Women are not hard to work with.
First, a disclaimer. I have never had a woman boss.
Second, an apology. Apparently yesterday 8th of March was International woman’s day. I apologies to all the ladies here, I missed it.
However, I was alerted to the day by two things.
One was an article by Marta Henriques. The other was a radio programme on the BBC.
Marta’s article applauded the day.
The radio show was interviewing a woman who had experienced male resentment at her being his superior. He considered he, as a man, should automatically be her superior. The programme went on to explain how some men consider women in senior positions to be cold and difficult to work with.
As I already said, I have never had a woman boss.
However, I have worked with several women who could have had a favourable or unfavourable effect on my sales career.
I spent many years on the selling side of the printing industry. This involved dealing with advertising agencies. For some reason, in the past, some advertising agencies decided to replace male print buyers with female buyers. I have no idea why this happened, but I would guess they were cheaper than men.
Now I am not going to start criticising all the male buyers I have worked with over the years. The majority of them were easy to work with, except the small majority who played alpha male to my beta male. But this was an ego problem for them, not for me.
Of course, for obvious reason, women buyers could not play the alpha male role, nor did they try the alpha female role. I found them to be as professional as their male counterparts, more so in some cases.
Another thing I experienced when working with women buyers was their acceptance that I may have had more experience in the printing industry than they did. And they would some time ask for my advice. And, shock, horror, they took it. Something I rarely encountered with male buyers.
Towards the end of my selling career, I became a freelance sales agent and dealt with many women in senior buying positions in the direct marketing and publishing businesses. I always found them open to ideas and very professional. I worked with most of them for many years.
I found all of these women easy to work with.
So I have something to say to men who believe their gender gives them the right to rule the workplace. The reason the women occupy the senior position above you is because they are better than you.
Get over it and get on with your work.
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