When Janet Yellen was confirmed as the first woman Federal Reserve Board Chair, blog posts with titles like “Janet Yellen: the Bitch of the Fed” sprouted across the Internet. Madeline Albright has struggled with similar labels and in her memoir said, “As I began to climb the ladder, I had to cope with the different vocabulary used to describe similar qualities in men (confident, take-charge, committed) and women (bossy, aggressive, emotional,).” She also noticed how men behaved in ways that would be dismissed if they had been women.
Examples like this spotlighted the negative connotations used to describe women and helped launch Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign. The campaign sought to change a culture in which men are “boss,” but women are “bossy.” Sandberg’s campaign drew amazing leading women as co-sponsors including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Girl Scouts CEO Ana Maria Chávez. Together, these women took to the airwaves asking people to stop referring to women as “bossy,” especially when talking to little girls.
These negative terms are pervasive in our culture, and alive and well in the workplace. In a recent report for Fortune.com, linguist Kieran Snyder took a look at employee evaluations to see if she could quantify the double standards in the ways that male and female employees are evaluated. She collected 248 performance reviews from 28 companies ranging in size from large technology corporations to small startups.
Her findings, coming from reviews conducted by men and women alike, were startling. For one thing, women managers behaved just like their male counterparts. Critical feedback was doled out in a much higher ratio to women: 58.9% of men’s reviews contained critical feedback, while an overwhelming 87.9% of the reviews received by women did. And it wasn’t performance that was drawing the feedback in many instances as much as it was personality. “Abrasive” appeared 17 times to describe 13 different women, but the word never appeared in men’s reviews. In fact, this type of character critique, which showed up in just 2 of the 84 critical reviews of men, showed up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women.
What to do? As always, awareness is key. Some have suggested that simply educating managers and asking them to monitor this tendency in themselves can reduce such disparities. And because the loss of talented women to self-employment drains off valuable human resources, this education should also include recognition of the strengths that women bring to the table.
Leading Women co-author Dr. Marcia Reynolds points out that companies that change to accommodate women’s strengths can have valuable employees who will stay and grow within the culture. “Women like communication that does not just flow downward but travels up-down-sideways like the Internet,” Dr. Marcia says. “We want flexible work arrangements and freedom to complete goals in our unique work styles. We don’t like operating within hierarchical silos.”
As she pointed out, smart employers have already learned to provide what keeps women happy on the job. Simply providing frequent new challenges and opportunities, flexible schedules, collaboration with other high achievers, recognition, and most importantly, the freedom to be themselves helps keep women in the workplace for the long haul. And who knows? Those talented high-performing women who stay just might propel the company’s success to the next level.
Words Really Matter In The Workplace
