An Even Playing Field?

Vice President for Global Online Sales and Operations, Chief Economist at the World Bank, Chief of Staff for Robert Rubin (Sec. of Treasury during the Clinton Administration) and Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. One of these titles would likely fulfill the average businesswoman. But for the Harvard educated badass Sheryl Sandberg, these titles only make up a fraction of her resume.

Ever since watching Sheryl Sandberg’s speech at the TED Women conference last December, I have been intrigued and motivated by what she said. When the The New Yorker arrived last week I was pleased to find the feature article titled, A Woman’s Place: Can Sheryl Sandberg Upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?” I suggest that everyone read the article. In pushing women to strive for C-Level positions, Sandberg’s message to women is direct. 1. “Sit at the table.” 2. “Make sure your partner is a real partner.” 3. “Don’t leave before you leave.”

As a woman looking for work I have my opinions. I think it would be exciting to see more women striving to sit on boards, to be heads of state, and to have that corner office. Yet we desperately need more men to root for this. I immediately think of examples that demonstrate how far we still have to go.

1. Only one of the Sale Representatives I supported at my previous job was a woman. One of the Sales Engineers described her as “aggressive and that turns customers off.” Well, in the 10 months I worked there, she was the only person who sold anything. Confident, well spoken, go-getter, and passionate in a man equates to rock star but a woman gets tagged as “aggressive”. So was she aggressive? No, she was great at her job.
2. It’s 2011 and I had a man give me this advice about sales, “you have legs, use them.” Now this man was a special breed of prick so his opinion was of little value to me. Nevertheless, you see my point.

In Sandberg’s TED speech she says, “Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women”. I agree with this. Competitive women are labeled as in-your-face, a little less “lady like”, maybe even colder. But a man who closes the big deal with the State Department is just doing his job. As a side note, I certainly don’t think all men have this barbaric mindset. I just think there is still a pretty large gender gap. Thankfully I don’t live in my grandmother’s generation where you had the choice between nursing school and no school. And thankfully I always have one good man behind me, my dad. He has raised two strong women to be strong women. We just need more men like him in the business world.

…And we need more men like Cosmo Kramer who admire women who can “bring home the bacon and fry it in the pan.”