(The title of this post is a Comment to Halley’s Suitt’s well-written piece.)
My thanks to Blog Sisters colleague Denise Howell who quoted a section other than what follows from an excellent article by Margaret Heffernan in the August edition of Fast Company: The Female CEO ca. 2002.
I’m using the following quote because it describes just one of the many effects that sexist male attitudes have on women who really don’t want to be treated as ‘babes’ (well, except maybe in some playful private moments.)
‘Neutron Jack’ Welch and ‘Chainsaw Al’ Dunlap may have inspired men, but macho leadership styles continue to alienate women. The Boom Boom Room of Smith Barney was more luxurious than the cubicles of software startups, but I’ve talked to too many women in both environments who have been — and who continue to be — subjected to routine sexual harassment. I’ve even unwittingly hired some of the perps — liberated guys who definitely know better.
The truth is, the macho exhilaration of coding through the night holds no charm for female engineers. For women executives, racing rental cars around the hotel parking lot is not a cheap thrill. But you will find women enduring these events — sometimes even competing to join them — because they know that it’s where the important information always surfaces. When women are asked to name the most significant factors that are holding them back from advancement, the top two answers are ‘exclusion from informal networks of communication’ and ‘male stereotyping and preconceptions of women.’
Nuff said.