out and said he spelled it correctly.  Other kids joined my protest.  The boy and I were sent out of the classroom to sit in the hall.

    As The Girl in the Hall, I got some attention because my school used this punishment to remove unruly boys from class.  After the first couple of punishments, other teachers began asking me what I did to warrant my punishment. I replied with the truth that I challenged my teacher’s unfairness.  After a while I became aware that the teachers next door and across the hall monitored how often I sat in the hall.

    One day Gino came to school with a broken leg.  It was no secret that he was abused at home by his father and his two older teenage brothers.  Seeing his broken leg our teacher came back to him and asked him what happened.  He said he fell down the stairs and after more questioning it was clear that his father pushed him.  Our darling teacher then sided with his father, told him he was a bad kid and deserved it as well as the beatings he got from his brothers.

    Sitting at my desk and listening to her, I began crying.  She scolded me for crying. 

    I will always remember it was at that moment that I began hating this woman. 

    My tears turned to anger.  I kept whispering to Gino that it was going to be all right and not to listen to our teacher because she was a mean wicked witch.

    Later that day we went to gym class.  Our teacher told the gym teacher that Gino couldn’t be excused from gym class because he didn’t bring a note from home.  Listening to our teacher I learned that Gino’s mother couldn’t write a note because she was in the hospital with cancer.   

    The gym teacher didn’t challenge our teacher and Gino wasn’t excused.  I got the impression they considered Gino’s family “trash” and if was OK abuse Gino because it was what he deserved. 

    A young girl expresses her displeasure, arms crossed and brows furrowed, in a mix of frustration and determination. Her reddish blonde hair frames her serious expression, hinting at a story behind her mood.

    My anger and hatred intensified

    As we did our jumping jacks I looked over at Gino who was struggling with his full leg cast.  Our teacher and gym talked as they stared at him. To me, my teacher seemed obviously proud of the punishment she inflicted on him. 

    My 6 year old mind saw the evil, wicked witch portrayed in fairy tales.  My anger exploded.   I got out of line and went up to the teachers and began yelling at them.   The gym teacher pulled Gino out of the line and had him sit along the wall.  I was told to sit down next to him. Then another boy got out of line to defend me and Gino. He was sent to sit along the wall too.

    I didn’t consider being expelled from gym class as punishment.  Using my imagination, I pictured us sitting under a big sign that said, “The Winners.”  I was never afraid of standing up to that witch again.

    In early December our teacher said she had a “special” holiday project for the last week of school.  She said that whoever brought in the most potpie tins could help her.  I told my mother and we collected the tins from our neighbors and family.  A week before the deadline I brought in a bag containing 18 -20 tins.  My classmates were all excited about how many I was able to round up.

    On the big day of the project, everyone told me they knew I would be the helper.  However, our teacher announced that one of her favorites would help her.  I felt betrayed.  My classmates sat in shocked disbelief. 

    Then one of the boys spoke up on my behalf.   Before the teacher could reply, the rest of the class joined in, including her two favorites.

    She had a full blown mutiny on her hands.

    I knew the reason they stuck up for me when I was wronged was because I stuck up for them when they were wronged.

    I spent the day helping my teacher do our project of filling the tins with plaster and putting a candle in the middle.  Amazingly we got along extremely well.  I could tell that for some reason this project meant a lot to her.  It had a personal and special meaning that made her very happy.

    Those last two days before Christmas break were the happiest days in the classroom.  After the holidays it was all back to “normal.”

    In the spring, she eventually went too far.  When 3 boys lined up with the girls, instead of putting bows in their hair, she made “bonnets” for them out of doilies and ribbon.  She then made them walk through the school wearing their “bonnets.”  I remember some other teachers questioned her about it.  She gave her standard reply that if the boys wanted to line up with the girls, then she would treat them like girls.

    When we got back to the classroom, she had the girls and the boys with bonnets remain lined up against the wall.  She then berated the boys and told them she was going to call their fathers and tell them their sons want to be girls.

    The boys got very upset and began crying.  One boy got hysterical and kept pleading, “Don’t call my father, don’t call my father.”  (It was 1967 in New Jersey so you can imagine how some fathers would react to that phone call.)

    An upset boy sitting on floor with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around his knees and face buried in his knees.

    Most of the girls started crying.  Then two boys who were seated stood up.  From the look on their faces, I thought they were going to attack our teacher who was still mocking the boys relentlessly.  Since our teacher was standing in front of me, I got out of line and placed myself between her and the boys who were ready to attack.  I began yelling at her to stop.  Other kids started yelling at her to stop. Every kid in the class was either yelling or crying.

    She got control of herself and sent me and the three crying boys still wearing their bonnets to sit in the hallway again. 

    This time other teachers came out of their classrooms to check on us.  I remember sitting there trying to console the boy who had been hysterical.  I don’t remember what I said but it was clear something had to be done.  The teacher in the classroom next door went back into her classroom and called the principal.  The principal and some other women came and we were taken to the lunchroom for the rest of the day.

    For the remainder of the year, our teacher was a lot more subdued.  I assumed she got in a lot of trouble.  I also noticed our classroom door was always left open as was the teacher’s next door.  And every day the principal or another adult stopped by our classroom.

    On the last day of school our teacher tried to get in her last little jab in at me.  I got 100% all year on my spelling tests so I was supposed to get a BIG gold star on the front of my spelling book.  However, she gave me a little gold star.  I knew she did it deliberately, so I called her out on it. 

    I stood there at her desk going through my book, showing all my perfect tests.  She never looked at me or said a word but eventually slammed a BIG gold star on the front of my book.  Everyone looked up.  I gathered my book and walked back to my desk in the last row in triumph.

    A gold star

    To me, I didn’t earn my BIG gold star for spelling.

    I earned my BIG gold star for standing up to the wicked witch.

    After reading this story it is easy to focus on my teacher and be outraged that she was allowed to bully, abuse and victimize her students.  We can blame the school administration and the organizational power structure for not doing their job, intervening and removing her from teaching.

    But if you focus on the teacher, you miss the real moral of this story.

    Back in the 1960’s and 70’s, bullying was a battle between the bully (and their friends) and the person being bullied (and their friends.)

    It was up to us to stand up to a bully and make the bullying stop.   

    With this principle as my foundation, my first grade experience taught me all I needed to know about bullying:

    1. Bullies thrive when no one stands up to them.
    2. Adults can be intimidated by a bully and be bullied too.
    3. People can witness bullying and choose to look the other way.
    4. You have to be your own knight in shining armor.  If you wait to be rescued, you will be bullied while you wait because of lessons 2 and 3.
    5.  Most people are afraid to be the first one to stand up to a bully.
    6. If you are the first to stand up against a bully, you have to rally support.
    7. Other people will join you in your fight against a bully because most people want to do what’s right.
    8. If you stand up for other people, they will stand up for you.
    9. People who stand up to bullies together form a bond and become allies.
    10. Bullies don’t stop just because you stood up to them once.  You have to keep standing up to them.
    11. If you keep standing up to a bully, eventually something will change, something will be done.
    12. All bullies can be defeated.  It just takes one person choosing to step forward and start the process.

    As a 6 year old, I summed up these lessons in fairytale terms:

    When Good fights Evil, Good always wins.  

    As it turned out my first grade experience prepared me well for the rest of my life. 

    In third grade two different groups of boys thought they could beat up the girl with the curly red hair.  They both learned I always fight back. And when you rip my favorite coat, I get really, really mad and there is hell to pay.  

    In college when a guy tried to grab me to sexually assault me, I grabbed him back…in the crotch.  I then squeezed as hard as I could, yanked down and twisted.  He screamed out in pain.

    As a woman in a male-dominated workplace, first grade taught me to never be intimidated by any of the men I worked with or any of their power plays.  I didn’t care who they were, I believed I could stand up for myself.  If they retaliated, which some did, I just kept standing up for myself. 

    I refused to let evil or bad behavior win.

    Of course there were times when I questioned if I should back down (usually from listening to the advice of others.)  There were also times when I questioned if I should get involved in a situation because the person being bullied didn’t want to stand up for themselves. 

    But then I always remembered Gino with his broken leg and I felt compelled to take a stand.

    (BTW, Gino’s mother passed away during the school year and he went to live with his grandmother…without his older brothers.)

    I lived by the lessons I learned all through the first half of my career with success and great satisfaction.  But in the latter half, Rule 4 went away.

    Society decided that people shouldn’t stand up for themselves. Instead, we must report incidents to people with the proper authority and rely on them to rectify the situation on our behalf.

    Because of my experience in first grade, I don’t like this. It disempowers us and empowers people with the “proper authority.”

    It gives them the power to decide if we are worthy of defending or if we deserve how we are being treated.

    And because the new policies didn’t eliminate Lessons 2, 3 and 10, I got mixed results from reporting bullying, harassment and unfair practices.

    Some of my managers handled the situation so badly they made the situation worse.  In one workplace we discovered that the person we had to file the complaint with, was severely bullying the bully we complained about. 

    I’ve also learned the hard way that many, if not most, of the people with proper authority who are supposed to deal with the situation, don’t want to and won’t do anything. I’ve had them try to intimidate me and bully me to make the complaint go away.

    However, in all of these cases I kept going and eventually found the good people who sided with me.

    There are good people who will do something.

    When I was sexually harassed at work and did get the fairytale response every woman hopes and dreams of:

    A true (though not handsome) knight in shining armor who was more upset by the incident than I was, was willing to fight for my honor.

    However, he said he had to delay his response a day because he was so angry that he knew he would punch my offender in the face that day.

    I’ve also known senior managers who dropped everything to get on a plane and intervene in a situation.

    The latter half of career taught me that in spite of these new corporate policies and our heightened awareness, Rule 4 still exists:

    You have to stand up for yourself.

    You have to be your own knight in shining armor. 

    Don’t expect chivalry. Don’t expect that even when a friend offers hours of listening, compassion, understanding, and empathy, they will put themselves on the line to fight alongside you.

    Most importantly, don’t expect anyone to fight harder for you than you are willing to fight for yourself.  And if you are afraid to stand up for yourself, then just remember:

    If a classroom of first graders can stand up to their bully teacher, then grown adult women can certainly stand up to their workplace bully.  

    I never stopped believing in the lessons I learned in first grade.  As I applied them throughout my life, I learned one more powerful lesson women are seldom told:

    There is GREAT POWER in doing what is right, standing up for what is right and speaking the truth. 

    Bullies and evil-doers are afraid of this power because, 

    When Good fights Evil, Good always wins. 

    Empowered Women Stand Up For What is Right

    and Stand Up to Bullies

    To learn more, watch these YouTube videos:

  • Find Your Niche, Find Your Personal Fulfillment

    Find Your Niche, Find Your Personal Fulfillment

    Have you ever noticed that people become really successful when they stop doing what other people say they should do and start doing things their way?

    There is something attractive and empowering about a person who is truly authentic.  I think a lot of it has to do with the way they project positive energy.  They aren’t listening to and absorbing all the criticism and negativity from other people.  Their energy is just flowing outward and what comes from within them is positive.

    It doesn’t mean they are perfect people.  It simply means they know who they are and they like who they are.

    All of us need to express our true authentic selves.  We begin by asking ourselves some simple questions:

    What are you good at? 

    This may be different from what you want to do or like to do.  It is about how your brain and your body work.  Too often we ignore some of our experience, talents, skills or traits because we assume we can only use them a certain way.  But who says we have to fit into someone else’s mold?  Being true to ourselves, we don’t conform to the mold, we break the mold.

    What are your values? 

    Your values are those ideals that you are willing to take a stand for in the face of opposition.   They define how you conduct and judge yourself and others.  They make you hold yourself and others accountable to a higher standard.

    What contribution will you make? 

    Our contribution doesn’t have to be something big and bold that you do by yourself.  Often it is something we do in conjunction with other people or as part of a team.  In making our contribution we put our experience, talents, skills, traits and values into action and join them together with the experience, talents, skills, traits and values of others to make something bigger possible.

    Bright and colorful puzzle pieces, some assembled and some still waiting to be placed

    What results do you want to achieve?  

    How are you going to measure your success and see the value of your contribution?  What is the final assembled puzzle going to look like?

    Our answers to these questions help us find our niche which may not be what we expected.

    As a civil engineer I always wanted to build runways and super-highways.  It is what I studied and set out in my career to do.  It fit with my value system of constructing something that made a contribution to society.  However, I never built a super-highway because as it turned out,  it wasn’t Me.

    Instead, I spent 12 years of my career constructing new military family housing.  As an Air Force veteran and Air Force spouse I knew it was important to military families that we tore down the old, dilapidated homes built in the 1950’s.  I knew how much these families were sacrificing and how wrong it was for them to live in housing that needed to be condemned.  I knew they deserved homes that met today’s standards and gave them the respect they deserved.

    Even with that knowledge it took me a while to realize military family housing was my niche and what I was meant to do.  During that time I tried to get into highway construction many times but failed to do so.  Eventually I realized I was right where I belonged – military family housing was the perfect fit for my experience, talents, skills and values.  My contribution was desperately needed because military family housing is a unique kind of construction that most construction professionals don’t fit into well.   My unique fit into the industry made me stand out and made a difference.

    When you are where you belong, doing what you are meant to do, you take a lot of pride in your work.  On one project I had the extra benefit of meeting every family who moved into the new homes my team and I constructed.  I learned learn first hand the difference we made to them. 

    I don’t think there was anything else I could have constructed that would have meant as much to me.

    My niche in military family house gave me a great sense of personal fulfillment.  It helped me learn more about who I am, what I can do and what has meaning to me.  In a way probably only I can understand it led me to doing The Woman In The Room.  And as we close out this year, I am again realizing my unique niche and hope that in time it will lead to even greater personal fulfillment.

    None of us should ever stop looking for those opportunities to express and be every bit of who you are.   As I learned these opportunities can turn up in some very unexpected ways.  They can even be those opportunities that you outright reject saying, “No that’s not for me, that’s not who I am.” 

    So, keep an open mind.  You may learn a lot about who you really are.

    Empowered Women Are True To Themselves

    To learn more, watch this YouTube video:

  • Have You Thought About Female Doctors This Way?

    Have You Thought About Female Doctors This Way?

    When we think of female physicians, we think of specialties such as pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family practice and veterinary.  Anyone with older parents may also add geriatric medicine to the list of the medical professions women choose to go into.

    If you think about why women go into these professions you probably think back to the stereotypes.  Women select medical specialties that align with their traditional domestic role of caring for women and children, the elderly, and animals.  But, after I took a nasty fall from my bicycle, I saw another reason why women gravitate towards certain specialties and stay away from others.

    In my fall, I shattered my wrist but also damaged the right side of my torso.  I complained right away about my shoulder but since it wasn’t broken or dislocated, all the attention went to my wrist.  Eventually I began seeing a chiropractor about the rest of my torso.  As I told her everything that hurt, she said “It’s all connected.”

    My reply was, “Then why isn’t it being treated that way?”

    She gave a sarcastic laugh and I knew what she meant.

    A few months later when I began physical therapy for my wrist I told my physical therapist that my it was my shoulder that hurt and bothered me the most.  Her reply was, “It’s all connected.”

    I again replied, “Then why isn’t it being treated that way?”

    She told me she was only authorized to treat my wrist, that’s how it works

    As my wrist improved, my shoulder became the limiting factor in my recovery because “It’s all connected.”

    I went back to my orthopedic surgeon who looked at my wrist and then my shoulder.  I noticed he didn’t say, “It’s all connected.”  He just sent me back to my primary care doctor for a new referral. 

    Once I had my referral I called back to get a new appointment with my orthopedic surgeon.  I was told he only does wrists and hands.  I had to see a different doctor who does shoulders.

    No.  I want to see the orthopedic I’d been seeing for months, who knew my case.

    No you can’t see him.  He doesn’t treat shoulders.  I had to make an appointment with the shoulder guy.

    Frustrated, I went on the practice’s website and was shocked by how the doctors were broken down and fragmented by body parts.

    “It’s all connected,” didn’t apply to how a patient was treated.

    Through my own professional work, I knew that fragmenting the whole into pieces and parts is classic male thinking.  I looked up the gender divide for medical specialties.  Orthopedic surgeons are 95% male and 5% female.

    I wasn’t surprised.

    A few years earlier I had a colonoscopy and my female doctor and I discussed how we both were in very male-dominated professions.  I remember laughing as she rolled her eyes as she talked about the men in her practice.  Gastroenterology is only 16% female.

    Women make up about 34% of the physicians but there is a significant gender divide within some specialties  and the pay of those specialties.

    Other male-dominated specialties are:

    • Neurological Surgery 92% male
    •  Thoracic Surgery 94% male
    • Urology 92% male
    • Pulmonary Disease and Vascular Surgery 88% male
    • Interventional Cardiology 92% male

    Now before you cry out about gender biases and gender gap, let’s consider a different bias.

    How do you think about the people who go into these male-dominated specialties?  Do you think, “These are the specialties that the really smart guys go into.  You have to be a genius to specialize in these.”

    How do you think about family practice doctors?

    Do you think of them as the people who barely got out of medical school and weren’t good enough for a specialty?

    We’re taught to think of people who are generalists as less intelligent.  We think of people who have a narrow area of expertise as smarter.  We even call them “experts.”

    This kind of thinking dominates the male-dominated workplace.

    But what do the pediatrician, the veterinarian, the geriatrician and the OB/Gyn all have in common?

    They treat the whole body, not just a body part.  (Yes guys, women think of our OB/Gyn as a “woman’s doctor” and we tell her everything that is going on with us physically and mentally.)

    Women tend towards professions where we can work from the premise that, “It’s all connected.” We want to treat the body holistically, not fragment it into isolated pieces and parts.

    Nursing is the same – it is caring for the whole patient.

    Men and women have different perspectives.  Men fragment to create individual pieces and parts so they can specialize and have a narrow field of expertise.  Women connect the pieces and parts to understand how they work together and influence each other.

    Puzzle pieces showing how men and women think differently. On the left the puzzle pieces are assembled reflecting how women think. On the right the puzzle pieces are sorted and organized into rows based on color reflecting how men think.

    My own profession of construction is similar to medicine in how it fragments.  To construct a building we have different trades – concrete, structural, plumbing, mechanical, roofing, electrical, insulation, drywall, finishes etc.  The industry struggles to integrate all of these trades efficiently and effectively.  That shouldn’t be a surprise since it is nearly 100% men who work on a construction site.

    As the female project/construction manager, I had a female perspective.  I focused on connecting and integrating all the project pieces and parts.  I looked at my projects holistically.  This why my projects always out-performed all of my male colleagues projects.

    As women we have to understand that our ability to join all the pieces and parts together – to integrate and coordinate how they function as a whole – is our 21st century super power. 

    I would have loved it if I went into the emergency room and saw a female ER doctor who looked at all of my injuries and developed a holistic, integrated approach to my recovery.  That holistic approach should have then been communicated to me and my family practitioner so she could take over and manage my recovery.

    For women in all industries creating an integrated and holistic approach is our greatest opportunity.  It is why we should be always be thinking “It’s all connected”

    Empowered Women Think Holistically

    To learn more, watch this YouTube video:

  • It Isn’t Always About Power

    It Isn’t Always About Power

    The current narrative says that all  unwanted sexual attention and harassment is based in power.  It isn’t.

    Sometimes it is simply about sex.

    Like many women I experienced a lot of unwanted attention and been harassed by outside associates, peers and even the men who report to me.  Most of the time, I was the one with more power.  I knew their advances weren’t intended to diminish me.

    They just saw a woman who was different from most women and decided “I want to try her out.”

    Many men cross the line into unwanted attention simply because they are looking for sex and believe the old saying: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”  If they take their shot, they might get lucky.

    This game gets played a lot when we are out of town.  Men want to know if we are one of those women who also believes “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”   

    Do we transform from serious career woman to party girl?

    Too often women make the mistake of being too polite when we reject these advances because we don’t want to hurt the man’s feelings or come on too strong.  But when we are polite, he interprets it as us leaving the door open.  He again thinks nothing ventured, nothing gained so he tries to open the door some more.

    The  harassment begins.

    So ladies, we can’t be polite in our rejection – we take our shot and send him down in flames.  His ego will recover.

    A propeller airplane going down in flames

    There are also some men who have this weird notion that if he is interested in us, then we want him too.  The idea that we aren’t attracted to him doesn’t even register as a possibility.

    I’ve dealt with this and so have most of the women I’ve work with.  And again, women have to give an absolute “No” and sometimes take action to make these guys leave us alone.

    In one of my workplaces a lower-level man who worked for me developed a crush on me.  One day I walked in on a group of my male colleagues including his supervisor talking about how the man could make some overtures to me.  My angry reaction was:

    “Guys, let me make this really clear.  I GET A SAY IN THIS.  Just because he’s interested doesn’t mean I going to say, ‘Ooohhh I’m so lucky, a man likes me.’”

    “I decide who I date! And I DO NOT want him coming around me.  So, you better get out there and start discouraging him because if I hear you encouraging him, I will come after all of you for sexual harassment.”

    My colleagues did follow through. They made it very clear to him that I was way out of his league, and they intervened whenever he attempted to come near me.

    Then there are the men who don’t believe a woman can be single – she must have a man in her life. She MUST have sex with someone! 

    It’s another strange thought process that only make sense in the male mind.

    These men play match maker and try to set you up with every single man they know, including men you wouldn’t date in a million years. 

    Cartoon of an ugly fat man with long hair in a ponytail wearing a blue t-shirt and red shorts revealing his bellybutton.

    They don’t understand that you have standards for the men you date beyond the possession of male genitalia.

    Since I’m not easily offended by male antics, my approach to dealing with this is to give the guys my list of dating requirements and say, “Find me this guy.” 

    The list of course has very high requirements.  But if they can find him….

    Then there are the weirdos and naturally creepy men.

    The first time I ran across this man was 6 months into my career when I went to a training course.  The last man to enter the classroom was looking for a seat and I motioned that the seat next to me was vacant.  That was my mistake.

    He interpreted my offer of a seat as me saying: “I want you to sit next to me because I want you.”  Two days later, this man, who was the stereotypical geek, professed his love for me and began stalking me.  By the end of the week, he said that he was leaving his wife and child for me.

    At first, I was concerned for my safety but then realized I could break this little geek in half like twig, so I tried to ignore him.

    Ironically his stalking turned out to be helpful. 

    One of our classmates became extremely ill and needed to go to the hospital.  We didn’t have a car to take him, but I knew who did – my stalker. And being a good stalker, he was standing right there.  He gladly gave us a ride. 

    After the course, thankfully, I never saw or heard from him again.

    Unfortunately, he wasn’t the last creeper I dealt with.  However, I took all of the others much more seriously. 

    We must remember that there is a lot about our colleagues that we don’t know. We only have a professional relationship with them and even if we are friendly a lot about them remains hidden.

    We should always listen to our gut instincts. If something feels off, then something probably is off.

    I’ve worked with quite a few men who seemed normal but then their behavior changed. They either developed a mental illness or had one all along that they hid. A few became dangerous.

    As women we will face a variety of situations and incidents. The one size fits all POWER narrative is far too simplistic. We have to recognize situations for what they are, so we deal with them appropriately.

    When we follow the narratives that say every situation is about POWER, we automatically cast ourselves in a weaker, subordinate position. 

    We tell ourselves we have to be afraid. We fear if we say “No” there will be consequences and reprisals.  This makes us less willing to act or fight back – either in the moment or afterwards.

    So, instead of assuming a man wants to assert power over you, consider he may just be looking for sex.  After all, we had a sexual revolution several decades ago and men know women want (good) sex too. And we all know colleagues who got involved.

    By now I’ve written enough articles like this to know there are some women who don’t want to hear anything other than it as all about power and are chomping at the bit to counter and say:

    “Well, what about abuse and assault – that’s about power.”

    I don’t disagree – those are about control and power.  But just because they are, don’t make all incidents about power.

    When we make all incidents about power, we hand men power they don’t have.

    A woman's hand holding a white box tied up with a red bow

    They will gladly take it and use it to their advantage. 

    Some then think, nothing ventured, nothing gained so why not try mixing power with a request for sex.  If we fall for it, they use it again and again and again.  They learn they can harass and abuse and get away with it.

    So, remember, it’s not always about power.

    Sometimes it’s about sex and getting laid.  And we have the power to say “No” and take action if our decision isn’t respected.

    Empowered Women Don’t Give Men Power They Don’t Have

    To learn more, watch these YouTube videos:

  • From #MeToo to Action

    From #MeToo to Action

    After reading an article I got in a comment battle with another woman over how women should respond to sexual harassment and assault.  She was very focused on offering empathy and sitting up all night with a woman who has been hurt.  To her offering empathy and understanding is what empowered women do.

    To me, empowered women do a lot more – they also take a stand and pursue justice.   An empowered woman, after sitting up all night listening to her hurt friend, goes out the next morning and starts the process of getting justice.  She is her advocate.  Sher puts her empathy, caring and understanding into action to help her friend get the justice she deserves.

    Statue of Justice at Old Bailey Courthouse with raised scales and sword. Justice isn't blindfolded
    Justice in her womanly form – raised sword and no blindfold.

    The other woman focused on being a victim and creating a lot of energy around those feelings of being a victim.  But putting a lot of energy into that state perpetuates that state.  And as the author of the article also discussed it is hard not to be affected yourself by the story of others and let it drag you down.

    To me, we need to put the energy towards healing and moving beyond the incident so it doesn’t permanently alter our lives in a negative manner.  I think of these incidents as someone pushing you down and infusing you with lots of their negative energy.   Our recovery process has to focus on working our way back up, ejecting their negativity and replacing it with our own positive energy.

    I have always found that standing up for myself and pursuing justice works miracles in speeding up the recovery process.   It gets me and the energy moving in the right direction.  Sometimes the justice process is swift and easy, sometimes it is really hard but you keep moving forward.  If you are lucky enough to have an advocate she ensures you keep taking steps forward, even if they are baby steps.

    When I feel I got the justice I deserve, I feel empowered and strong.   This is why I don’t reflect back on my career and see a long list of harassment, discrimination or unfair incidents.  I see challenges and obstacles that made me stronger and more confident.  They are a reminder that men don’t have power over me.

    The subtext of the other woman’s comments (and what really fired me up) was that it implied that when men act inappropriately, empowered women only respond in an emotional manner with empathy and understanding.  Change can only come when men decide to change their own actions.  Until then, it is women’s duty to keep pouring out the empathy and understanding to other women.

    Doesn’t that sound a lot like the stereotypes?

    Men act. Women are emotional.

    What about women taking action?

    After reading many comments on many posts, it seems that many women don’t believe or don’t want to believe that women have the power to act and influence men to change their actions.

    Our society is conditioned to believe women won’t act.   It believes if we give women their #MeToo moment to vent, appease them emotionally, sacrifice a few men, then eventually women will sit down, shut up and go away.

    We conditioned men to believe they just have to wait it out.  They don’t have to change because women aren’t going to do anything to make them change.  Women aren’t going to impose consequences. 

    If women want real and lasting change in men’s behavior, then women have to stop just talking and empathizing.  We need to act by standing up for ourselves, pursuing justice and imposing consequences.

    But again, from reading through lots of comments, there are a lot of women who don’t want us to see women as actors and doers because it then makes women responsible and accountable for their own actions.  In every incident they want women to be seen as innocent little lambs who are attacked by the big bad wolf in order to put 100% of the focus on men’s actions.

    They don’t want us to ask “Why did you go up to his hotel room?  Why did you get drunk with those guys?  Why did you let him in?”

    I can hear women screaming now “You want to bring back Victim Blaming!”

    No.

    I want women to understand the negative consequences of us denying our action, responsibility and accountability.

    An innocent little lamb is like a dependent child who needs others to protect and take care of it.  That image reinforces the stereotypes, the patriarchy and the subjugation of women.  It is not an image of an empowered woman who exercises her equality to men.

    Empowered women aren’t afraid to admit their mistakes.  Fear of Blame is a guy thing because men are afraid to be vulnerable.  Unfortunately they’ve transferred it to women and use it against us as victim blaming.

    Men use our 10% mistake to intimidate us into not exposing their 90% mistake.

    We need to get wise to this and stop falling for it.

    I’m not afraid to expose my mistake and take my 10% of accountability.  If anyone wants to victim blame me then my response is “I know I’m not perfect.  I am human.  We all make mistakes.”  Then I give them the look that says “Shall we discuss your long list of mistakes?”

    This attitude let me to file an 80 page complaint against a serial abuser in which I included all of my dirty laundry.  Not only was the serial abuser addressed but the company instituted a lot of policy changes to prevent the abuse he doled out.

    I know I keep harping on how important your attitude and perspective are to standing up for  yourself (and others) and getting justice.  This is why you can’t see yourself as a powerless victim.

    Several years ago I was sexually harassed at work and filed a complaint.  My complaint was not kept confidential.  Luckily someone who received it intervened and stopped a subsequent email that would have made it public.

    I was horrified, disgusted and angry.  As I drove home from work, I realized I was victimized – twice.  I got very upset.  After wallowing in my victimization for 20 minutes I thought “What the hell do I have to be ashamed of?  I didn’t do anything wrong.  The man who breached my confidentiality after being instructed to protect it was who was wrong.”  (My harasser was already fired.)

    I realized how thinking of myself as a victim disempowered me.  So I picked up the phone, called the appropriate person and got my justice.

    That was the only time in my career I ever associated myself with “victim.”

    I prefer to be a justice seeker and someone who always stands up for what is right.  I found there is a lot of power in that. 

    And that probably explains why women are discouraged from believing in their power to act, their power to influence men and their power to invoke consequences.

    Empowered Women Put Their Empathy into Action

    Find this article helpful?

    Sign up to receive more

    Checkout my book. 

    Follow The Woman In The Room on Facebook

     

     

     

     

  • Embrace Your Quirks

    The true secret to success is being yourself – your true authentic self, full of strengths, weakness and quirks.

    We all gladly embrace our strengths.  We love to show them off.  But we should also be proud of our weaknesses and quirks because through them we find real strength.

    Embracing our weaknesses and quirks demonstrates confidence.  Declaring them out in the open makes us strong.

    We are taught our weaknesses and quirks are something we should be ashamed of so we try to hide them.  That makes us vulnerable and insecure.  We are afraid of being found out. But when we put them out there – no one can hold anything over us – there is nothing left to expose.  We have freedom.

    For example, I can do many things as well as a man.  I like to cycle and I like it when I pass men with big calves.  It makes me feel good.

    But don’t ask me to throw a ball.  I throw like a girl.  No, actually a 6 year old girl throws a ball better than me.  When I was in middle school and we tried for the Presidential Fitness award, I was the top girl in all of the physical tests except for throwing the softball.  I didn’t get the Presidential Fitness award because I couldn’t throw a freaking ball.

    I can make business decisions and solve problems all day long.  But don’t ask me where to eat.  My mind literally goes blank and all I can say is “I dunno know.”  On weekends I get dressed to go out to eat but then drive around in circles because I can’t decide where to go.  I wind up going home to eat.  Now that’s a quirk!

    And I cannot tell left and right.  All through elementary school I put my left hand, then my right hand then my left hand over my heart for the pledge of allegiance.  My family knows that if I am driving and they tell me to turn left or right, they have to point.  Ironically I can do izquierda y derecha  (Spanish) with no problem.  Weird huh?

    Laugh at me.  It’s funny. And I’m not embarrassed.  It is who I am.

    At work when we share our little quirks with each other we find out that each of has a peculiarity to laugh at ourselves about.  We discover that we can help each other deal with our quirks and it feels good to help them.  My colleagues learned that when they ask me to go to lunch, I would reply “Sure, where are we going?”  I would go anywhere and eat anything as long as I didn’t have to decide.

    Our quirks are what make us real, authentic and unique.  They show we are human.  So embrace them and share them.

    Empowered Women Embrace Who They Are, Quirks and All

     

    To learn more about empowered women checkout my book. 

    Follow The Woman In The Room on Facebook

  • The HUGE Misperception Women Have About The Male-Dominated Workplace

    www.123rf.com 39546075

    Women have a HUGE misperception about the male-dominated workplace that has done incredible damage to our efforts to advance.

    Women work from a narrative that says men want to climb to the top so they can have power over others.  Many women believe men aspire to control and dominate others – they want to be authoritarians, dictators and the king.

    If you think about it, that makes men sound really dysfunctional and as if all men are inherently insecure with control issues.  But we know most men aren’t that way, they are normal guys.  However, the few that have real control issues – such as the recent list of powerful men who are sexual harassers – get a lot of attention and reinforce the narrative.

    In reality, men don’t aspire to have power over others.

    They aspire to keep others from having power over them.

    Men want to be autonomous – they want to be independent and have self-determination.  They want to exercise their own judgement to do what they want, when they want, how they want.  They don’t want to be treated like a child who has to ask permission or be told what to do.  Therefore they aspire to rise higher in the organization so there are fewer people above them who can tell them what to do.

    If you think about that too, you realize it is why every revolution, rebellion and resistance movement was fought.  It is why there are very few monarchies left.  Men fought for autonomy, self-determination and self-governance.

    So if men aspire to be autonomous then why do so many women believe men want power and are driven to protect their power structures?

    To understand that, we have to go back in time to when women had no legal rights and were completely dependent on men.  Women spent their lives in a precarious and vulnerable state.  Their only means to attain financial security, power and status was to attach themselves, through marriage or family affiliation, to a strong man with those attributes.  Therefore women needed to see the public sphere (the world of government and business) as the male proving ground where survival of the fittest played out and the strongest man rose to the top.  Women used men’s success in the public sphere to measure how good of a marriage prospect he was.

    Women saw the public sphere for what they needed it to be.  Their perceptions about how it functioned were formed by being on the outside looking in through their perspective. They weren’t formed by actually watching and observing how men interact with each other in the workplace.

    When women went into the male-dominated workplace they brought their perceptions with them.  They wrote their own narrative that one had to “tear down to rise up.”  This narrative said women had to fight men for power.  Women had to tear down men’s power structure in order for women to rise and take power for themselves.

    Women weren’t shy about stating they wanted to be the CEO’s, on corporate boards and in top government positions for power.  Once women obtained this power, they believed they could dictate new rules and exercise their control.  (Ironically, women stated that they wanted to be just like the men they wanted to tear down.)

    However, women’s belief in how they thought the male-dominated workplace worked clashed with how it really worked.

    Men who aspired to be autonomous, saw women’s quest for power and control as a threat to the autonomy they valued and the entire structure they built to promote their autonomy.  Faced with this threat, men resisted the advancement of women.

    For 40+ years, men and women have interacted through a huge misunderstanding of what the other wants and values.  Women interpreted men’s resistance to advancing women as men wanting to subjugate women.  Even when men treated women like men – like people who  valued autonomy as much as men – women felt rejected.  To women autonomy feels like you are being left to fend for yourself, no one supports you and you are in a sink or swim situation with no life preserver.  It doesn’t feel like you are being treated equal to your male colleagues – it feels like you are being ostracized.

    So when men treated women as their “equals”, women still saw it as men rejecting women in order to keep power for themselves.  It reinforced the narrative that men work off a power and control structure and that women needed to tear down that structure.  This in turn caused men to believe women worked off a power and control structure and men had to stop women in order to protect their autonomy.

    Even worse for women, men learned how to use women’s perception about the power and control structure against women.  If women want to believe men have all the power and women assume they are in an inferior position, men, especially dysfunctional men,  will take advantage of that.

    I suspect that the increase in harassment and bullying of women is due in large part to this dynamic.  Many men believe they will get away with it because women are taught they are powerless victims who cannot overcome the power structure.  And as I said earlier, these dysfunctional men get all the attention and reinforce the narrative that men are all about power and control.  We create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Today we have a huge mess of misunderstandings and misperceptions we need to fix.

    In order for women to achieve equality and parity with men, they must first change their perspective and stop buying into the power and control narrative.  They have to see the male-dominated workplace for how it really functions and for the huge role AUTONOMY plays in its structure.

    Women need to watch and listen to the men they work with.

    Are they acting to have power and control over others?

    Or, are they acting to preserve their AUTONOMY – to do what they want, when they want, how they want?  Are they being isolationists who want to pretend their actions don’t affect other people and resist other people’s actions affecting them?  Do they resist listening to others, wanting only their voice to be heard?  Do they take autonomy to an extreme by becoming selfish, self-centered and even narcissistic?

    I guarantee that if you look for autonomy in the male-dominated workplace you will be shocked by how much of it you see.  It’s rampant.  As women, tune into all those things that bug you about working with men that don’t seem to come from power and control – they probably come from autonomy.

    Only when women learn to recognize autonomy and understand its power in the male-dominated workplace, will they put themselves on the right path to realizing their own equality.

    One more point.

    I use the Yin-Yang concept to describe the natural and correct interaction of men and women.  Notice in this image there are no power and control mechanisms.  It is about mutual influence and harmony.

    Therefore, for everything men do, women have a balancing, influencing reciprocal action.  We are inherently equal.

    However women will never recognize and exercise their inherent equality if they continue to work off of bogus narratives.  So change your perspective.  See the male-dominated workplace for how it really is.

    Empowered Women See the Male-Dominated Workplace For How It Really Functions

     

    Find this article helpful?

    Sign up to receive more

    Checkout my book. 

    Follow The Woman In The Room on Facebook

     

     

     

     

     

  • Women Do More Than Create Balance

    www.123rf.com 75183174

    When we talk about how women influence the male-dominated workplace we often say that women create balance.  But that isn’t very impactful and it doesn’t portray the full power of women.

    When we think of women balancing men we equate it to men going too far and women tempering their efforts.  It creates the perception that men are the driving force who get things done while women apply the brakes and slow them down from 120 mph to 90 mph so they don’t crash and burn.

    This concept of balance doesn’t portray women as an equal driving force who can also get things done at 90 mph.

    We also think of balance in terms of pendulum swings.  For a while the pendulum swings in one direction.  But then it goes too far causing things get out of balance and no longer function properly.  In response we then swing the pendulum in the opposite direction…until it goes too far and we decide to swing it back in the opposite direction.

    When the pendulum is swinging upward we think we are making progress and accomplishing great things.  We push the pendulum to greater heights and greater extremes.  We forget that we will eventually push the pendulum too far and cause it to come crashing down amongst turmoil, chaos and negativity.

    This drive to extremes and the resulting cataclysmic crashes are causing us to associate balance with high drama.  But balance isn’t about drama.  It is about two forces of equal strength and importance continuously interacting and influencing each other so they produce a steady state of harmony and equilibrium.

    We find this type of balance in the concept of Yin and Yang.

    When men and women apply Yin and Yang to themselves, they recognize that they are each one half of the whole and need each other for balanced action.  As we picture the Yin and Yang acting on each other we see them rotating in a circle.  Yin and Yang each take turns being the driving force that pushes them over the top to create the rotation.

    Their rotation is gentle, peaceful and very efficient.  There is none of that clumsy wasted energy we find in pendulum swings.  Acting together, Yin and Yang build up energy and increase their momentum without falling out of balance.

    If you read Jim Collins famous book Good to Great you remember him talking about the flywheel effect.  He described the way the flywheel begins rotating as “a cumulative process – step-by-step, action-by-action, decision-by-decision, turn-by-turn of the flywheel – that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.”

    But what he doesn’t say it that the flywheel mimics Yin and Yang interaction – it requires women to assert themselves as full equals in the workplace.  Without women helping to complete the rotation, the flywheel becomes nothing more than a pendulum.

    This explains why flywheel companies like Circuit City couldn’t sustain their results and came crashing down.

    Many companies avoid the crashes by moderating their pendulum swings.  But this won’t create sustained and spectacular results.  That is why we need to stop thinking about balance and start thinking about working in wholeness.

    Wholeness is a much larger concept than balance.  Wholeness has the power to hold everything together and create unity.  It doesn’t allow Yang to disregard Yin as it goes off to act independently or put itself first.  Wholeness reminds Yang that its actions affect Yin and will cause Yin to act in response.  Yin’s resulting actions will then impact Yang.

    Wholeness creates a complete circle so an entity’s negative actions always come back to them.  Likewise so do their positive.  Therefore, wholeness inspires people to act positively.  And it is only through positive action that we can achieve sustained spectacular results.

    Where we have gone wrong for centuries is believing in the great myth that men have the miraculous power to create wholeness all by themselves and therefore have incredible power in comparison to women.  Consequently women have been demanding men to give up half of what they have and give it to women.  But in reality men only have their half of the whole and only one half of the power.

    Women’s half has been sitting off to the side patiently waiting for women to recognize it, realize its value and put it into action.

    Men cannot put women’s half into action.  Women have to act on their own volition and do this themselves.   That after all is what equality and empowerment really are.

     

    Whether or not we continue to function through wild pendulum swings or begin functioning like the flywheel is completely up to women.  Because at this point, the power to create wholeness lies entirely with women.  It depends on whether or not women recognize their inherent equality and put it into action.

    Empowered Women Choose to Assert Their Half of the Whole 

    To learn more about how women create wholeness checkout my book. 

     

     

     

     

  • Seeing and Believing In the Equality of Women

    What value do women, bring to the workplace?

    For centuries the accepted answer was “None.”  Even today most of us can still only give a vague answer.  We hear that companies with more women perform better but we can’t specifically state why that is.  Without a clear answer, women don’t know how to leverage themselves at work and companies don’t have an incentive to proclaim “We need to hire and promote more women!”

    The reason we can’t define the value of women is because we are still influenced by old ideas.  Most notably is the Doctrine of Two Spheres, which most of us probably never heard of even though we know its effects.

    The Doctrine of Two Spheres states that men and women, due to their biological makeup naturally inhabit two distinct and separate spheres.  According to the doctrine men naturally have traits suited for the public sphere (politics, law, business, commerce, academia and finance) while women naturally have traits suited for the private sphere (domesticity, child rearing and religious and charitable work).  This doctrine determined that male traits set a superior standard in the workplace and female traits are of little to no value.

    Back in the 20th century when women first went into the workplace to work on par with men, we didn’t question the validity of the doctrine.  We didn’t declare women’s equality by saying “Female traits are just as important to workplace success as male traits!”  Instead we sought women’s equality on the basis of equal rights and equal opportunity – giving women the right and the opportunity to go into the workplace and achieve the superior standard set by men.

    Without the declaration that female traits are just as valuable as male traits, a woman couldn’t work on par with men by acting like a woman.  To be equal she had to be perceived as being the same as a man.  She had to leave her female traits behind in the private sphere and adopt male traits for the workplace.  She could have the body of a woman but she had to think and act like a man.

    Many, many women still think this way.

    The consequences of this have been enormous for women.  We perpetuated the perception that men are superior and women inferior in the workplace.  We made women choose between their femininity and having a career and financial security on par with men.

    This choice keeps women out of many industries, jobs and professions, especially the highest paying.  It is a major contributor to the wage gap.  It leads women to conclude that they can have a career but they can never go as far or achieve as much as their male colleagues.  It is a significant reason why women aren’t advancing in the workplace.

    This is why any effort to advance women has to start with throwing the Doctrine of Two Spheres in the trash can.  We have to stop comparing women to men, stop telling women to copy men and stop believing that the way men do things in the workplace is the best and right way.  We have to stop believing women will obtain equality when we measure up to the standards set by men.

    This is how I began my engineering career.  Like many women, when I started my career I had high expectations of my all-male workplace.  However, it took me only a few days to say, “What the Hell?  I thought you guys knew what you were doing!”

    All around me I saw was chaos, crisis management, stress and lots of inefficiency.  Any concerns I had about measuring up to my male colleagues immediately vanished.  I saw lots of things that I needed to fix if my workplace was to meet my standards.

    I quickly realized that the way my male colleagues worked always felt incomplete – it was as if there were a lot of “things missing” in everything they did.  At the time I couldn’t quite articulate what was “missing” so I began using the term “Swiss cheese” to describe how they “functioned” and “completed” tasks.

    To fix my workplaces I didn’t copy my male colleagues or compete in their discussions.  Instead I listened for and looked for what they weren’t saying or doing.  I looked for the Swiss cheese holes.  Then I asserted myself and filled in the holes.  Filling in the holes felt obvious and completely natural.

    It also made our performance soar.  It made me wonder why millions and millions of men armed with their superior traits never figured out how to fill in the holes like I did.  We had the same education and experience.  There was only one difference between us – I was a woman.

    Could it be that as a woman I brought unique and valuable traits to the workplace that men couldn’t?

    After many years and many workplaces I concluded the answer was – Yes!

    I discovered that it was the combination and interaction of male and female traits that made workplace performance soar.

    To understand how this works we only have to look to the Yin and Yang concept we are already familiar with.

    Unlike the Doctrine of Two Spheres which divides male and female into two static and separate spheres, Yin and Yang are connected opposites.

    Yin and Yang continually interact and influence each other.  Neither is superior or inferior.  Each controls the other and both need the other to create a harmonious whole. 

    Yin and Yang allows men and women to be different but still remain full equals. 

    But it is really the concept that men and women together create wholeness  that is really important.

    This is what I picked up on when I began working.

    My male-dominated workplaces weren’t whole.  They were full of Swiss cheese holes because they didn’t have any women.

    I came along and provided the missing other half.  By asserting my female ways of thinking and doing things I made my workplaces whole.

    The significance of this is enormous to all workplaces and companies.

    It  means they are all under-performing.

    This is especially true for all those heavily male-dominated STEM industries who work from the premise that male traits are the right traits for their industry.  But watch the movie Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.  Listen to how many times the word “chaos” is used and how often the men talk about their stress and frustration.  This occurred because they were working with only one half of the whole.

    Workplace that function in wholeness, achieve greater performance while also reducing stress, frustration, chaos and inefficiency.  That is the beauty of working in wholeness.

    So let’s answer the original question: What value do women, bring to the workplace?

    Women make the workplace WHOLE. 

    This is why  workplaces with more women  perform better.

    Empowered Women Understand They are One Half of the Whole and Essential to Every Workplace

     

    To learn more about the value of women in the workplace and how we create wholeness, checkout my book. 

     

     

     

     

     

  • How Women Should Navigate the Drinking Culture

    www.123rf.com 74158468

    There are some industry cultures that endorse a drinking culture – frequently getting together after work to drink. Coming from one such industry I understand how it normalizes alcoholism and creates problems for women.

    Many women and women’s organization encourage women to participate in this culture in order to get ahead.  However, my been-there, dealt-with-that, opinion is that women must be very careful any time they are around men who drinking.

    Personally, I’m not much of a drinker – one glass of wine is my limit. So, I’m not big into getting together 3-4 nights a week after work for drinks.  Frankly, I have better things to do with my time.  And that is the first lesson about men who participate in the drinking culture – they don’t have a life outside of work.

    They don’t have a family or girlfriend they want to get home to.  They don’t have a dog or even a hamster to take care of.  They don’t go to the gym to work out, play a sport or have a hobby.  Sadly, work is their life because it is their escape from the rest of their life.  Recently separated or divorced men are often the ring leaders of getting the guys together after work so they don’t have to go home to a small, empty apartment.

    Women are mistakenly encouraged to go out with the guys for the social bonding that will build relationships and advance our careers.  But how much career advancement do we get from our peers?  Very little.

    We are also told we need to participate if our boss or management is going because it is a great time to pitch your ideas and get face-time.

    No it isn’t.

    When men leave work, they leave work.  At the bar they will discuss work but in the form of war stories.  They won’t be solving any workplace issues or making business decisions.   The only tangible value of going out with the guys is that we can pick up on tidbits of useful information – we can find out who worked on what and how they screwed up.  Those could be opportunities for us to assert ourselves – if we remain sober and clear headed enough to mine those gold nuggets of information.  But this is where we will run into problems – when we are out with the guys, we will be pressured to drink, a lot.

    The guys will offer to buy you drinks; they will buy you drinks even if you decline.  They will pressure you to keep up with them and it is easy to fall to the pressure unless you own your limits.

    As I said I am not much of a drinker and I proudly declare it.  Call me a light-weight.  Make me the Designated Driver.  The more pressure that is put on me to drink the more of I proudly I declare – to the entire bar – that I am a genuine light-weight.  Poke fun at me for my limits – I will accept the laughter at my expense because I know that the ability to laugh at myself is 100 times more important to bonding with the guys than how much or how often I drink.

    I also limit my drinking for my own safety.

    Women are encouraged to go out drinking with their male colleagues to become “one of the guys.”  But when there is a lot of drinking going on we must always remember that this is when we ARE NOT one of the guys.

    We all know what people are like when they get drunk.  And while I like to talk about how men and women are equal and how women have a mental strength, we lose our edge when we get intoxicated.  This gives men who are physically stronger an advantage and makes us vulnerable.  A woman who gets drunk in the presence of men puts herself in a dangerous situation.

    This situation is exponentially magnified when we are traveling out of town with the guys.

    There is a saying: “What happens out of town, stays out of town.”  This is men’s permission slip to behave badly in ways we never see them do at home.  The nice family man whose family hangs out with your family is suddenly hitting on you.  Or he’s in the “gentlemen’s club” disrespecting his wife with his activities.

    The bottom line is that when you go out of town for the first time with men, trust no one.  Act like prudish Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes.  Don’t tell anyone your hotel room number.  Go to dinner with the guys but limit your drinks.  After dinner, you can hang out with the guys for a bit but beware of colleagues getting too friendly and asking lots of personal questions.  As soon as they do err on the side of caution and go to bed early.  Don’t accept offers to walk you to your room.  And if you get a knock on your door in the middle of the night by one of your colleagues, don’t answer it.  Don’t even respond.

    Set boundaries and make each man earn your trust.

    They understand what you are doing and they get it.  Most of the men will rise to the standards you set so you can trust them.  They will then be your protectors from the few men you cannot trust.

    I used to travel extensively and be the only woman.  When I worked on a project out of town, my company decided to rent two-bedroom apartments instead of hotel rooms.  As the only woman I shared an apartment with two different male colleagues, both of whom I trusted implicitly – but they earned my trust first.

    I also had a boss who I traveled with a lot who loved martinis.  I love green olives.  So I ordered a glass of wine and he ordered his martinis with extra olives for me.  It became our thing.

    And yes, there have been occasions when I had too much to drink and had a blast with some of my colleagues.  But again, the only men present were the ones I trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    As women we can be one of the guys but only in a safe environment.  Too often women in their efforts to be equal, act like one of the guys, forgetting the obvious differences.  They trust all men and make men earn distrust.   But by the time the distrust is earned there was an incident – it’s too late and there are regrets.

    Our equality is not about acting the same as men.  It is about exercising our inherent power to influence men.  We set the standards for acceptable behavior around us and only trust the men who prove they can rise to our standard and be our equal.

    Empowered Women Know When They Can be One of the Guys and When They Can’t

    Find this article helpful?

    Share and Sign up to receive more

    Checkout my New Book:

    The Woman In The Room: How I Realized the Unique Value of Women in the Male-dominated Workplace

    Follow The Woman In The Room on Facebook

     

     

     

  • Don’t Lean In – Jersey Up!

    A lot of women tell me I am strong.  My usual response is to screw up my face because I don’t think I am any different from many women I know.  Actually, I’m more restrained than them because after I left New Jersey I  learned that many people don’t know who to deal with a full fledged Jersey girl.

    Jersey girls are different.  The female stereotypes women are supposed to identify with don’t apply to us.  And we are dramatically different from Southern girls who mastered the fine art of southern diplomacy.  They can tell someone to go to hell in such a nice way that they actually look forward to the trip.

    Jersey girls don’t have enough patience or tact for diplomacy.  We prefer to be blunt, very blunt.  If we soften our tone, we do it with sarcasm.

    You see, Jersey girls grew up in a fast-paced, densely populated state and that affected us.  We learned to assert and stand up for ourselves because if we didn’t, we’d get run over.  To survive we learned to be little bulldozers running around at 120 mph.

    In spite of our tough reputation, Jersey girls have a lot of characteristics that all women could learn a bit from.  So, to help you understand Jersey girls, I borrowed a few pictures from the New Jersey Pride Facebook page.

     

    The rest of the world outside of Jersey tries to be special and popular.  They want to fit in and be accepted.  Jersey girls scoff at such notions.

    Jersey knows its reputation…and we don’t care.  You may think that where you come from makes you sooo special but we know the truth – it ain’t so perfect either!  We will gladly point out all of its faults if you need us to.

     

     

    Jersey girls are real and we can handle the truth!

    We know the truth scares people so we love to blurt it out at inopportune times  just to see their reaction.  Will they face it?  Or, will they run and hide?  This tells us a lot about people

    Being real also means we are adaptable and as contradictory as New Jersey itself.  We can go from the city to the shore.  From industry to the farm.  From pizza and beer to glammed up for dinner at an expensive restaurant.  All within minutes.

     

     

     

    Our contradictory nature give us  three sides.

    We can be incredibly sweet, soft, generous and caring.

    We have fun Jersey shore nights until closing then its off to our favorite Jersey diner till morning.

    But , please pay heed to the third side.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    In case you aren’t taking me seriously, here is another warning.

     

    Because….

     

     

     

    There is no storm full of fire and fury quite like that of a Jersey girl on a rampage.  When Trump threatened North Korea with fiery and fury the likes of which they’ve never seen, he was really threatening to send  over a bunch of Jersey girls after lying to them that North Korea had great discount shopping.  When the girls discovered the great shopping was actually in South Korea, the fire and fury would begin.

    Beware of the Jersey girl who feels she or her friends were wronged.   She will not stop until she gets her justice and avenges herself.

     

     

    Jersey girls are best known for our opinions and our big mouths that we can’t keep shut.  We will tell you exactly what we think whether you want to hear it or not.  You can’t silence us by walking away, hanging up, closing the door or turning up the music.  We will find a way to make you hear our opinion and deal with it.

    And don’t ever try that “manterrupting” thing on us.  We will just keep talking louder and louder until you shut up.  Then we will give you that look that says “don’t you ever dare try that again, if you know what is good for you.”

     

    Then there is that “mansplaining” thing so many women complain about.  We don’t get it because no one “mansplains” a Jersey girl.  A Jersey girl always knows what she’s talking about, as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny demonstrates.

     

     

     

    One more warning.  Just because our mouths aren’t running, it doesn’t me we are docile and submissive.  The wheels in our brains are still turning.

    We are planning how to get exactly what we want.

     

     

     

    Jersey girls don’t need men to take care of us or rescue us.  We can take care of things ourselves.  When we ask men to take care of something, it is really a test to see if they know how.  If they don’t know, then they won’t be around long (especially if they are our boss.)

    I’ve said this many times on the construction site.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Men are fascinated by Jersey girls and we know what they say about us in the locker room.  Consequently, we get a lot of unwelcome attention by men who think they are man enough to handle a Ferrari.  When they crash just backing out of the driveway they love to turn on us and blame us.  But we don’t listen.

    We just shove them back into their Prius or Minivan and blow a kiss as we drive away in our 789-hp 6.5 liter V12.  We know we need to leave fast because the only thing faster than our Ferrari’s 0-60 in 2.8 seconds is our temper which can go from 0-150% in 0.01 seconds.

     

    People who don’t understand Jersey girls like to point out our flaws to put us down.  But we aren’t afraid of our flaws.  We accept them.  Actually, we accentuate them – just to drive people crazy!

    We can also spot a fake a mile away because we grew up with a lot of slick men  coming out of the city flashing around their cash, jewelry, and fancy cars.   We aren’t impressed cause we know they the truth: They aren’t rich – they are dead broke and up to their ears in debt.  We send them back to the city with their tail between their legs.

     

    So be wise and don’t ever BS a Jersey girl or play her for a fool.  Don’t ever deny her the promotion or the raise she deserves.  Don’t think you can get away with paying her less than her male peers.  She will not stand for it.

     

    All of this adds up to the unique attitude and the most identifiable Jersey girl quality:

    We don’t take sh*t off of anyone.

    Anyone.

    We don’t care who you are or who you think you are.

     

     

     

     

     

    All women need to know that being a Jersey girl is empowering.

    We know who we are and accept who we are.

    We know what we want and how to get it.

    And most importantly we don’t let anyone or anything get in our way.

     

    So next time someone tells you to “Lean-in,” tell them you don’t want to do any of that touchy-feely kumbaya Silicon Valley California stuff.  Tell them you are going to Jersey-up and heading out to the shore because…

    Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run   (click)

                                                                          -The Boss

     

  • There Was a Time When Men Were Gentlemen in the Workplace

    www.123rf.com 22041589

    We have a lot of impressions of what the professional office was like in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  But our impressions probably miss one important characteristic – its civility.

    When I began working in 1982 I was the first female engineer in a very traditional office.  Men were engineers, designers, draftsmen and managers while women were secretaries.   Contrary to the popular myths, secretaries weren’t subservient, didn’t fetch coffee or do other menial tasks for the men.  They, in spite of their administrative roles, wielded a lot of informal power.

    Secretaries set the rules of conduct for the office.  They were a continuous reminder to men to elevate their behavior and they expected men to conduct themselves as gentlemen in their presence.  Words such as “please” and “thank you” were always used.

    As the female engineer I witnessed how my male colleagues conducted themselves when  they were by themselves versus around women.  For the most part they were the same.  I overheard a few “spirited” discussions in meetings but whenever I was present they watched themselves and toned it down.   Any time a man cursed in my presence he turned to me and apologized.  Even though I wasn’t offended, I acknowledged the apology and accepted it.

    I understood that my presence was also a continuous reminder to men to be their better selves.  It was also a reminder for me to set a higher example so I seldom cursed.

    As part of their gentlemanly behavior men always opened the door for me so I could enter first.  Most of my coworkers were civilians even though I was an Air Force officer so it wasn’t and awkward situation with them or the enlisted force.  However, the situation became awkward when I was with more senior officers.

    According to protocol, the junior ranking officer opens the door for the senior officers.  But since I was a woman the senior officers opened doors for me.  This got especially confusing one day when I went running at lunch at the same time as the three most senior officers on base.  As we entered the gym I went to open the door for them but one of the officers also rushed to open the door for me.  His long arms beat me to the door so I entered first.

    Not knowing if this was proper, I took my concern to the base women’s  group to discuss.  We had an interesting discussion:  were we officers first and women second OR women first and officers second?  We concluded that we were officers first and women second however, the male officers were also an officer and a gentlemen.

    As female officers (all of us very low ranking) we recognized that we were in a more precarious position than our male peers.  We needed the male officers to be gentlemen and chivalrous.  While most men were well behaved we all witnessed the ugly side of men and knew there could be a time we needed a man to be a chivalrous and intervene in a situation on our behalf.  Therefore we concluded that if male officers wanted to elevate Gentleman above Officer we should let them.  We expected that as the number of female officers increased eventually we would be seen as just another officer and normal protocols would take over.

    Little did we know how things would really change.

    For the first 20 years of my career most men acted with the same gentlemanly behavior around me.  They opened doors and apologized for any cursing or off-color comments in my presence.  My language however deteriorated a bit, especially when I was working out on a construction site.  Overall though things were evolving well.

    But then it changed.

    Suddenly, it is politically incorrect to treat women any different than men. Feminism interpreted men’s gentlemanly behavior as men seeing women as inferior. Opening a door for a woman was equivalent to discrimination and sexual harassment.  Women proudly proclaimed “I opened this door myself because I am equal.”

    These women didn’t understand that opening the door ourselves didn’t say anything about our equality – it was about encouraging polite and civil behavior to protect women from abuse and harassment.

    This misunderstanding created unintended consequences.

    Under intense pressure men stopped being gentlemen.

    This is a prime example of what men do to each other as a prank that is not acceptable to do to a woman.

     

    The minimal standard of acceptable behavior was removed.  With chivalry gone more crude behavior set in. Men could get away with anything by simply saying “That’s how I treat the guys. You want me to treat you differently?”

    Women were put in a difficult position.  Complaining about men’s behavior meant you couldn’t cut it as “one of the guys” or be their equal.  A complaint was a sign of weakness and inferiority.

     

    In response women also lowered their behavior and increased their aggressiveness in order to become “one the guys” and fit in.  Our behavior gave men permission to go even lower because in men’s minds, women should act better than men.  Crudeness, aggressiveness, meanness and bullying increased.  Dysfunctional and controlling men became more powerful and got away with more.   Overt sexual behavior towards women became common.

    For my own safety I divided men into two groups – those I trusted and those I didn’t.  Early in my career, the men I didn’t trust were the rare exceptions.  Later in career, they were the majority and the men I trusted were the exceptions.

    Today women are treated far worse in the workplace than they were in the 80’s.  It seems more men have no bottom limit to their behavior and see the workplace as a competition where it isn’t good enough to simply beat a competitor – they also have to demean and hurt them.

    It is up to women to reverse this situation.  We have to go back to asserting ourselves and using the Power of “No” to establish and enforce civil and polite behavior.  For centuries, this was our role in society.  Even without any legal rights we wielded our power and moral authority to better society and fight for social causes including abolition, temperance, children, the working poor and the rights of women.  Unfortunately when we went into the workplace in larger numbers, we left this power behind.  That was our mistake.  But we can correct it.  That’s what our rights and equality are for.

    Empowered Women Demand and Enforce Civil Behavior

    To learn more about the inherent power of women checkout my new book:

    The Woman In The Room: How I Realized the Unique Value of Women in the Male-dominated Workplace

    Follow The Woman In The Room on Facebook