Hard Questions: Why won’t we work for women?

By Elizabeth Harrin (London)

You don’t have to look too far into management research to uncover that all the statistics point to one thing: we prefer to work for men. When Ella Edmonson Bell asked her MBA students whether they would rather work for a woman or a man, most of them said they’d prefer a male boss. When ForbesWoman asked their Facebook community the same thing, the answers were the same. Admitting our preferences doesn’t seem to be a problem – we’re happy to confess that we want to work for men – but why do we feel like that in the first place? What’s so problematic about working for a woman?

“One way of explaining this phenomenon is gender schemas,” says Dr. Birute Regine, a developmental psychologist and author of Iron Butterflies: Women Transforming Themselves and the World. “A gender schema is an unconscious cultural assumption we hold about men and women. One schema is that women are first assumed incompetent and therefore not leaders, whereas for men it’s the opposite – that they are first assumed competent until proven otherwise.”

The problem with ideologies of this type is that we don’t necessarily know that we have them, and they tend to be pervasive. “Both women and men hold these assumptions,” adds Dr. Regine. “So perhaps women prefer male bosses because they assume they are more competent, and don’t give women the same benefit of the doubt or confidence going in. Women bosses may not be as supportive because, even though they know that they themselves are competent, these schema lead them to assume that other women are not.”

“A host of studies show that negative and positive stereotypes of women and minorities are held as strongly, or nearly as strongly, by members of those groups as by outsiders,” explains Dr. Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at the Stanford School of Engineering. “So despite pleas to the contrary, the negative behaviour and attitudes of women toward women are often the same as men.” Essentially, whatever men think about our abilities in the workplace, we think the same about other women – although we might cut ourselves as an individual a bit of slack.

Fewer female role models

Part of these judgements come from the fact that we have more male role models in positions of authority – we’re just used to seeing men in the top jobs. As men hold more of the board and C-suite positions, chances are most women will have worked for men in the past and become accustomed to working for them. We might deduce that working for a woman would mean a different leadership style – and therefore a change on our part as we would have to get used to working in a different way.

Debbie Mandel, a stress management expert, believes there’s yet another reason why women prefer to work for men. “Women tend to compete – especially with other women,” she says. There’s less competition working for (or with) another man than there is with another woman. This could be felt particularly keenly in situations where there are only a few senior women, which could imply that there are fewer ‘places’ for women at the top, or that those senior women might be tokens and not really high performers. “Also, many women befriend colleagues and superiors which blurs the border between boss and employee, creating an uncomfortable chain of command,” Mandel adds. “Therefore women have trouble navigating relationships where other women are in a dominant position. The stereotype is out there and in some cases holds true as stereotypes do that women do not affirm other women who are ascending the ladder – there is jealousy and fear.”

Be perfectly assertive

The best bosses, according to Professor Sutton, are those who manage the fine line between assertiveness and aggressiveness. “They are in tune – on a moment to moment basis – with their people, pushing just hard enough, backing off at the right times, and so on,” he says. He calls this being ‘perfectly assertive’. “Arguably, as suggested by a lot of research on gender dynamics, sustaining this balance between too much and too little assertiveness in the eyes of followers is much harder for male than female bosses, because the norms for acceptable behaviour for women in the workplaces allow a much narrower range of behaviour than for men,” he adds.

“Becoming conscious of the assumptions we make would be a big step for each of us individually and collectively in changing these stereotypes,” says Dr. Birute. However, it’s not easy to become aware of something like this when you are immersed in it. Try to step out of your behavioural assumptions; when you are recruiting or carrying out performance reviews for managers, think about whether you expect the same from your male and female colleagues. Always address the behaviour, and not the gender, if you need to challenge (or reward) any of your employees.

“As my colleague Maggie Neale at Stanford is always saying, and my wife too, the line between being a boss who is seen as a doormat and seen as a bitch is much narrower for men than women,” says Professor Sutton. “And since men and women hold the same negative stereotypes about women – a lot more women (in the eyes of both) veer over the ‘doormat’ and ‘bitch’ boundaries. So a lot more female bosses will be seen as too assertive or not assertive enough.”

Professor Sutton says that this is one of the biggest challenges for female bosses. He recommends that managers try to foster an environment where unacceptable behaviour is identified and confronted. “General awareness and strong norms where people are encouraged to call each other on their sexist responses in the moment are most powerful. Note that some self-advocacy by women bosses also can help, but having seen female bosses ask their colleagues, ‘Would you react the same way to a pushy man,’ unfortunately, provokes the conclusion that she is being too pushy.”

Being perfectly assertive means treading a fine line, but until we can sweep away the stereotypes about women not being as good managers as men, it’s about the only trick we have to start convincing women that working for each other is no bad thing.