Women prefer working for male bosses

[DamsonInDistressss]

It seems a common argument that the lack of women in senior management positions is a result of the patriarchy. However, I was surprised to read in a recent thread on here that the majority of women prefer female bosses and are more likely to collaborate with a man than with another woman. I can't find that thread so am reposting here.

If true, this is surely a prime example of us women shooting ourselves in the foot and must be a serious contributor to male dominance.

(in my view, empiric evidence of...there being 2 female bullies in Lass's firm)

And I meant no more than that. I have not said bad behaviour is universal. I have said several times that of the small number of outstandingly bad bosses I have come across there were more women than men.

I have not said anything of the kind resembling your option A that "women as a class are inherently flawed etc etc".

My objection to certain posts is the dismissal out of hand of the veracity of the articles in opening post and the feeble excuses being made for poor management by women.

The posts you see as "sneery" are a response to the excuses being made for bad management by women.

"the feeble excuses being made for poor management by women."
Posts seeking to examine the context for such poor management (if it exists) are not the same as individual excuses, and we are all too used to seeing any such investigation being couched in those terms. Including, unfortunately a possible attitude amongst successful women or managers themselves, which is the 'I achieved this through my merits, why can't the rest of you'.

Would people have the same responses do you think if the question had instead been 'white men or black men, which do you prefer as managers?..............................

You offer nothing other than ad hominem attacks

Unlike you Sunshine?

I am getting tired of your accusations of lying. Either stop it or report me to MN.

I said I don’t believe lass is a partner in a law firm. dey
lass as I explained earlier my posts have been about women as a class, not anecdata. No one has dismissed the op’s article out of hand, they have simply said, hang on a minute if this is true, what might be driving it.
I’ve asked you before and I’ll ask again, why do you think people might prefer male bosses? If it is simply that you believe they are better at being bosses can you explain why that is?

Ahem

It appears that this thread is turning into a slinging match, and we don't want to have to delete it, so can we try and keep it civil? It would be a shame to lose it when there are so many great, supportive posts buried within.

Peace and love...

Sunshine you have now accused me 3 times of lying. I will not respond to any more posts by you.

how convenient

why do you think people might prefer male bosses?

Personally, I think it's confirmation bias.
The same reason men might say women are bad drivers: they drive alongside hundreds of female drivers every day without noticing, or commenting, but when that one woman pulls out in front of them it sticks in their mind and and creates or reinforces their belief that women are bad drivers.
None of us would agree that women are inherently bad drivers.
I don't think women are inherently bad bosses, but that some people perceive that they are due to this same confirmation bias.
I also wonder if some women kind of expect male bosses to be, if not bad, an adversary, whereas they kind of expect female bosses to be a bit kinder, then when they aren't classify them as a bad boss.

Personal experience
Speech and language therapist: 5 different good female bosses
Teaching: 2 vile female bosses 1 good female boss 1 very manipulative female boss 2 good male bosses
Farming: I'm the boss
One of the vile head teachers almost broke me and others mentally and emotionally. She was a very insecure bully.
A mix of men and women in a workplace is always a good thing in my opinion. It diffuses a lot of nastiness.

This is how I see it.

In the workplace regarding managers. Men will always like men they think they can surpass but will dislike women who they can't surpass. They will dislike men they know they can't surpass, or who women like.

Women will like good men and will know they won't surpass them, but will dislike women who they can't surpass.

I conclude that attractive smart males are in fact disadvantaged in the workplace as are smart women, regardless of looks.

The problem is that we can all come up with a hundred just-so stories about why the surveys might come out that way, and those stories will be based on our existing beliefs about gender. But those beliefs also affect the way we answer those surveys. So the research a PP linked showing objectively that there's no gender difference in behaviour at work is the really important stuff, whereas polls, anacdata, and the narratives we come up with to explain them are all the same kind of noise.

In 30 years of work, I have seen many managers both above and below me. In total, more men than women, but enough to generalise.

Those managers have been good and bad. The very worst (and in two cases they were truly terrible) happened to be men. I have only had experience of decent to good female managers. But some of the very best were also men. I suspect that I have seen a broader range of competences in men because I have seen more male managers in aggregate than female ones.

I don’t believe for a minute that sex alone is any sort of predictor for managerial performance.

By the way, based on what I have read on this board over the years, I would be very happy to be managed by Lass!

I once reported to two managers on a job share who got on only slightly better than Lass and Sunshine.

That was extremely fun.

PS I believe you Lass

Lass - I agree with you. You made some very good points. wish the debate could have been more robust but sadly not.

At no point in this thread have I said that all women managers are rubbish or similar, despite the efforts of posters to say I did.

I do not have the answer as to why the respondents in the poll say they didn't want to work for a women. You would have to ask them.

Perhaps it is just gender bias. It is as illogical to assume that all women managers are rubbish as it is to assume that women managers will be more nurturing and understanding of family issues as some posters have done

Perhaps the respondents had a bad experience with a female boss and didn't want to repeat it.

In a discussion with a trainee who turned down a job with a female boss I was told it was the erratic, unpredictable and inconsistent behaviour of the boss which put her off.

I have no interest in discussing "women as a class" , especially as that seemed to be going nowhere other than to find excuses.

It is irrelevant to the employee victim that the bullying employer is a "victim of the patriarchy". If a woman wants to be treated as a grown up with responsibiliy for employees then deal with it and act like a grown up.

The over-zealous and pointless red pen revisals commented on do seem a particular female trait. In my experience men either accept stylistic variations or if the work requires major revisal just re-write a clean draft.

I see that Sunshine chose to use a "their" pronoun about me. I had asked her to not use masculine terms for me. I assume her use of "their" is to insinuate I am either a man or a trans woman. I am a natal woman and expect the appropriate singular female pronouns to be used.

The point made earlier about infantilising women managers struck a chord...The tendency to "blame" something outside of ourselves for our own behaviour...absolving me of personal responsibility and denying my own power and agency...

This from Lass...

It is irrelevant to the employee victim that the bullying employer is a "victim of the patriarchy". If a woman wants to be treated as a grown up with responsibiliy for employees then deal with it and act like a grown up

100%

I think it comes down the people themselves- some personalitys just don't jell as well as others, and if you've had one not so nice experience it can ruin perception of any others. My first office job was largely female run and it was unbearably bitchy, I'm now working for a company where senior bosses are men and middle management female but such a better environment!

melody, who is absolving female managers? Perhaps the problem is we are talking about two different things. I'm interested in discussing why 21% of women prefer a female boss, and only 5% prefer a male boss. I don't understand whether (a)You are either interested only in discussing individual bad female bosses that you know (a discussion that isn't really that interesting to me and which I can't usefully participate in as I dont know those individuals) and thus are taking any discussion of why male bosses are preferred as an "excuse". Or b) you are using all these examples to "prove" that the reason why male bosses are preferred is that objectively speaking, more females than males are bad bosses. Therefore, again, any discussion that doesn't accept this as an underlying premise is taken as "excusing" women. I don't believe that women are objectively worse than men - backed up by my own "empirical evidence" of seeing women (e.g. My mother, fellow trainees) judge women more harshly, as well as by research. Lass says she doesn't believe all women are bad bosses. But lass, melody, do you believe that more of them are than men - measured objectively, and without any bias? Now not talking about your two bullies, and maybe you don't want to answer the question since you're not interested in discussing women as a class? To be honest, it's not an exact analogy, but it's as if the op was a study showing more black men are in US prisons, the resulting discussion was all about individual black criminals people have known, and any attempt to discuss, for example, institutional racism, poverty, is taken as an excuse. "Cos racism, cos poverty".

And just to add to that, I've already said I find private practice law firms (corporate ones) toxic environments. I think the character traits to reach partner are such that the majority of them are not great bosses. I've been an "employee victim" myself. I just don't think the women are any worse than the men - and certainly not nowadays when you don't have to be quite as much of an outlier to be a female partner.

A PP made an important point which got lost in the sniping.

Imagine asking the same question about any of the other protected characteristics. Would you prefer to work for a white person or person of colour? Gay or straight boss? Person with or without disabilities? etc.

The question is loaded to begin with. It starts from the premise that there is something about those characteristics that affect their performance.

I thought feminism was all about the treatment of women as a class. And we are on a feminist board. So it’s odd that posters are so set on discussing individual cases rather than looking at the picture holistically.
I don’t really know how many times I can repeat that no one is excusing or condoning individual bad behaviour, but instead saying behaviour does not occur in a vacuum, what is the context and what might be causing this.
This is getting rather boring now.

Oops posted too soon.

The question is loaded to begin with. It starts from the premise that there is something about those characteristics that affect their performance....

This would be seen as immediately and obviously offensive for any other characteristic but sex seems to be fair game.

I agree jelly.

Lass its not a man. She is a woman. And she is a lawyer. She has been posting here since forever.

She is not a feminist. But she does have some feminist views.

I sometimes don’t agree with her, because I’m a feminist.

But for those of you who are doubting what she says, she is a lawyer and she is a woman.