Dear Annie: How can I achieve a balance between standing up for myself at work and being regarded by colleagues as a bitch? Overall, I'm a pretty easygoing person, I try to help others out when I can, and I volunteer for assignments. The problem: When I need to say "no" or point out that I just can't take on anything else because I'm already buried in work, I get accused of being uncooperative, not a team player, or "bitchy." But when my male counterparts do and say the same things, no one seems to mind. What am I doing wrong, or what can I do to change the perception? -No Prima Donna
Dear NPD: "When men speak up for themselves, they usually do it in a very business-based, proactive way, and without emotion," notes Rebecca Shambaugh, head of the Shambaugh Leadership Group, a McLean, Va., consulting firm that has worked with IBM, Marriott, Northrop Grumman, and many other companies on how to develop and retain female managers. "They'll say, 'Sorry, fellas, I just can't take this one on.' Women, though, often tend to be more reactive, sometimes even bordering on feeling like a victim: 'Don't they know how much work I've already got?' My guess is that this is what you're doing, probably without being aware of it - and that your resentment is coming across loud and clear."
Of course! It's 'cause we're whiney bitches who feel like victims and can't keep our feelings under wraps! So we need to more closely monitor our every thought and word and expressive gesture lest it offend the menfolk by letter our true bitchiness come out! It had nothing - nothing! - to do with perceptions, oh no sirree!
Posted by binky at October 5, 2006 02:59 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Corporate Bullshitso demeanor and choice of language (pathos vs. logos, say), the latter of which has been demonstrated to track gender in many contexts in plenty of rigorous studies, should be forcibly divorced from how one is perceived?
what makes you think men aren't keeping their feelings under wraps when they take a more logos-based approached to refusing additional work, unless its a counter-generalization that men don't have emotional responses to these sorts of things? and if there's a behavioral code that men feel bound to consciously observe in a professional setting, while the development of behavioral codes is certainly arbitrary, should the burden be on everyone to change the code or on women to learn it? (i say this as someone with an almost autistic inability to identify and apply basic workplace codes, who recognizes that fact and accepts the inevitability of certain inconviences that it engenders.)
that said, i wouldn't even feign to dispute with you that perception has plenty to do with gender politics in the workplace, and that this particular woman might try to demur work in a way that in every relevant aspect tracks a more male-patterned response, and nevertheless take shit because she's a woman. really, i agree with you on that 100%, and for failing to recognize that possibility, the response quoted is facile.
i'm merely asking whether there isn't a more complex issue here on the other front as well -- that it might not just be patriarchal men preserving their old boy club, but rather human beings responding to different speech patterns that tend to provoke different responses than what they are used to.
that is, i think the excerpt and your response to it both gloss over complexities to the issue that defy a pat answer.
Posted by: moon at October 5, 2006 04:49 PM | PERMALINKWell, as I have said numerous times, patriarchy hurts men too.
Had her answer raised as many subtlties as yours, perhaps it would not have been so stupid.
Posted by: binky at October 5, 2006 05:15 PM | PERMALINK