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August 5, 2005
Chivalry not dead, it's been renamed
Benevolent Sexism, and if you're not watching it can bite you, at least if you're a working woman. Tulane University has studied women who flirt or use other sexual behaviors to advance their careers, and discovered that, on average, women who engage in these practices earn less and are promoted less than their non-flirtatious counter parts. (Read USA Today article) Of course, my mind immediately draws the parallel that women who feel compelled to use their femininity to further themselves must be lacking confidence in their own professional abilities. Or could it be their supervisors perceive a lack of competency due to their reliance on what Donald Trump would call "God given assets". But where exactly does the line fall between when it's ok to be a woman, and when it's not? Isn't flirting in the eye of the beholder?
Executive coach Debra Benton points out in this article the most innocuous of coments from the woman's perspective can be interpreted as teasing from the man's perspective. I was recently asked by a male co-worker if I'd ever used my blue eyes to get out of trouble. How I answered does not matter, I'd already been tried and convicted by a brown-eyed jury. The incriminating blue eyes were futile in arguing that people with blue eyes don't consider them special, and except for the rare occasion when we're filling out drivers license applications, don't think of them at all.
According to the Tulane researchers, we should use caution in allowing a man to open doors or lift a boxes we are capable of lifting, yet how many times are we accused of doing something "to prove we can do anything a man can"? One of my personal favorites is when a male comes through my area of the shop and sees me performing a task as a normal part of my job, something I am accustomed to doing several times in a shift, and he feels the need to jump in and take over. (I'm not talking about tasks which are above my physical capacity here, I know when I need to ask for assistance.) Generally the person "helping" me is in a position which would never require him to perform that duty, and as such, has very little idea of what works well and what does not. I'm enough of a lady to stand back and watch him struggle with a smile on my face, thinking "I would have been done already if you'd let me do it myself". Now I'll be wondering "Is this going to affect my next raise?"
Posted by Anna at August 5, 2005 10:00 PM