Women bosses YellowJacket: I saw an interesting article on Fark that talked about women bosses. It wasn't so much the article that interested me. It was the responses in the message board associated with it. There were many people of the opinion that women are catty and are thus out to get other women in the workplace. This was coming from both genders and it surprised me.
Here is the article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2524299.html
My experience has been that the engineering world is extremely civil and there is very little cattiness, back-stabbing, etc. So I've never seen any of this in the workplace. I've had many female and male team leads. While I have seen differences across genders, they aren't along the lines of what's discussed in the article.
I'm curious what others think. Have you had a preference in which gender you wish to work for and which has treated you better? What field do you work in?
Re: Women bosses lonewolf: I'm one of the bosses at my current workplace(but i could be resigning as of today), but my boss (location manager), is a woman. Out of us 5 bosses, i'm the only male.
So guess who's the odd one out? Guess who doesn't sit in the office all day talking about women issues or that episode of sex and the city or what kind os shit to cook for your husband?
If i was gay (no offence to gays) maybe i would take some interest. But they don't even TRY to associate or even acknowldge that HELLLO! There is a straight hot-blooded male present!
I love to cook and everything, but don't be asking me what to cook my husband for God's sake.
So yeah, i'm outcasted because i'm the only male in an all female office where the chief is an older female. In fact i'm the least favorable one because i spend less time with 'them' and more time with the 'lower ranked' office people as, well, i get along with them more... especially the MEN. In turn i get all the 'bad' managerial jobs alone whilst they do the 'group' taks of running the office.
it's not by choice as well. I'm an outgoing, friendly guy. They choose to alienate me because i have a friggin penis.
Re: Women bosses yella: My former boss is a woman, actually both of them are. Yes, they were very catty, and very bitchy. I thank God that I got out when I did.
I worked for one other female boss before my current employer, and she was excellent. Very mature, and very diplomatic. You could trust her.
I find that women are very competitive, but at the same time, most of us who want to get somewhere are. There's a distinct difference though between healthy competition in the workplace, and just plain petty girly crap.
Seeing how it's difficult still for women to get far in the work place (in many cases), most feel they need to fight harder, and that's where a lot of this cattiness results from. Unfortunately.
Re: Women bosses Lumpy: Two of the best bosses I've ever had were women, one being the manager I'm currently working for. I think that we get along so well in part because I'm a guy. About 85% of the employees at my job are women and I think she gets tired of dealing with all the cattiness and back-stabbing. I guess I'm a nice change of pace for her.
Re: Women bosses alonewith2: Statistics do show that women (I didn't know that the men agreed though) prefer working with men over other women. The reason being all that you described and more. In the efforts of breaking the glass ceilings and other gender biased restraints, women have gone off on their own. They compete with each other to get ahead, and then leave the other women behind once they've gotten there. There is no teamwork or the "hey, want me to help you get through that ceilng, too?"
Even with all the progress in women's issues in the workplace, they still remain the minority in many industries for those exact reasons mentioned above. It was suggested in one of my HR college classes, that if women actually helped each other out over the last 5-10 years, we would dominate the workforce instead of continue lagging behind.
With that being said, I've worked for many catty women managers, but I've also worked for catty men. The women tend to be more so... The women managers that I currently work with (not for) are great to me, accept my ideas, are willing to help. But when it comes to their employees under them, it's a different story. ;)
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