Women and Success

My sister sent me a link to this article today. I found it rang much too true to my ears. Aside from feeling that as a mom the best job I can have is raising my boys, I’ll admit that it didn’t break my heart to leave the world of industry for these exact reasons. Even in today’s world, I routinely made less than male counterparts at the same (or lower) levels. And my judgement was routinely questioned with behind the hand comments about “the time of the month” when I happened to disagree with the men in the room. And heaven forbid you should stand up for yourself…it would get ugly quickly. Even with all that said though, I much preferred my male bosses to the few female bosses I had. Because it seemed as if to maintain their position, the women with power felt they had to forgo any attempt to be likable, where as the men could at least still have a modicum of respect for their employees and still be seen as a good boss.

Now that I’m out of the corporate world, I do still see some of it happening within other groups. I’m the primary teacher of the co-ed small group my husband and I started at our church. But the name on the folder and in the small group flyer listed as the leader is his. And we’ve had a few couples leave after visiting and realizing that I was the one primarily doing the teaching (and it’s not as if I lecture, it’s a very collaborative, discussion based class. I just happen to be the one who brings the questions most of the time.) And I even see it with the leaders of all women groups (I’m thinking of the MOPS group I was part of for a while, and even VBS committees.) Throw in the frequent disdain working moms have for stay-home (or heaven forbid, homeschooling!) moms and vice versa and sometimes I wonder why it is we can’t all find a way to respect and support the success of one another, even encourage it, without acting as though one person’s success diminishes my own chances for having some. Because really, I think that’s at the root of it.

I’ve been struggling some with this (perhaps tangentially) as a writer. I see writers who are always promoting themselves, tweeting their positive reviews, talking about how they made so-and-so’s summer reading list, that kind of thing. And I have to admit that my initial instinct is annoyance. Now, I don’t happen to see a lot of male writers feeds, so I don’t know if they do it (and if they do, if I would find it as annoying), but there’s definitely a part of me that feels that so much bragging is not ladylike. But it is, most likely, a recipe for success. After all, you can’t get new readers if they don’t know you’re out there. And really, what’s the harm in letting people know that other people have liked what you did? There isn’t any. So I have to ask myself, am I somehow feeling that their success diminishes my own chances? It’s not a pretty thing to think is possible. I want to believe I’m better than that.