Women are taught to think of men as tough and aggressive. But then we work with men and discover just how many of them really hate conflict. They literally run away from it.
In the workplace, personnel issues can be the biggest source of conflict. The manager may try to hide behind coldness or bravado, but it doesn’t protect him from the raw, honest emotional reaction coming directly at him.
As women our empathy makes us dread firing someone. But in my experience, our discomfort is nothing compared to men. I’ve seen several men get physically ill at the thought of firing or disciplining someone. I’ve known several men who had to fire someone, not show up to work that day.
In one of my workplaces, I watched three senior managers have a secret off-site meeting to develop a plan on how they were going to fire a superintendent on my project. I was shocked by how whimpy these otherwise big manly men were. When the time came to meet with man being fired, the most senior manager was nowhere to be found. Another suddenly had an important phone call. And the one manager who was left, as he was sweating bullets, he tried to get me to do it.
I would say it was the most bungled firing I ever witnessed, but it wasn’t. Even President Trump with his “You’re fired!” television persona, can’t seem to fire people in person.
Watching men deal with conflict, I’ve seen through their “tough exterior” to find that most men are big softies.
Many men have counseled me that the construction site is the domain of the macho men and is managed through intimidation. So why then, am I always going out on site to deal with issues and conflicts the guys avoid???
Dealing with conflicts and I faced many men who got very aggressive. Early in my career, these men were imposing. But by the end of my career all I saw were overwhelmed little boys crying for help.
I learned that overly aggressive men aren’t to be feared. These are men who desperately need help but don’t want to admit it.
I learned that many men get very aggressive in conflict because they fear it, dread it and hate it so much that they only way they can get themselves through it is by being aggressive. (Men have admitted this to me.)
When you figure these men out, you discover that the guys who come across as the biggest grizzly bears, are actually the biggest teddy bears.
So why do men hate conflict so much?
It’s because they don’t like dealing with the reaction.
Men aspire to be Autonomous. They want to believe their actions produce the result they want and that is it. They don’t want any other consequences and certainly don’t want consequences not in their control.
Men want to take an action, get their desired result and be done.
In conflict, men know they aren’t autonomous. They know their action will threaten another man’s autonomy and cause him to react. Not knowing what the reaction will be, leaves them unprepared to deal with it. And since they have no control over the reaction, they feel vulnerable.
Men don’t know how another man will react to his action. Will it be a small reaction or a big one?
When men feel vulnerable, they know they have lost their autonomy. In order to regain their autonomy, they must react to the reaction.
The need to react goes back and forth and suddenly things go off the rails and a simple issue gets really twisted and complicated.
Men don’t deal with complicated well.
But women do.
Women aren’t afraid of the reaction, feedback or pushback. We expect it. It is a natural part of our group dynamic.
Before the 21st century and before women were taught to act like men and be aggressive, women didn’t feel the need to react. Our emotions such as empathy and understanding told us we should consider the reaction and what it means.
Therefore, we aren’t afraid of conflict. Heck we don’t even consider it conflict. To us, we’re just talking things out. We’re figuring out how to make things work for everyone within the group.
As women in a male-dominated workplace, this is one of the most important transformations we can help our workplace make.
In today’s workplace, no one is autonomous. Each person’s work impacts other people. If we don’t work in coordination with each other, there will be a lot of conflict.
As women we can help men (and aggressive women) learn to talk to each other and become comfortable with reactions from other people. Since we all have responsibilities and objectives, we all feel some pressure to get our work done and don’t want to be negatively impacted by other people.
This is why we need to teach each other to RESPECT each other’s jobs. With respect we can then work together to optimize how we each do our job so we all get the best possible outcome.
As women we’ve historically been credited with bringing communication and teamwork to our workplaces. However, today too many women believe they must be as aggressive and selfish as the stereotyped man. But by following stereotypes that don’t represent the vast majority of men, women are hurting both themselves and our workplaces.
As women we also can’t be a stereotyped woman who is afraid of conflict, especially conflict with men.
As a manager, I always liked conflict because it showed me a problem or issue that needed to be resolved. I saw conflict as an opportunity to facilitate communication and coordination, so we made positive changes in how we did our work.
This made everyone happier!
Resolving conflict creates a better work environment.
Ignoring or being scared of conflict achieves nothing.
As a woman and team member we are the ones who are best equipped to step forward and resolve conflicts. We are far better than men at facilitating and coordinating communication to resolve conflicts. Men know this about us, and many hope we will step up and help them.
However, I don’t want you to think of yourself just as a facilitator or communications specialist. Those are soft skills that put you in a support role.
Recognize that you are stepping up and leading your team through its coordination issues.
Therefore, you are a leader.
Empowered Women Lead Their Workplace Through Conflict
To learn more about dealing with conflict with men, watch this YouTube video:
Many women don’t understand the real and tangible value women bring to the workplace. For centuries we were led to believe that the all-male workplace functioned just fine without us. The proof is in all of its accomplishments.
Thanks to men, civilization has advanced technologically, industrially and philosophically. All the tangible things in our lives and all the principles we live by are due to men!
That sounds wonderful…until we look a little deeper.
Behind the scenes is a messy, chaotic, frustrating and often destructive process. The truth is that the male-dominated workplace doesn’t function very well.
Throughout my career, I discovered over and over again, the value of being a woman working with men. My male colleagues needed my female ways of thinking and doing things. Over the years I came up with a few analogies to remind myself of the value and power of my female ways.
Analogy 1: Swiss Cheese
My first analogy describes how men really work.
Men want us to believe all their work is solid and complete.
But it isn’t.
In reality their work is Swiss cheese. There are holes in everything they do.
These holes are what create chaos, incomplete work, rework and unintended consequences.
Men are taught to be the one who brings the Big Cheese. As women, we’re told to compete with men to bring the Big Cheese. However, it’s very hard to compete with our male colleagues’ boldness and brashness. To them losing to a woman is unacceptable so they gang up on us.
Early in my career I learned not to compete with them, even though I knew I had a better plan or could do the job better.
I took a different strategy.
I looked at their plan or job and compared it to mine. I was looking for all of their holes; all the things that wouldn’t work out right. I then focused on figuring out how to fill in their holes.
So, when their work didn’t produce the expected results, I could stand up and be the one with all the solutions. I was the one who could fix things. This got me recognition. And when our performance soared, I got the credit.
No one cared who started the project.
They only cared about who delivered the results.
Over time I discovered that men couldn’t fill in the holes themselves, no matter what they did or how hard they tried. I witnessed all my workplaces adopt management initiatives to improve performance.
Eventually all of them failed.
The holes could only be filled in by women’s Pink Zone traits – the way women think and work.
When women fill the holes, we create wholeness. And wholeness is the only way to achieve the sustained superior results our workplace wants.
Looking for and filling in Swiss cheese holes proved to be the most powerful tool I used in my workplaces. I transformed so many ideas, plans and practices and made enormous impacts. My male colleagues kept asking, “How does she do that?”
My answer was, “I think like a woman.”
Analogy 2: Cupcakes and Cake Slices
Since my work was always project-based, teamwork was very important. But in men’s concept of teamwork, all parties aren’t of equal value. There has to be an MVP.
There are men who want to prove, “I can deliver this project!” They give the rest of the team permission to back off and ride his coattails. Team members willingly sit back either because they’re relieved to escape responsibility or they believe they aren’t as valuable. So, they wait for the MVP to deliver that big, beautiful chocolate cake that they can all get a slice of.
But in the end, all he delivers is a cupcake that celebrates him.
As women, we need to think of teamwork as a dessert bar where there are many different kinds of cake slices. As women, we find it hard for us to choose just one cake. We want to bring a slice of every cake back to our table to sample. We want to appreciate each of them for their unique qualities.
That is what teamwork is.
It requires everyone to come to the table, everyone to participate and everyone to emphasize their unique characteristics.
Analogy 3: Women Hold Up Half the Sky
Atlas holds up the world all by himself. He doesn’t need the help of anyone, especially a woman. We’re taught that the workplace is the same. Superior men accomplish great things and don’t need the help of women.
The foundation for this belief is the Doctrine of Two Spheres. It says men naturally inhabit the Public Sphere and women the Private Sphere. This of course, harkens back to the old stereotypes that see male traits as superior to female traits.
Consequently, for women to have any value in the workplace, we must adopt male traits and compete with men. Women must take a piece of work away from men or men have to surrender it to us. This is how we will achieve equality.
However, there is another concept:
Duality
Duality refers to two contrasting elements that coexist. They don’t exist in competition or in conflict but rather in a complementary relationship. I think of the value of women in duality with men through the Chinese proverb that says:
Women hold up half the sky.
But given our indoctrination as to the nature of men and women, we still see them as distinct and separate. We also want an empirical measurement to ensure there is equality.
However, that isn’t Duality.
In Duality, men and women aren’t separate.
They are opposing forces who interact and work together in harmony.
This means women don’t have to compete with men. We don’t have to take from men and men can’t take from us. We are inherently equal.
We each have our own half of the sky – our own way of thinking and acting. We need each other to perform our duty of holding up the sky. Most importantly, the sky isn’t complete and whole unless we lift up our half.
This brings me to my final analogy.
Analogy 4: Yin and Yang.
I use Yin (pink)and Yang (blue)to represent women and men as two complementary halves of the whole. They are connected opposites who continually interact and influence each other, creating a dynamic environment.
In this symbol we often miss noticing Yin and Yang are not represented as a solid color. Yin has Yang’s blue qualities and Yang has Yin’s pink qualities. This is because women and men aren’t different species. We share human qualities.
As individual men and women, the size of our complementary qualities can vary. Some of us have more, some of us less. How much we express also varies by our situation and environment.
Yin and Yang are not static within themselves or together.
As connected opposites they both influence and respond to each other. They work in harmony where neither is stronger or weaker than the other. In their dynamic relationship, they continuously balance each other and create balance within their environment.
More importantly, their harmonious, balanced interaction creates Wholeness.
Wholeness is where we find sustained, superior performance.
When men and women interact, work together and influence each other, we become comfortable expressing our complementary traits. We change each other, so we are no longer solidly Pink and Blue.
Even though we remain predominantly Yin or Yang, we transform into our own unique shade of Purple.
We find, balance, harmony and Wholeness within ourselves.
Empowered Women Know They Are One Half Of The Whole
The media likes to boast that women get more college degrees than men. We are “smart girls” who do better academically than men. However, academic achievement doesn’t guarantee workplace achievement.
When we were in school, we knew who the “smart girls” were. They sat in the front of the classroom, they got perfect grades and the teachers really liked them. They got into the college of their choice and graduated with honors. They got great job offers. But that is where their success starts to erode. They don’t go on to become the next great entrepreneur or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Why not?
It’s because the workplace rewards different qualities than academia.
Our employers initially hire us because we have knowledge. However, they don’t pay us to regurgitate that knowledge.
Employers expect us to apply our knowledge to develop skills.
They then expect us to use our skills to achieve workplace objectives. They want us to keep developing and applying our skills, so we gain experience that then allows us to achieve more complex objectives.
The workplace is all about taking action, making things happen and delivering results that positively impact the bottom line.
In the workplace “smart girls” can struggle with workplace expectations because in school they were conditioned to believe there is one right answer. In school they got regular feedback as to whether or not they had the (one) right answer. If they were correct, they were praised with gold stars, high grades, certificates and membership to elite clubs.
However, in the workplace, the textbook “right” answer is seldom the best or correct workplace answer. The textbook answer has to be adapted to the current complex situation and environment. The workplace “right” answer has to be figured out and may not resemble the academic textbook answer at all.
In the workplace, even after you have the “right answer”, you learn that answer didn’t produce the “A” you expected. You lacked experience to know that the “right answer” expected you to also go on and answer more questions. So, you wind up with a “low B” or a “C.” It may even turn out that you earned a big fat “F.”
It’s a test.
Your employer is looking to see how you respond to your low grade.
Are you the type of person who can stay in the arena and keep working the situation to get to the best solution?
Are you the type of person who can take the B, C or the F and turn it into a B+ or even an A?
The workplace is about rising to the challenge in front of you.
Being the “smart girl” in school isn’t good preparation for the workplace arena because the classroom doesn’t teach you to take risks and think beyond the textbook. It can be infuriating watching the “class clown” get ahead just because his silliness taught him to think outside the box and adapt quickly to new situations. He developed skills that make up for his lack of textbook knowledge.
Being the “smart girl” however, can be great preparation for being on the workplace sidelines.
“Smart girls” often discover their comfort zone puts them in support roles, especially communication-based support roles. They get to train or write and speak about what the people in the arena are doing and accomplishing. In these roles they can showcase how intelligent and articulate they are. They get the feedback and validation they want – “Good report,” or “Nice presentation.”
However, there is a danger that is always lurking out there. And when you face it, it feels worse than getting an F.
Too often, when articulate women are asked to speak on behalf of their inarticulate male colleagues, they only know what is in the presentation. Because they haven’t been in the arena, they don’t have the experience that makes them experts on the topic. So, when asked in-depth questions, they don’t know the answer. Many try to bluff their way through with an articulate and sometimes lengthy textbook answer.
But in the conference room that gets you skewered.
You are labeled “Incompetent.” And you are pushed even further to the sidelines.
Over the past several years the media and academic outlets joined forces to increase the emphasis on being the intellectual, articulate person. They sold us on the idea, “Words Matter.” However, we must realize that works well in their world where they sell ideas.
For them, the content of their words may be right, wrong or total BS. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t in a business where they have to prove their words produce the tangible desired outcome. Instead, they’re on a debate team where they only have to sell a point of view and score points for style.
The business world isn’t a debate club.
It’s a sports field.
In business, if you are going to sell an idea, then you also have to score points by delivering the expected results.
Right now, it’s also trendy and prestigious to be in a consulting firm or an organization with “Institute” in its name. However, as I’ve seen in ALL of my workplaces, those consultant recommendations and reports wind up in the trash can.
Why?
Because they are textbook recommendations. They weren’t written by people who honed skills in the workplace arena and had the experience to adapt their skills to the current situation and environment.
So, if women are to advance in the workplace, then we must stop valuing being the “smart girl.” Throughout my career, I watched “smart girls” who had the potential to break barriers and shatter glass ceilings just give up. I watched them leave nontraditional jobs and return to a traditional career or a gender-neutral career with little hope of advancement.
As women we must accept that the requirements for workplace success are different from those for the classroom. We must also prioritize the skills for workplace success over those for the classroom. After all, where are we going to spend more time? Which environment will impact our life more?
As women must spend several years in the arena of our industry. We must learn how it functions, take risks, experience failure, experience achievement and learn to think on our feet to solve problems in the moment. Then we can leverage our advantage – intelligently articulating what we did, how we did it and the results we got.
Today, men and women still have very different perceptions of empowerment and freedom. The difference is based in our different histories but continues because women dwell too much on our history.
As women we’re taught that empowerment and freedom are granted to us by those with power. We’re also taught that white men always had them. I saw this view expressed in a comment by a young woman who wrote, “White men have never had to fight for their freedom.”
I posted a simple reply, “Yes they did. It was called the Revolutionary War.”
We often forget how very different life was prior to the mid-18th century when the vast majority of people were oppressed and struggled just to survive. The American and French revolutions were the historic milestones when common white men (and women) rebelled against the tyranny, power and control of monarchies and the church. They fought for their inherent right to liberty, individual freedom and self-determination.
The Declaration of Independence documents their creed that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” and “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted by men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
These beliefs made liberty and personal freedom the guiding principles for western societies.
In the United States the importance of liberty and self-determination is cemented through The Bill of Rights. It guarantees citizens certain rights and freedoms while limiting the power (control) of the federal government. The Tenth Amendment specifically states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
The U.S. Constitution elevates personal liberty above the power that was historically held by a governing entity. In doing so it gave men a new self-image where they were free and empowered to act based upon what they believe is best.
Men applied this same concept in their workplace. When the captains of industry acted like kings and treated men as serfs, once again men rebelled. The labor and union movements began the procession to give men more liberty and self-determination in the workplace.
Men don’t aspire to have power over others.
Men aspire to be independent.
Therefore, men rebel when faced with oppressive power.
This is why I always push back when someone says the male-dominated workplace is all about power and the only way women can have power is by tearing down men and claiming power on behalf of women. If women try to oppress or assert power over men, men will find a way to rebel. Every woman who supervises or manages men needs to understand that.
Men believe liberty, autonomy, independence and self-determination are an inherent part of their being. They aspire to have freedom to use their own judgement to do what they want, when they want, how they want. Men understand this about each other. Therefore, today most men don’t even try to control other men. They understand the futility in it.
Boston Tea Party
Women, slaves, and people who have a very different history with liberty need to be aware of how that changes our perceptions. These groups weren’t granted equal rights because some (not all) white men were fearful of how equal rights for these groups would negatively impact their self-determination and self-interests.
In other words, men oppress others not because of a quest for more power, but out of a fear of losing the power they have.
In 1870 the 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by stating that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Women had to wait until another 50 years for the 19th Amendment to be ratified in 1920 to have voting rights.
The 15th and 19th Amendments and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965 weren’t achieved by revolution. They were achieved by convincing men with power to grant others the same rights as them.
This distinction had a profound effect.
Women and other historically oppressed people don’t see themselves as having liberty. They see themselves as being granted license.
License is very different from liberty.
License says there are entities who have the power to control and restrict the actions of other people. Therefore, people only have as much self-determination as these entities grant them. The 15th and 19th Amendments are examples of this. They enfranchised disenfranchised people.
However, many people exercised their autonomy and ignored these Amendments. So, enforcing some of these new rights, required more legislation – which is why the Voting Rights Act was necessary.
License reinforces in women that we need to ask permission for additional independence and self-determination. We have to prove ourselves worthy before we can assert or advance ourselves. If we are fortunate, the entities who hold power will write more rules, policies and laws to grant us more authority over our own lives.
Consequently, men and people with power have a different definition of empowerment from women and historically oppressed people.
Men define Empowerment as Liberty
Women define Empowerment as License
Today women need to update our perspective and grab our legal equality by embracing our liberty. Out of all the lessons I learned from working with men the most important was to believe in my inherent right to liberty. I don’t have license. I have liberty!!!
“The most common way people give up power is by believing they don’t have any” – Alice Walker
In my career I always believed I had the same right to pursue the same jobs and opportunities as my male colleagues and get paid as much as men. If someone told me I couldn’t because I was a woman, I did what my male colleagues would do – I challenged them: “Who are you to deny me my right to self-determination and decide what I do?”
It’s amazing how many men respected me when I said this. I didn’t threaten them or try to take them down. I just stood up for myself. In doing so I was speaking their language of liberty and self-determination. I not only understood their values, I voiced them and stood up for them. That earned me respect and trust.
During the course of my career I’ve seen most of the career restrictions against women get removed. So today there’s no reason why women (and other groups) shouldn’t see ourselves with the same inherent right to liberty and self-determination as (white) men. If someone questions why we are living our life as we are and making the choices we make our answer should be “Because it’s what I want to do.”
Unfortunately, there are still many people and organizations who tell us that women must be granted more license. These are the people who don’t recognize our inherent right to liberty. Even worse some tell us that they want power so they can fight on our behalf and then grant us more license.
This should be a huge red flag warning to us.
We should question them:
“Why don’t you recognize my unalienable right to liberty and self-determination?”
“Why don’t you believe that I have the fortitude to exercise my personal power and liberty?”
“Why don’t you believe in my inherent equality?”
As Women have a choice:
We continue to live in our past history. We can oppress ourselves by giving entities power hoping they then decide to grant us more license and power over our own lives.
Or,
We do what men did in 1776. We claim and exercise our inherent right to liberty, self-determination and equality.
We are now earning 57% of the college degrees!! Whoo-hooo! We will soon close that nasty wage gap and have equal representation in the workplace all the way up to the board room. Right?
Not quite.
When just we focus on getting a degree, any degree, we ignore the two other factors that contribute to wages and promotion:
What employable job skills your degree gives you.
The type of job and career path you take.
So sorry, the reality is that not all college degrees have value. And given the high cost of a college degree, everyone should first ask themselves:
“What kind of job am I going to get with my degree?
Is my degree a good investment?”
For example, I was recently talking to a woman who was very proud of her daughter who was getting her PhD in Art History through an elite program. I bit my tongue instead of asking her, “And what kind of job will she be getting with her PhD?”
When I got home, I looked up the program. The program cost $75,000 per year and it was a 3-year program! Adding in the costs for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, we can assume this young woman invested a fortune in her education.
But what is the return on her huge investment going to be?
If we look at college majors from the perspective of Return on Investment, we see two categories:
The first category are majors that provide the specialized knowledge required to enter a profession. These majors include architecture, accounting, engineering, nursing, doctor, elementary education, computer science and law.
Trade and vocational programs also fall into this category.
These programs and their degrees give us clearly defined options for our career path. We are offered jobs because employers recognize the value of our skills and/or knowledge.
Career Paths for Civil Engineering
The second category are degrees that don’t result in clearly defined career paths. These degrees give you knowledge in an area, but that knowledge doesn’t convert to job skills. After graduation we can be left wondering, “Now what do I do?”
These degrees make it difficult for us to find a job that pays better than if we never went to college at all. In my day we said women who went to college for these degrees got a degree in “Underwater Basketweaving.” Many liberal arts degrees fall into this category. Even the popular degrees of Business and Psychology, can also fall into this category.
So, before we pursue a college degree we have to remember that companies are in specific industries and they want to hire people with the knowledge, skills and experience specific to their industry. Therefore, a liberal arts or generic business degree may not be very valuable in securing a higher paying job right out of college. The return on our investment may not come until several years later.
But by then was it really our degree that mattered?
Or was it how we performed in our job?
Today too many women still get college degrees that don’t translate to high paying careers because we don’t get degrees that provide employable skills.
Even back in the 19th and early 20th century, women-only colleges provided an education and degree that was on par and equal to the degrees men got in their colleges. They focused on developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills so women could prove their intellectual equality to men.
Today, even when women get degrees from that provide skills, too many of us choose majors that lead to the lower paying jobs. In short, not enough women are getting degrees that lead to the same financial independence, financial security and ability to support their family on par with men.
Last year Glassdoor published a study, The Pipeline Problem: How College Majors Contribute to the Gender Pay Gap. It verified:
Men opt to for the highest paying majors. Of the top 10 highest paying majors, 9 are heavily male dominated.
Women opt for lower paying majors. The one exception is Nursing. It is in the top 10 highest paying majors and heavily female-dominated.
When men and women have the same degree, men choose higher paying career paths than women.
The study concluded that 54% of the gender pay gap is attributed to “occupation and industry sorting of men and women into different jobs that pay differently throughout the economy.”
In other words, 54% of the gender pay gap is attributed to the degrees and career paths women choose.
The study also revealed something else that was very interesting – a reverse pay gap in some professions. In others no pay gap. Even more interesting is that most of these are in the highest paying professions.
Architecture – women earn 14% more.
Advertising – women earn 8.1% more
Environmental Science – women earn 6.8% more
Chemical Engineering – women earn 5.4% more
Kinesiology – women earn 4.9% more
Mechanical Engineering – women earn 3% more
Accounting, Finance, Civil Engineer and Nursing – no pay gap
Personally, I am not surprised by this at all!
In my career I learned that many traditionally male-dominated professions such as engineering, architecture, accounting, finance, medicine and statistics, are actually better suited for women than men.
Celebrating that women get 57% of college degrees is celebrating a gee-whiz fact. How many college degrees women get doesn’t change anything if we aren’t choosing college majors and choosing career paths on par with what men choose.
It’s time to evolve out of our mid-20th century mindset and realize that in the 21st century the male-dominated professions are a goldmine of opportunity for women. If we apply ourselves correctly, we can not only close the wage gap but reverse it in many of the highest paying professions.
It is common to hear that in comparison to men, women lack confidence and therefore seek more validation. I’ve never believed this was a natural trait of women but a product of our conditioning. As we grow from girls into women that conditioning is continuously reinforced so throughout our adulthood we continue to seek external validation.
As children, both men and women are taught to meet someone else’s expectations and in return earn praise. But as boys move to manhood, they naturally move to being more autonomous. Their view the world and what they want to do is more important to them than how other people view the world and what other people want them to do. This gives men a better sense of self and self-determination.
It is why men seem more confident.
Women don’t seem to inherently make this same transition to independence of thought. We remain more aware of others than men do. This awareness is a very powerful female trait but it is misapplied and exploited by society, media and social media. This exploitation teaches women to elevate the thoughts, opinions and ideas of others and subjugate our own.
This is why women seem less confident.
A major difference between men and women is how we perceive ourselves.
Men believe their individual thoughts and ideas are the whole of thoughts and ideas.
Women recognize that our individual thoughts and ideas are one part of the whole.
When women are conditioned to believe other people “know better,” we diminish our individual thoughts and ideas as an inferior part of the whole.
Our conditioning tells us that in order to regain our full value, and confidence, we need external validation. Various groups within society are more than willing to tell women:
“If you think, look and act within the parameters of our defined box, we will validate and accept you.
Women then listen to the ideas of various groups. We choose which group we want to join and which box we will fit conform to. When we conform to their box, we lose some or even all of our individuality.
As a woman who’s spent her entire adult life in male environments, I see the stark difference between how men and women are conditioned to be confident about who they are. I’ve heard all of the messages telling me to choose a box.
Even worse, there were many voices telling me which box I belonged in.
But because I’ve worked around men and their thinking, I developed a strong sense of self and tuned out those messages.
I refused to be in a box that doesn’t fit and isn’t Me.
Instead, I developed my own responses to all the voices telling me who I should be:
Who are you that your opinion matters so much?
Why would I put your opinion above my own opinions and experiences?
If you don’t validate me, why does that make me inferior? Doesn’t it just mean I am different from you?
There is no shortage of people who want to convince us that they are smarter and better than us. I’ve learned that many of these people (men and women) have a need to need to feel superior to others. They need others to look up to them in order to validate their own sense of worth.
Many others do it because women make up the vast majority of consumers. If they keep the validation cycle going, they make a lot of $$$.
And of course there are the media, social media, and politics who manipulate us with validation and acceptance for their own purposes.
As women need to wise up to how others use us for their own purposes.
We need to break out of these manipulative cycles.
When we elevate other people’s opinions above our own, we disempower ourselves. We don’t voice our ideas, thoughts and opinions. We don’t express who we are. We deny our value and our equality.
Women we need to take a lesson from men and have a stronger sense of self. This doesn’t mean we ignore other people and their ideas. It means we think highly enough of ourselves so we are a full and equal participant in our family, team, workplace, community and society.
When we step outside the box that confines us, we find a big world of ideas, concepts and thoughts.
For many women going outside the box is scary.
Boxes are safe. They have well defined and validated boundaries that provide us security. However, the price we pay for that security is a denial of being our complete true selves and the personal fulfillment that comes with it.
When we explore outside the box we are exposed to lots of ideas, concepts and thoughts that we can evaluate. We can figure out if they fit into and add value to our life and who we are.
We find there are lots of “standard ideas.” Some fit into our lives. Some don’t.
We learn other people have unique ideas.
Some fit into our lives. Some don’t.
We learn we have unique ideas. Some people will benefit from our ideas. Others won’t.
When we are willing to step outside the box, we can go on the lifelong journey of pulling all of this together and discovering the unique person we are. That person is so much more open, colorful and interesting than the person inside the box.
Outside the box the only validation we seek is from within ourselves. We validate that we are being true to ourselves. This truth becomes our source of genuine confidence.
When we live our lives as our unique selves, we also give other people permission to be their unique selves. We destroy the boxes that confine people, make people think small and let people diminish others.
Women have a unique opportunity to change the world by allowing everyone to be their full unique self. But first, each of us has to choose to get out of our box and be our true selves.
In order to advance women in the workplace, women need solutions for the unique issues and challenges we face. That is why I started this website.
When I began, the women who had worked deep in the male-dominated workplace weren’t sharing the lessons they learned. So, through this website my original intent was to share a lot of “How To’s” such as:
How to get your voice heard and take command of the conference room when you are the only woman in a meeting with 25 loud, opinioned men who all want to be in charge.
How to prevent sexual harassment and what to do when it occurs.
How to get a lot of recognition for your achievements without being an obnoxious braggart.
How to recognize and seize the hidden opportunities in your workplace that will propel your career forward
How to deal with women in traditional roles when you are the first female manager and upset the decades old informal power structure.
How to be a leader as a woman.
How to be confident when you don’t have all the answers.
How to approach any job so you always out-perform your male colleagues
How to deal with very competitive male peers.
These are the solutions women need. However, as soon I began putting these solutions out there, I met resistance. I quickly discovered that women had a larger, more fundamental problem:
We don’t understand how the male-dominated workplace really functions.
Our perceptions about the male-dominated workplace are based on narratives written over 40 years ago. And these narratives have been repeated decade after decade. Consequently, young women today think they are facts. They aren’t.
What women don’t know is:
Those narratives weren’t written by women with any experience working in traditional male roles.
Even now when I speak to a group of women, I sometimes get lambasted by women who want to protect these old narratives. Meanwhile the women who have been “the woman in the room” as computer programmers, mathematicians, procurement specialists and statisticians are quietly sitting, nodding their head in agreement with what I am saying.
It seems many women are focused more on protecting the narratives, than on advancing women. They don’t want to hear how their bad workplace experiences come from the bogus narratives. They don’t want to know how the male-dominated workplace really functions.
We know that if we want to succeed in an environment, then we have to understand that environment.
Therefore, if women want to advance in the workplace, one of the first solutions we have to put in place is and understanding of how the male-dominated workplace functions.
Here are some basics:
Men and the male-dominated workplace are driven by a quest for Autonomy, independence and self-determination. (Women’s narratives say they are driven by a quest for power and domination over others.)
Trust and respect are paramount in the male-dominated workplace. (Women’s narratives eradicate men’s trust.)
Men fear blame. In some men that fear is intense. (Women’s narratives blame men.)
A good sense of humor is critical. (If you have never LMFAO at a Trump tweet, you will have problems working with men.)
The result of not understanding of how the male-dominated workplace really functions is having a devastating effect on advancing women. Too many women see themselves as powerless.
Consequently, too many young women accept that the only way women can become empowered, and advance is when men decide to give up some of their power and give it to women. Since this idea follows the dictionary definition of empowerment, women accept it as a real-world truth. We accept that this is the way the world works.
Out of all of the narratives this definition of empowerment is the most devastating to women. To remedy this woman must adopt men’s attitude towards empowerment:
I turned 18. I am a legal adult. I am fully empowered. Period.
Women need to understand that our full empowerment and equality already exist. They are just sitting there waiting for each of us to pick them up and do something with them. We just have to choose to do so.
As women we should never accept that we aren’t fully empowered. And when someone says we aren’t we should do what men do – challenge them.
But many women resist accepting this perspective on empowerment and equality. Why?
Why don’t women want to see our own inherent equality and power?
I found one answer when I first began talking about my career. I wasn’t cheered for my success. Instead, I was slammed with comments that I was lying or making it up. Women didn’t want to hear that a woman was successful in a male-dominated job.
Why not?
Because I could then turn to them and ask:
Why didn’t you try?
Why didn’t you go into a male-dominated profession where you could break barriers and shatter glass ceilings?
The truth is that the old narratives give women an excuse not to try. They give us an excuse to play it safe and stay in our traditional roles and protect our feminine privilege.
The fundamental, underlying reason women don’t want me speaking out is because I was willing to give up my feminine privilege in order to achieve equality and advance my career.
Feminine privilege says women can assume less responsibility in the workplace but still have the same pay and promotion opportunities as men who take on more work, responsibility and accountability.
But that is not how the workplace functions. Ultimately the workplace is merit based. So, we need to prove we merit the same opportunities, pay and promotions as men because we take on the same work, responsibility and accountability as men.
If we really want to advance women in the workplace, then the very first thing we have to do is give up our feminine privilege.
I know that the male-dominated workplace is a goldmine of opportunity for women. My blogs, videos and book can help women advance and achieve their full potential.
We just have to choose to do it.
Empowered Women Give Up Their Feminine Privilege To Achieve Their Equality.
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.
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?!
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 productthe media and social media sells to women is:
Emotional Responses.
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 outrageand an intense feeling of unfairnessreminiscent 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:
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.
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.)
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.
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:
Bullies thrive when no one stands up to them.
Adults can be intimidated by a bully and be bullied too.
People can witness bullying and choose to look the other way.
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.
Most people are afraid to be the first one to stand up to a bully.
If you are the first to stand up against a bully, you have to rally support.
Other people will join you in your fight against a bully because most people want to do what’s right.
If you stand up for other people, they will stand up for you.
People who stand up to bullies together form a bond and become allies.
Bullies don’t stop just because you stood up to them once. You have to keep standing up to them.
If you keep standing up to a bully, eventually something will change, something will be done.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
