Gender Gap

Man, am I tired.  Tired of fighting through the gender gap.  Tired of having my complaints, concerns, frustrations and disappointments be dismissed as the emotional weakness of a woman. 

Yesterday one of my peers, another executive on the team, and I had a conversation.  Someone on his team was rude and disrespectful to me in a meeting last week and again on the phone yesterday.  The executive told me that he had talked to the guy, and would do so again.  He’d ‘handled it.’  Then, he told me how he had handled it;  he asked the staffer to ‘be nice to Val right now.’ And he said: “I specifically remember my words to him; use all your charm and powers of persuasion with Val to get what you want.”  What the hell is that?

Not:  ”Val’s an executive of the company and a direct report to the CEO.  She has 30 years of business experience and you will show her respect.”  Not:  ”She’s a member of this team and a leader of the company and you will show her respect in front of others and in private.”  Nope.  Nothing about respect or about my role.  Just “be nice”.  Like that doesn’t undermine my authority and position me as some sort of emotional wacko.     

I’ll be 46 years old on Sunday.  And I’ve been working and leading people since I was 16 years old. I’ve run $50MM divisions of companies.  I’ve managed international teams of nearly 100 people.  I’ve keynoted at industry events.  I’ve delivered results.  I’ve mentored junior staffers into exceptional leaders now working at CA, Microsoft, IBM, Deloitte & Touche and dozens of small, successful companies.    I’ve integrated 10 acquisitions into the acquiring company.  I’m not ineffective, immature or stupid.

I’m good at my job.  I have the ear of our CEO.  My work is valued and valuable to him and to the company.

And yet my fellow exec tells his team to ‘be nice to Val right now’ and to ‘charm her’.  Yes, I’m emotional right now–  I buried my father 3 weeks ago.  But that doesn’t discount 30 years of professional leadership and experience.     It doesn’t mean I’m not an executive of the company. 

I am discouraged and tired. And I have to fight. I have to be vigilant every day.  One of the people who is supposed to watch my back throws me under the bus.  And I think if he were reading this right now he would be surprised I feel this way.  Surprised that there was anything wrong with what he did.   And I’d be dismissed as ‘over reacting’.  It’s possible I’m being unfair. And maybe I think to little of him. I hope so.  I’ll find out when I talk to him about this.   

But still and all, it makes me wonder if he’s read the American Management Association study that shows corporate profits increase when women sit at the executive table. (The study compared all-male senior management teams to mixed-gender senior management teams and found women made a significant positive difference to the financial results of the company, including improved gross sales revenues, improved market share (38% versus 61%) and overall improved net operating profits. )

Maybe he’s okay with having only 6% of all Fortune 1000 companies in the year 2016 be led by women, as cited by Tucks University.  Maybe he doesn’t want his daughter to be a leaders.  Maybe he thinks it’s okay for someone to talk to the his sisters or daughter or wife this way.  Maybe he still thinks women should be in the kitchen.  I have no idea.  

I just know I’m fighting a battle to be seen as equal, valuable and worthy of respect.  And it’s not just at the company I work for now and it’s not just me.  My women friends are CEOs.  They are directors at public companies.  One is the chief of staff to the CEO of 10,000 person company.  My women friends manage hundreds of millions of dollars for a wealthy US family and they run engineering teams for world-class software.  And they deal with this every day.  

It’s an epidemic.

People wonder why Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are such ‘bitches.’   I think they’re just tired of it all.