I have reported to both male and female bosses and can honestly say I never had an issue with either.
Although I must say that the man I reported to in my early years as an attorney was probably the best boss I ever had. I was the only female in a 10 member in-house legal department and it was an exceptional working environment --mostly because our boss led by example and was just an extremely decent human being. As a young attorney he helped me establish myself in the bank and with his help I got exposure that I never would have gotten elsewhere at that age.
I happily worked for him for many years and when he left a woman was hired as General Counsel. She and I got along well and often socialized outside the office. Some of my male co-workers did not feel the same way about her.
At the end of the day I always inserted “get along with your boss” into my job description. If you are reporting to someone you have to be the one that adapts to their management style. Down the road when people are reporting to you, they do the same.
Huh. My female bosses (2) have been wonderful - fair, supportive, professional. On the other hand, most of my male bosses (3 out of the 5) have been awful - condescending, unsupportive, borderline-abusive.
One of those male bosses was a serial sexual harasser (he was a ring-leader among like-minded losers who used to rate women with flash cards – think Olympic gymnastic-style ratings – as they walked down the halls at work.)
Another was an egotistical, belittling tyrant who loved to make his employees cry. Seriously. I was in a staff meeting with him once where two employees burst into tears after he berated them publicly for several minutes.
Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk, no matter their gender.
This is a side tangent but all this talk of men and women working together reminds me of the VP Pence comment that he does not eat alone with a woman other than his wife, and the resulting discussion about how that rule can harm women in the workplace (or men, depending on who is the boss) by limiting their exposure to their boss outside the office. Of course workplace affairs can arise, but really how hard is it to have a lunch, dinner or late night work session with a member of the opposite sex and be appropriate? I did not understand that discussion.
It was part of his religious faith and personal commitments to his wife. I have no problem working alone with members of the opposite sex, but it’s really not hard to avoid doing so without impinging on anyone’s career trajectory.
@techmom99 - I called my worst female boss the Hellcat. I refused to refer to her as b**** because sometimes that can be construed as a left-handed compliment. I spent six horrible months working for her until a job for which I’d previously interviewed opened up. I left a week after another employee retired, leaving three positions vacant during a busy time, and it felt really, really good to finally get a bit of my own back.
I’ve never heard the B word used as a compliment. Funny how there is no male equivalent. Woman get labeled as a b-witch. Men are considered to be “tough taskmasters”. Seems pretty unfair.
@zoosermom Are you saying that choosing to not “socialize” with your co-workers is not going to affect anyone’s career trajectory? If so, I disagree (and do agree with vistajay). I suppose it does depend on your job situation/career choice to some extent. But I think in many (or most) work environments these days, it would be very difficult to adhere to this strict rule without some negative repercussions.
I worked for over 30 years in a male dominated field that required lots of collaboration and team projects along with frequent travel with members of the opposite sex. We worked together both in the field (outdoors) and in the office. When we travelled, we had only one shared vehicle to use to go out for lunch and dinner, and also it just would have seemed very rude or standoffish if I’d had a policy of declining to accompany my supervisors and co-workers. I have many good memories of the social activities that we participated in during our travels. In addition to going out for meals, we also went for walks, hikes, sightseeing, and once I even went fly fishing with my boss. I feel the relationships that I built during these work and social interactions helped a great deal in developing and maintaining a good reputation at work. I would also go so far to say it had a major effect on my promotional opportunities. I don’t think that being viewed as a woman who was reluctant to socialize and develop good relationships with the men I worked with would have done me any favors at all in my field of work.
BTW, I have a husband who was not concerned at all with my interactions and social activities with my co-workers. He trusted me.
No. I’m saying that not socializing ALONE can be done without harming anyone’s career. In my firm, we have a spectacular cafeteria with a prominent chef. People can and do eat in the cafeteria for business purposes, they can and do hold evening meetings in comfortable locations where people pass regularly, they can and do take meals in restaurants with other team members or with clients, vendors, experts. In my experience, the solo meals would be the anomaly. I don’t have a problem with them occurring, but there are plenty of opportunities to socialize that don’t involve solo meals.
In the location in which I work, there are often accommodations made for people of strong religious faith, some Christian and some not. It’s not a problem. At all.
Interesting. Of all the supervisors I’ve had, I’ve only had two who were terrible. Both happened to be males.
One had a serious issue paying me and other employees on time and act all huffy when we brought it up. A key reason why I quit on him after a few months.
Another offloaded so many of his job onto me so he could leave earlier which meant I ended up routinely working till 2-3 am. The straw which broke the camel’s back was when he tried to get me to illegally sign a document which only a licensed attorney was legally permitted to sign. Quit then and there as I wasn’t about to risk criminal sanctions for the sake of a job I already had serious issues with.
All the female supervisors I’ve had were good/excellent.
When women are in the minority, anything we do appears extreme. Competent women are described as brilliant, less competent women are described with other strong words. Same with any minority.
However, women are human being people types, just like men. Some bully and gossip, some coach and support. The worst backstabbing gossips I knew were men, but my career was in engineering so most people I knew were men.
I work in a female heavy industry where women get a bad rap for being difficult and I must say they do deserve it. I find while men can be critical or harsh they are more so doing it about your work, while women make it personal/about you. I find more of the women difficult than not. There have been numerous times where I have been in a meeting or work situation where the behavior is particularly bad and where younger/more junior women have come to me afterward to talk about it. And I have told them, let this be a lesson for you - that when you are farther in your career and are running meetings and departments and have people working for you, that you will never, ever speak to people or treat people in the way you just witnessed. It’s my little way of trying to change the culture. My own D has told me she wouldn’t want to work in my industry with all those b___hy women, but on the other hand doesn’t want to work in my DH’s industry with all the misogynist men!
I had no issue with men in my actual field, bosses, engineers, even the anti-social sorts. But whether a small startup or larger corporation in a startup phase, to the men I worked with, it mattered who could do their jobs, whom they could trust with both the work and that any issues brought to them were reasonably vetted.
Unfortunately, in the corporations, there were women put into managing roles as placeholders, with a boot of office politics involved, not based on their ability to either get the real (mgt) job done or a willingness to escalate for us, unless it benefitted them. Or even willing to stay after 5pm when it was critical. And when you advocated on behalf of a client (and these were big money billers,) they seemed to react personally: why are you bothering me? A shame.
Many times women have different expectations of a female boss than they would for a male boss, they expect them to act like friends and not like bosses. I have had any number of people work for me (I’m female) and far and away the most troublesome employees I have had were women who thought I would “understand” and “cut them some slack” when things in their lives ( kids, mothers, boyfriends, cramps, break-ups, etc.) impacted their work. Successful employees (both male and female) were the ones who would tell me early about the problem, offer a suggestion for how we could both be accommodated, and then left me the hell out of their private problems. I don’t have time to listen to your boyfriend troubles, cause I am too busy trying to cover the work you didn’t do while talking to your friends on the phone.
I suspect that if we just stated the facts about our bad bosses’ behavior, without referring to gender, people would be unlikely to guess whether they were male or female.
To the OP, I’ve never found women more difficult to work with than men.
As a side tangent, I think it’s a terrible idea for a male boss to have a late night dinner or work session alone with a female subordinate. There’s too much chance the invitation could be misinterpreted, or worse result in a false accusation. At startups, it might be unavoidable. If you’re effectively at the COO level of one of the largest corporations in the world, bring other people into the meeting or late dinner.