Women Penalised for being ‘Angry’ but Men Rewarded for Same Trait …It’s Enough to Make you Furious

New research published in the Psychological Review, corroborates a body of evidence that we see angry men and women very differently. Men expressing anger in the workplace are given higher status and seen more positively than men who express sadness. One guess who gets penalised for being angry? That’s right, it’s professional women.

Interestingly, people are also likely to attribute his anger to external circumstances, like others being obstinate or him being in a difficult situation. On the other hand we see women who show anger much more negatively, plus we attribute her anger to internal factors such as: “She’s just a bitter person” or “She’s out of control”. This view was taken whether the woman in question had high or low seniority at work, and I think partially explains why women are not as frequently seen as ‘leadership’ material.

This issue was highlighted during Hilary Clinton’s run for the presidency, when the Chair of the Republican National Committee chastised her as being ‘too angry’ to be a viable presidential candidate. As Dowd responded in an article entitled “Who’s Hormonal: Hillary or Dick?” in the New York Times: They are casting Hillary Clinton as an Angry Woman, a she- monster melding images of Medea, the Furies, harpies . . . . This gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew.

The same has happened more recently against Michelle Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate when Newsweek magazine ran a wide-eyed cover shot of her with the title “Queen of Rage.”

Anger, like sadness, pride and happiness are all normal feelings in the modern workplace – but we limit the range of emotions a woman can display before penalising her. Whereby we actually reward men who show anger, when it comes to women we assume she is not competent to handle challenging workplace situations, therefore limiting her progression. Women who showed anger were consistently given lower status and lower wages than unemotional women and angry men.

I also think it’s a pretty poor indictment that we reward angry men above sad men, again limiting to a certain degree what characteristics we ascribe ‘successful’ men. One way around being labelled an angry woman,  is to point out how any anger is situational and external, such as a difficult boss, being kept out of the loop, a period of organisational change.

The research indicated that if women breadwinners can show their reaction is due to these external factors, in the same way we assume them to be for men, the prejudice against her completely disappears – indeed doing this for another woman you see unfairly labelled is a great act for the sisterhood, and helps people reshape their assumptions about angry, working women.

Cubicles for Cryers: Is Crying in the Office Letting Down Our Gender?

As a specialist who works with women in male dominated fields, I have heard my fair share of stories about crying on the job. That’s why I was so pleased to hear Women’s Hour tackle the issue of crying at work.

I was even more delighted to hear my good friend Vanessa Vallely, founder of www.wearethecity.com being interviewed. Vanessa gave her impression about emotions running high across the city, and even spoke candidly about the times she had become emotional at work.

I recognised myself and many of my clients in her story of working all hours on a specific project away from her family for 38 days straight, only to be told she wasn’t getting the promotion she expected. She talked about what it felt like to receive that news;  “You  could almost hear me crack.”  Vanessa pointed out “excessive use of any emotion, anger, passion, tears…” was seen negatively in most companies.

She agreed with the host Jenny Murray, that women are much more likely to get negatively labeled “emotional” rather than “passionate” which is a more respectable term for the same set of behaviours. They discussed research suggesting that most women felt if they cried at work, they were letting down other women.  They worried they were pandering to the stereotype of working women as highly strung and too sensitive at work.

While it is never advisable to get a reputation for being a cryer or “overly-sensitive”, I think crying has been over-criticised as a career killer. I think that while crying probably is best done behind closed doors when at work, it shouldn’t be held against someone. If anything, it just displays how strongly they feel about a decision an much they care.

My coaching clients invest an inordinate amount of time and mental energy to their careers. They love what they do and are always striving to get better. They read on their subject, confer with colleagues, often give up their evenings and weekends to their career. When they have a knock, it’s only human to take it hard. To tell them “not to take it personally” is unrealistic and dismissive of their dissapointment.

On the bright side, a unexpected benefit to a wee cry in the Ladies is how you can often find support from those you don’t know, but who recognise the struggle and reach out. A client I’ll call Sarah, once told me how in breaking down in a cubicle after an argument with her new boss, she escaped to the loo but ran into a colleague, Moira, in another team who reassured her that Sarah’s boss was a ‘known idiot”.

Sarah said ” Just hearing he had that reputation made me realise I couldn’t take it so personally, that others also found him difficult. Plus Moira and I began to have coffee every month and I still am in touch with her, sharing our crazy stories about work, four years later. She became an ally when I didn’t even know I was looking for one! For more tips on handling office politics click here.

Women Good at Closing Ranks to Gain Upper Hand

According to a new study to be published by the Association for Psychological Science, women may not be less competitive than men – they may just be using a different strategy. The study involved volunteers playing a game against two other competitors which accumulated points for money. The participants were given three options of how to play; by themselves, with one other partner forming an alliance against the third, or by all competing together and splitting the profits. With these instructions there was no difference between men and women in the number of times they chose to form an alliance. However, when some of the volunteers were confronted with the possibility of social exclusion by being told that if they selected the compete alone option they would “run the risk of being excluded by the two others” female volunteers chose the alliance option more often than men. The option of preemptive social exclusion was more favourable to women, despite the worry of alienating others, than being excluded themselves, whereas men were more concerned with being beaten. Read more stories on risk taking and office politics here.

Have Your Office Affair – But Keep It Clean!

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I thought it best to look at a subject close to our hearts – office romance. In years past, the simplest thing to say about office romance was just “don’t do it”. However, with more hours devoted to the office than ever, that advice is becoming increasingly naive. I met my husband at work, and know lots of friends who have had serious relationships with people they met through their jobs. Office romances can work

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Sure, we’d like to meet our future mate at a drinks party or via an introduction by a good friend. But most working women I know lament they don’t have enough time to see those good friends in the first place, let alone the people they’d like to set us up with! I just can’t see how infrequent blind dates via match.com are going to have the same pull as daily banter with that special someone from accounts when you are meant to be discussing excel spreadsheets. With that in mind, I decided to offer three of the best tips for having an office romance, but keeping it clean.

  • Check the red tape: Before you take an office flirtation further, look at your company manual to see not only what type of relationships are condoned and when you have to notify HR. Some relationships will be legal no go areas (direct line of reporting, actual or potential clients, etc). Also check to see what is considered sexual harassment, to make sure you don’t get into hot water.
  • Be discreet: Take it from me, you and your paramour will often be sussed out by colleagues even if you think you are keeping it on the down low. Don’t kid yourself, you are not fooling anyone. Other women notice subtle changes between colleagues and will resent the woman in particular if they think you are hiding something. Date for several months before you announce it to the world. If it’s a fling you don’t want to have proclaimed your undying devotion to someone who dumps you via a post-it note after a few weeks.
  • Seek distance: If you both think the relationship is worth holding onto, at least one of you should seek a reassignment to another project, division, office or even company. It’s hard for colleagues to work with couples and also makes you vulnerable to unflattering speculation about how you earned that last promotion. Seeking a secondment or a transfer to another team helps mollify the situation and also allows you to see if the relationship will grow past a convenient water cooler distraction.

If you want a more highbrow, but entertaining explanation about the attraction of office sex check out this video clip of Alain de Botton, who talks a little about what he found when researching The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work Alternatively you might enjoy the book “Office Hours” by Lucy Kellaway, a funny novel about romance in the work place. For more stories on Office Politics click here.

Knowing When To Use ‘Masculine’ Traits Gains Women More Promotions

As a woman in business you know the fine line you tread between being assertive and being labelled as ‘hard nosed’, ‘aloof’ or worse. The good news is that by self monitoring these ‘masculine’ traits and knowing when to use them, researchers have found you have a better chance of promotion than other women and surprisingly, men. The British Psychological Society has just published research by Olivia O’Neill, assistant professor of management at George Mason University and her co-author, Charles O’Reilly, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The study followed 132 business school graduates, of which 43 percent were women. They assessed them at the beginning of their studies and again seven to eight years after they graduated. They found that the women who were able to monitor a social situation and respond using ‘masculine’ behaviour, received three times as many promotions as women who didn’t have this skill. They also received one and half times more promotions than men! Being adept at using this skill, helps woman in business balance ‘masculine’ traits associated with competence without the risk of losing ‘likeability’ if they behave against gender stereotyping. The key message to take from this research is that you can be assertive and even aggressive, but first you need to learn to read situations and act accordingly. For more artciles on office behaviour and politics click here.

Is Ladette and Celebrity Culture Destroying Young Women’s Confidence?

Dame Patricia Hodgson, a Cambridge University academic has claimed that young women are so sexualised and image-conscious they lack intellectual confidence, believing they are less intelligent than boys. She says ‘Quite a few women are held back by fear of failure and lack of confidence. It stops them fulfilling their potential’ and she blames the ‘celebrity culture’ that judges them on their looks and frowns upon academic achievement. Young women need positive role models not just models and celebrities. A recent survey to determine the future 100 most powerful women had only a few academics and business women, much of the list was made up by women famous for the sake of being famous, not for having achieved something, a sad reflection on what influences young women today. Dame Hodgson also mentioned the number of girls who approached her during this year’s Freshers’ Week to say they thought they ‘had made it to Cambridge by mistake’ - could this be the beginning of Impostor Syndrome which many women in the workplace suffer with?