I had to look back through my careers to realize I had five female bosses. Three of them get a thumbs up from me. My first female boss probably got her sales job due to her looks, and I think she was the only one who wanted the supervisor job. I worked from a satellite office and rarely spoke to her. Another boss admitted to all of us that “people don’t like me” and I could see why…tactless, tolerated no mistakes and excuses, very negative, gossipy, and a poor trainer. She hired me to do one job then I discovered all she wanted me to do was data entry all day long.
One female boss was hard on me when I first started. Eventually she respected my work and we became friends. Soon she was telling me confidential information about management and her supervisor. I was the only one who was following “who’s who in the zoo” and kept it to myself for months. She finally gave her two weeks notice, and her boss fired her on the spot, and made her clean out her desk in front of her entire department. I don’t think they would have done that to a man. The woman who replaced her was very respectful to me and I think it was because of her battles with some of the women.