To not believe that female boss = bitch

[justwondering72]

Yesterday, while doing the ironing, I watched a Ted talk of Sheryl Sandberg talking about women in business. One of the things she spoke about was how men and women getting ahead are labelled differently ie that men are labelled as assertive, ambitious etc and women - while displaying the same types of behavior - are labelled as bossy, selfish etc. I nodded along.

Then I spoke to some people about it and was regaled with story after story of how mean and bitchy female bosses are! My SIL being bullied by two female bosses, a friend who felt that her female boss deliberately held her back to 'serve her time' in a position, while her male bosses were pushing her forward. Then to top it off, I went to a talk last night given by the ex-head of communications for a large EU body, a woman. Her attitude was that to get ahead she was 'one of the boys'. I asked her whether she felt it was possible to get to her very high level without being one of the boys... Her depressing answer was that she enjoyed working with teams of men and that most of the women she worked with at that level were unpleasant, difficult and seemed to feel that they had worked so hard to get where they were, they were not going to make it easier for anyone else.

So AIBU to agree with Sandberg, and to believe that women getting ahead in business are not 'bossy bitches', but rather they are labelled as such because they display ' male' characteristics of being ambitious and assertive?

Yes indeed all female bosses are exactly the same, they act in exactly the same way just as all male bosses are exactly the same. Once in power people lose all individuality and become clones.

Guess what? I'm being sarcastic because I am sick to death of hearing blanket stereotypes like this based on gender. Some women bosses may not be great and may even bully - some males bosses are the same.

Personally I have had a few female bosses and I can't fault one of them. I've quite liked my male bosses for the most part too. OH has a female boss right now and he is glad to have her, his previous male boss was useless.

Some people bully (regardless of gender) other people don't (regardless of gender). Propagating this kind of generalised bunkum helps no one least of all women.

• seriously heavy sigh -

So AIBU to agree with Sandberg, and to believe that women getting ahead in business are not 'bossy bitches', but rather they are labelled as such because they display ' male' characteristics of being ambitious and assertive?

Sorry OP in my exasperation at some responses I meant to say you are not being unreasonable.

I have had precisely one fabulous manager ever, who happened to be a woman (and a MNer ).

The bullying bosses who drove me to tears and indeed clinical depression were male.

Just saying.

you get shit people of both genders. so I fundamentally disagree.

I was very badly bullied by one female boss, basically she didn't like it when some of the clients preferred to talk to me rather than her and she made my life absolute hell for it. I ended up leaving because I was close to a complete breakdown. it was her company. Lost all my confidence and as a result, I don't think I have reached the career heights I could have done. From international business travel as a commodity trader, after a year off trying to get my head back on, I went to working as a groom mucking out stables. bit of a difference however you choose to measure it. I still muck out stables, but I do utilise the brain cells more these days. life has moved on of course and I am now nearly 50, so I'll never be getting back to where I might have been if things had been different.

I agree this is a rather sweeping generalisation.

I think I was a pretty good boss. Exacting but very fair and I always tried to remember that work is not the be-all and end-all and some things are more important. My company did have a culture of working hard and I expected my team to put the effort in but I also looked after them well. We had fun as well!

I was lucky - I never experienced sexism within my own organisation. But my work was client based and I did notice that some of my clients were not altogether comfortable with a capable and confident young woman taking on a relatively responsible role and making the sometimes tough decisions that went hand-in-hand with that. I had the odd comment from one or two of them that I am pretty sure they never would have made about my male colleagues.

So if female bosses are no better or worse to work for than men on the whole.....
Not sure what I am trying to say or think.
It means that women are no nicer than men when they have power?
Which means that women in Government may be no nicer than men?
And that The Apprentice is actually quite accurate?

In my experience in the work environment I've tended to find that if issues come up with worker relations there seems to be a woman involved.

A few years back I had a god awful female manager- she was clearly good at her job in terms of getting sales targets but regarding managing a team of people she was shocking.
Within 12 months pretty much all her team had left the company, including myself- best thing I ever did it was making me utterly miserable.

Other team members & managers within the company knew exactly what she was like, it was joked about & nobody wanted to be in her team.

Sadly in my experience, female bosses have behaved like bitches, however NOT all to them!
Personally I feel more comfortable working with men...don't have an issue with female seniors but definitely feel more on edge by comparison.

Where I work the people most likely to stab you right in the back as soon as you are no longer of use to them are all male. The only manager to openly shout and swear at me was male. Yet because they are men it is apparently fine to stroll into a meeting waving their metaphorical cocks about and acting like arseholes. In fact I have noticed that providing you are male getting a formal complaint made against you for bullying in no way limits your career prospects, but instead they are labeled as difficult but hard hitting managers. Do the same things as a woman however and you could pack your bags and take your great big 'what a bitch'sign with you.

All the managers who have helped me most in my career have been female, even when it has done them no favours they have stood by me, pushed me and supported me. I have never had a male manager who I have felt is on my side the way i have about my last couple of female bosses.

Not that that means anything in the grand scheme of things. It is just my experience where I work at the moment. I don't believe for a moment that this can then be read as meaning all male bosses are bastards and all female bosses are great.

Being a bloke, I guess this is a potentially toxic subject in which to participate. I currently work for a woman who is great, but I have had some horrors in the past and I work in an industry as a freelance where the immediate boss will more likely be a woman.

Of course some men are arses, perhaps as a bloke I find it easier to dismiss them in my mind. Perhaps that is society's sexism, that we expect women to be nicer or something. However, I'd argue that any awfulness of male bosses is an extension of that person's rotten personality anyway. With the awful female bosses, I've found that they might be quite nice and normal away from the job, but as a 'boss' they feel they have to adopt a nasty persona, a front. It is nothing to do with competence (they are competent) it is just the superior hierarchy doesn't sit well with them or their mindset. Same way as posh women tend to come across as haughtier and more annoying than posh blokes.

Also, bad blokes tend to be aggressive, so their behaviour is mentally upsetting. Bad women bosses tend to be passive-aggressive, give you the silent treatment, freeze you out all day even if you are sat right next to them. That is emotionally upsetting instead. The tone is different. But there is nothing you can take to HR about it because you cannot quote them on anything when they have said nothing to you all day, or when the nastiness is in the tone of voice. Unlike, in theory, with awful male bosses .

I have also personally found that as a bloke if you ask these woman bosses a question to clarify your task, or just consult with them, they act as if you are trying to knock them off their perch or trick them. This even means they almost want to send you away even more confused than fefore. A bloke will be delighted that you are conferring with them and not just doing your own thing.

The female bosses I've enjoyed working for were chatty throughout the day so you could just drop in a question and it would not seem like some intrusion.

Just to add- really I was being bullied by this female boss, I tried keeping my head down & just getting on with the job but this backfired.

I suppose I should have fought back but it's very difficult when you're in a junior position and relatively new. Sadly, my personal perception is that females are more inclined to bullying behaviours whether they intend to be or not.

I think it would make such a massive difference to the work place in general if more people, male and female, were more willing to work as a team, rather than spending their entire working life trying to make themselves look good and everyone else look bad. In the one big business that I worked for, team work was non existent, every day was a battle, and it was taken for granted that you should always blame a mistake on the most junior member of the team, that was just 'how it worked'. It was my first 'real' job and I worked there for years. It wasn't until I experienced other workplaces that I could see what a toxic environment it was. If people were more accepting of others strengths and weaknesses, and pulled together, there would be much less need for backstabbing amongst staff, because people wouldn't live in terror of being found to have made a mistake. And everyone makes mistakes, everyone.

I worked in an industry, part of which was engineering, so traditionally male dominated. the company, in order to show just how good they were, promoted several women to managerial positions. It was a disaster. Only one had done the job, so knew what was what. The others were absolute horrors, discipline cases were raised left, right and centre. Mainly because they didn't understand the job - which everyone knew, and wouldn't take advice in case it made them look small. They should never have been put in that position, and when this was pointed out to the company concerned, they said they were doing the right thing bringing women into engineering. This would have been true if the women they had brought in were interested.

This thread is making me want to weep.

Bullies are bullies, no matter what their gender.
Good bosses are good bosses, no matter what their gender.
Bad bosses are bad bosses, no matter what their gender.

Couple of weeks ago I switched the telly off in disgust when George Galloway said that because Margaret Thatcher was a terrible person, there shouldn't be any attempt to drive up the number of women in politics.

Turns out George was riding the wave of popular opinion. Who knew?

This thread is making me want to weep.

I'm glad it's not just me.

There is an another angle. I've been bullied; actually proper, time off work, mental breakdown bullied by three men, occasionally working alone, but regularly working together to attack me. It was sometimes overt, and sometimes snide, difficult and manipulative. I reported all of it. Nothing was done. Where I work is an old-boy's network, and I'm considered less valuable than they are.

The idea of me turning around and saying; 'I'll never work with another man again!' is nonsensical. I'll have no choice, simply because women are massively underrepresented in management. I won't have the luxury of shopping around for all those masses of jobs that come up with female managers.

So if you get bullied by a woman, you can get burnt and swear off. If you're bullied by a man, to be frank; tough.

(Also, I wouldn't refuse to work for any man due to these three - I'm not under the impression that they equate to All Men.)

The boss who bullied me the worst (and has form for this) happened to be black. I am not exactly going to go around saying this means black people shouldn't be bosses.

My boss is female. She isn't bitchy or mean, she may be quietly assertive but that's good, she is supportive without being intrusive and she appreciates life is a balance and her staff work better if they have a bit of flexibility for home and personal stuff. Shame more bosses aren't like her.

Good bosses are good, bad bosses are bad.

I think that the 'women are X' stories are examples of confirmation bias. People's underlying expectations lead them to note behaviour that fits the stereotype.

I also think that there is something in the argument that women are often conditioned not to be leaders, so feel put off by women in that position, often without even realising that is why they feel uncomfortable.

I worked for a very demanding, direct, sometimes overly blunt boss. Who I got on with brilliantly. I can imagine that if this boss had been female, she would have been subject to all the 'bitch' labelling. It happened to be a man, so instead he made senior management.

I've also worked for/been junior to a number of insecure, undermining blokes - some whose behaviour I only realised much later, when other people pointed it out to me. I think quite a few men find it hard to accept that women could be brighter and/or more competent than them, in all honesty.

I agree with motherinferior.

The whole woman = black thing is a bit misleading imo; women and men can be said to have certain respective characteristics while you are on dodgy ground suggesting black people do, unless of course you single them out for positive traits, in which case all is good supposedly. Some blacks do have group characteristics but imo that is only due to culture ie nationality, same as labelling the French or Italians. I mean Africa is a huge continent let alone looking at the Caribbean. But I think some from Ghana might have certain ways of behaving, not in common with someone from South Africa.

I mean, ads on telly show the woman as lord of the household cleaning while the bloke is an idiot. A bit sweeping but sort of acceptable with some humour. A white tenant suggesting the black tenant is a hopeless case - then you have trouble! So imo it's not the same.

See Professor I absolutely refute that men and women do have respective characteristics. I think that's societal bollocks.

I don't believe that women are more nurturing than men, I don't believe that men are smarter than women. The only absolute points of difference I believe in are ability to bear children and, I suppose, physical strength. That's it. Neither of which are needed to be a boss.

In the same way as if you dropped your person from Ghana into South Africa, they may initially be puzzled by some cultural norms, but they will pretty soon learn new ones. Character isn't fixed, it's formed.

I don't think women have some kind of chromosomally-dictated 'characteristic' of being bitchy, undermining and insecure.

I have been working for over 30 years. In that time I have had lots of bosses, some good and some bad. I can only think of 4 women bosses who were OK to work for, and only about 2 men who weren't. Perhaps it's me, but the vast majority of female bosses I have had have been horrible. The last 2 female bosses really affected my self esteem and stress levels. Luckily I was moved sideways and now have a lovely supportive male boss again.