Warning, I have a small point of anger to vent. I always fly Virgin when I can, I find their service excellent, flights smooth and seating quite comfortable. I was reading their inflight magazine on a flight recently when I came across an article called “Nice girls finish last” which was about a book supposedly to inspire women in their career. One of the suggestions was the following:
Emphasising your feminity can dimish your credibility — which regardless of the context is a pretty awful thing to say. The fact that in many workplaces it can be quite true is more a reflection on backwards workplaces than on women being inherintly unable to be credible unless they act like a man.
There is this horrible habit by women in western societies to complete block their femininity in technical, political, corporate and scientific roles, as they often get labelled masculine anyway and it is the easier road. I was going down this road as well, but then realised actually I really like being a woman. I am proud of my femininity and the terms feminine and strong are not mutually exclusive. The hilarious thing is that none of the fields mentioned above are particularly masculine of themselves, they are just seen as jobs for men. Until we completely get rid of this attitude that these jobs are “untraditional” roles for women, then there is going to continue to be a lifetime of disincentives for girls to get into these roles, and discrimination if they do. What breaks my heart the most is the lack of opportunities presented to girls for these roles, although that is starting to change. I feel very lucky that I had the environment that I grew up in. I thought that women in ICT that had a hard time were the minority until I got into the work place. It really opened my eyes.
I have not yet read the book, and some of the other tips were fairly good. I’m going to get it to see whether this is the feel of the book, or whether Virgin has just managed to pick a pearl that is ridiculous. The book is called “Nice girls get the corner office: 101 unconcious mistakes women make that sabotage their careers” by Lois Frankel.
The way I see it, if you sabotage yourself to get ahead in your career, then you are not really ahead. Women shouldn’t have to hide their feminine nature to be taken seriously, and while we continue to do so, we are simply maintaining an outdated status quo for our children.