By Grace Fodor
Have you come across this stereotype before?
As the founder of a growing beauty brand, Studio 10, I’m infuriated by the stereotypical view of female bosses as hardened ball-breakers, rampantly manipulating hapless employees and bullying those who dare to stand up for themselves.
Many is the article that explores the idea of the Queen Bee archetype. And for every one you’ll find a multitude of comments like ‘she didn’t care about my feelings’, ‘she was so unlikeable’, ‘she made my life hell’.
Some go as far as to suggest this is why women haven’t progressed further into the boardroom – the game playing and competitions they take with them are so off-putting they either never get there or aren’t wanted as a result.
I say they couldn’t be more wrong, as do several prominent female leaders now campaigning for worldwide change.
Successful women including Yahoo exec Marissa Meyer, Katie Couric, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and even the outgoing first lady, Michelle Obama have all reported being called ‘bossy’, ‘demanding’ or ‘bitchy’ by people who’ve worked with them.
Just last year it came out that Prime Minister Theresa May was called ‘that difficult woman’ by members of her own party – men who themselves are no stranger to scandal.
Is it a sexism issue? Men trying to use the historical assumption that women should be the ‘fairer’ sex to put women attempting to push through in their place?
Is it a competition thing? With so few women CEOs - less than 5.5% of FTSE 100 boards are female – and this puts us at the top of the chart, in the US it is 4%, it’s inevitable that just to get to that level and a woman would have to be really good at challenging the status quo – could she be so insecure about losing her place that she would keep other women down?
That certainly hasn’t been my experience. The smart, ambitious women I encounter through networking and professional associations such as The Women’s Chapter are some of the most generous I’ve met at sharing leads, introductions and encouraging one another’s growth.
And surely the simple answer to reducing a feeling of competition would be to have more women on the board, not less? Studies suggest that when the balance is more equal boards are more compassionate, steady and make better long term decisions for the business which is contradictory to the idea that women in power are a negative force.
I’ve written before, in my piece ‘the high price of nice’ that women are expected to be different to men. More compliant, more empathic and less demanding.
Women who step out of this ideology are often referred to as ‘unlikeable’. Interestingly though, a man with high expectations, like Steve Jobs for example, who was renowned for his almost unattainably high standards of perfectionism, is simply called ‘visionary’.
In her article for Spring Street, writer Amelia McGuinness starts by stating that the myth is so pernicious that at the start of her career she feared having a female boss. But as she explains:
‘I worked in male driven offices where the boss would have screaming tantrums, throwing things around.
“People often squint their eyes when I say I work in a female office and say they couldn’t work there as it’s too bitchy, but that just isn’t the case – we empower each other, especially when there are more of us”.
Writing for The New York Times, Facebooks COO, Sheryl Sandberg said much the same:
“The biggest enemy of women, we’re warned, is a powerful woman," she writes.
But I run a company with almost entirely female staff and this isn’t the case for my company either. My team are unequivocally excellent at supporting one another, my staff turnover is historically low and attainment rates are extremely high.
As I was writing this article I bounced the idea over with a staff member and my concern was that I know I am a hard person to work for myself. I worry that I’m considered too hard, too pushy or too bossy.
She was quick to assure me that whilst I know what I want, she too had experienced far worse levels of competition in a male driven role, eventually being bullied out by the sort of ‘banter’ I would never tolerate from my teams.
I look at my leadership team and I’m inspired by their ability to predict trends and support the idea that their staff have lives outside work, which can impact on their jobs, without letting it takeover our office.
Finally, if there is any truth to the idea that as females in charge we expect too much from our teams, perhaps it comes from having to give so much of ourselves to even get this far in a world still so slanted against female success.
Change the language we use from birth – instead of ‘she’s bossy’, she has ‘leadership potential’.
Instead of ‘demanding’, she knows ‘which direction she needs to go’ and reward women for success and you’ll see more women at the top, which is proven only to be good for us all.