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| This woman probably had to be liked. |
“Bitches get stuff done.” – Tina Fey
Once, in a job interview, my future boss asked, “If you were a food, what food would you be?” I laughed and thought for a minute. “Spicy guacamole. Most people love it. But for some, it’s an acquired taste.”*
They hired me anyway, and that was a good sign. I am a woman. I have opinions. I feel lucky that I’ve been steadily employed for so long, specifically in women-dominated fields. I love working with other women, and whenever people make disparaging remarks about “women bosses” being the worst, I am quick to shoot them down.
If your boss is a jerk, she’s a jerk. But her ovaries didn’t cause that problem.
Over the weekend in The New York Times, Tara Mohr challenges women to learn to embrace criticism in the workplace. She writes about women who struggle to balance being likable and being good at what they do. Many women, she claims, struggle to not take negative feedback personally.
Sure. Giving and receiving feedback is an art. (Be timely and honest, but as gentle and earnestly constructive as possible.). But how is this a gendered issue?
Turns out, women might be getting bombarded with more than our fair share of “constructive” criticism:
Mohr cites Kieran Snyder, who did a small study in the tech industry and found that a whopping 87.9% of women received critical feedback in their performance reviews, compared to only 58.9% of men receiving criticism. Of those critical reviews, 76% of women received a negative comment regarding their personality, while only 2% of men did.
Specifically, women were called out for being bossy, abrasive and emotional. Snyder holds up this red flag for human resources professionals, who should be on the lookout for gender bias in written performance reviews. Mohr, however, sees it as a sign that women need to polish our armor, put on a happy face, and start disassociating.
The problem starts with Mohr’s strange arguments about likability. For centuries, she writes, women had no property, no legal rights, and survived by being likable. And now, she says, women struggle because people expect likability of us first, and other things second. What a strange way to think of our ancestors, the survivors of the nicest. Many more women have survived by working hard, by being resourceful and tough while also constantly being told that we are less than, not as worthy. Women endured.
Mohr goes on to admit that attacks against famously successful women like Hilary Clinton are often “vulgar, sexualized and angry,” but she is sure that regular women can develop a thicker skin against the types of criticism we receive. Because regular everyday women probably aren’t ever fielding those types of hits, right? So, she recommends that we normal ladies start by looking inward to determine why certain critiques hits us so hard (are we upset about our bodies? Unsure of our intellect?), and then we can place these comments on a non-emotional shelf and admire them at a distance.
After this, she suggests a little more disassociation—we should think about a woman whose response to criticism we admire and mirror “how the admired woman might respond.” If the criticism is the type described above, I’d imagine this will involve crying on the inside.
The truth is most women already know how to deal with being called bossy bitches. But how do we stop managers and co-workers from expecting women not to lead?
What seems to be missing from both pieces is a call for accountability for managers and workplaces who apparently still expect different behavior from men and women. Instead of asking women to reshape who they are to fit the workplace, a good workplace welcomes difference.
Mohr is right when she says that people offering criticism are really revealing more about themselves than they are about you. But what if what they’re really saying is, “This is not a workplace that’s friendly to women.”
*I generally do not trust people who don’t like guacamole.
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