When progress goes too far: becoming a top woman manager

Over the weekend, I picked up this delightful little read in my favourite Woodville op shop.

At first, I laughed. The cover is dated, the terminology is cringe-worthy, and it’s tempting to think we’ve come a long way since this book was published in 1988.

Then, I read it. As I worked through the examples and advice, my laughter began to subside for sobriety.

This book isn’t an airport business book read. (If this is a genre you hold in some disdain, I would strongly recommend listening to If Books Could Kill, which is one of my favourite podcasts right now.)

This book is the second in a trilogy, written to interpret and build on the findings of a multi-year, peer-reviewed research study that ran between 1984 and 1987. Leonie Still, the book’s author, is a respected and prolific academic, author, and media commentator who dedicated her career to gender equality in management in Australia.

The book is a terrifying play-by-play that sets out the strategies required for women serious about advancing into senior management, and Still is exceptionally blunt and directive in her advice. In Chapter 2: ‘Where are the women managers?’ Still lays out a series of critical decision rules for women.

“You will just have to decide whether or not you are really serious about a career. Successful people do not ‘give it a try for a few years’ and then opt out when circumstances become difficult. They just keep on going despite all the handicaps, hurdles and obstacles.

Unfortunately, too many women fantasise about having a career. They want a home, marriage, children, an exciting job, fame, glamour, and riches. What they are not prepared for are the sacrifices that this entails.

No woman has ever reached senior management without having made some significant sacrifices along the way. The sacrifice may entail marriage, children, health, peace of mind. However, a choice has to be made because the career demands single-mindedness. Avoid the all-consuming dedication and the goals are not achieved.

Decision rule no. 1: Decide whether or not you want a career. Once having made the decision, keep going and don’t look back.

Still goes on to lay out a comprehensive game-plan, based on her research findings. The plan involves careful plotting and staging, changing positions regularly, avoiding women's ‘work ghettos’, leaving any organisation that doesn’t provide the next step on the ladder immediately, avoiding specialist roles without responsibility, focusing on line management, forgetting about ‘nice’ jobs and prioritising progressively larger department sizes, pitching the creation of new jobs (and being appointed to them), pulling in favours, using your contacts, and if all else fails, starting your own business.

For any woman reading who feels a bit daunted and put off by this advice, Still is forthright.

"You may feel that this type of strategy is not for you. It looks too much like scheming, and you just don’t operate that way. Also, the successful woman manager seems to be quite ruthless about her career ambitions. If anything gets in her way, she finds a way around it.

This is not you. You don’t believe in such tactics. You would prefer to retain your friends and your reputation of being a ‘nice’ person. You don’t want to be called ‘ruthless’, ‘dangerous’, and ‘ambitious’. You just want to be accepted and to be allowed to do your job your way.

Well, if you do think like this, you are merely fantasising about a career and your wish for success.” (emphasis mine)"

The book gets clear on all the barriers and obstacles women are up against (myths and stereotypes, role traps and moulds) and lays out strategies for trying to outsmart and overcome each of the barriers. It also offers general advice about how to manage your life and home when you have a career, which includes: treating your home like an extension of your office, leaving your husband, sending your children away to relatives or boarding school (if you have them) and outsourcing your housework. It’s exhausting. It’s terrifying. It makes my heart hurt.

It’s also sensible, practical advice for the social and political context that didn’t attempt to dress things up as any better than they were. At the time of writing,

• Official figures put women in management at 16% - though there were classification issues that suggest many of these jobs were not managerial at all
• In the author’s survey, 1706 women held management positions across 239 Australian companies, out of a total workforce of 214820
• In the author’s survey, there were 45 women in senior management, compared to 1873 men (2.3%)

Sentiments expressed in the ‘oral history’ phase of her research speak to widely held views on women in management at the time.

“I don’t believe women should be in management. They only get hard and lose their femininity. You can’t talk to them either - they’re either moody, jealous, temperamental, picky, or they want to control everything. Give me a man any day.” Woman non-manager, aged 42

“You just couldn’t have a woman as managing director of BHP. I mean, she wouldn’t know what to do. Who would listen to her? The shareholders, the financial press, the Japanese? You must have a man if you want credibility.’ - Male manager, aged 56

‘If you let a woman run anything important, it would soon be a mess. A woman’s place is in the home. That’s her biological function, and you just can’t get away from that fact of life. Women have no head for figures - imagine them trying to balance the country’s budget. They’re not used to thinking in big terms as you must in business. - Male non-manager, aged 38

Maybe things have just gone too far

Under the heading: Will Women Managers Ever Be Accepted? there is this quote, which left me cold for a while:

“I find no reason to differentiate between male and female management. I do not have a sex-based view towards them. I have run the ambit from befuddled incompetence to scintillating brilliance. Anyone who could question the efficiency of Buttrose, Thatcher or Gandhi would be a fool. I do feel, however, that we have now reached a stage of giving managerial positions to women as a sinecure to silence the strident, braying feminist lobby even having reached a point of reverse sexism. I believe that a stage is being reached when a reaction amongst male managerial staff will set in and a strong anti-women-in-management movement will result. I find sexism to have become a socially divisive issue.’

That quote was from 1986. When the percentage of female managers was, at best, 16%. 

It’s easy to laugh now, but today, almost 40 years on, things are better. Right?

Yes, though perhaps not as ‘better’ as we would hope. Sticking with Australia, where the book and the underlying research focuses, the most recent data tells us:

‘Women remain under-represented in all key decision-making roles across almost all industries in the Australian workforce comprising only: 22.3 per cent of CEOs, 35.1 per cent of key management positions, 34 per cent of board members, and 18 per cent of board chairs.[32]’

And the accusations of reverse sexism remain. A recent study of Australian men found that “48 per cent feel fatigued by the notion of gender equality and 52 per cent feel they are being discriminated against, with women being favoured for promotions and jobs on the basis of their gender.” This is despite their opportunities for advancement remaining the same.

The largest ever study on sexism in Australia (’Is Australia Sexist?’) published in 2018 found that 45 per cent of men and women believe that feminism has gone "too far" – despite the survey also finding that 60 per cent of young women in Australia have suffered gender inequality, from sexual harassment to workplace discrimination.

Be aware of your status quo bias

This isn’t a Wednesday Wisdom about sexism and how hard it is to be a woman in the workplace. Those numbers speak for themselves. But it has made me think a lot about progress, and how well we cope with change while we’re in it. It's easy for things that threaten the status quo, which our little brains have coded as ‘normal,’ to look terrifying. If those things threaten your status, privilege, or identity, like shifting the gender balance in management, then of course you'll balk. Something you had might be taken away. Nobody likes that.

Under these conditions, even extremely reasonable and quite minor change can feel too far - even (or especially?) when it’s addressing blatant inequality and oppression. Status quo bias is a thing, loss aversion is a thing, privilege is a thing, and the odds that someone who is negatively affected by a rebalancing or cultural shift is the best arbiter of what is fair or reasonable are pretty low.

In the current political environment in NZ, we’re watching progress that required decades and generations of dedicated activism - things like pursuing health equity, valuing culture, reviving a critical national language, and addressing structural racism - get rolled back with the sweep of a pen. In times like these, it is more important than ever to be conscious of our bias toward the status quo.

Be wary of statements like “I think a little bit is OK, but THIS NEW THING I happen to be in the middle of is a step too far.” This kind of sentiment often comes with a profession of support for previous change - which they also would have resisted - to temper it. A personal favourite is the diminishing of sexism and discrimination, which goes along the lines of "Modern feminists have nothing to complain about. REAL feminists like the suffragettes will be rolling in their graves."

These kinds of comments forget how vitriolic the response to suffrage was, and assume the person making said comment would have been one of the enlightened few who supported the radical suffrage movement. Odds are, they would have been one of the majority, who laughed at the hideous newspaper comics, and supported force-feeding by tube,  while brave women were reviled for their views and treated like idiots for complaining. 

I’ve seen this rhetoric a lot around transgender rights. Something similar to, ‘Look, I don’t mind the gays, but this trans business is all a bit far.’ Well, first of all, Kevin, you DID mind the gays. When we pushed for progress there, you were saying exactly the same sort of self-congratulating garbage. Things like "I don't mind what people do in their private lives, I just don't want it shoved down my throat." Secondly, if you’re in the thick of a march for progress, and it's progress for a group that:

a) you don't belong to

b) you haven't had lived experience of the oppression and discrimination they're describing

Then you're not the best arbiter of how far progress has gone. In fact, Kevin, in those situations, I recommend you keep your clever comments to yourself. Take a break from explaining other people's oppression away, and listen for a goddamn second.

Whether you identify with my politics or not, it's worth examining where you get your ideas from and what your personal threshold for change and progress is. What you think of as 'normal' probably isn't. It's probably a reflection of your experiences and observations to date, coded as reality and not any indication of its morality, utility, or quality.

Understand how likely you are to cling to that sense of normal, and gently encourage yourself to think a little more openly. It will make you a better person.

To close this rambling Wednesday piece, I gift you two things.

The first: an exceptional video about ‘idea technology’ from Barry Schwartz. This video, required watching in the first module of the Not An MBA curriculum, will help you to understand why the ideas you hold about people and their nature are so important to examine.

The second: me in a purple power suit/ bridesmaid dress/ sartorial delight, also in an op-shop, which I like to think would have suited my 1980s Top Woman Manager persona well.

I’m glad it’s nearly Christmas. Hang on til the end, team.

Til next week,

Alicia

P.S. - Please forgive all typos. 'm writing this ON THE RUN to Child Christmas Event #4 for the week. 

P.P.S. - If you’re interested in being the kind of person who examines their thoughts, beliefs and ideas critically, because you want to be a better leader and make better decisions, enrolments for Not An MBA February 2024 are open now.