Women Don't Ask
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personal characteristics are more likely to be seen as similar to negative
stereotypes about women’s characteristics.34 In a 1980 study, Madeline
Heilman confirmed this finding by asking a group of MBAs to rate po-
tential applicants for a hypothetical job. When less than 25 percent
of the applicant pool was female, the MBAs rated female applicants
lower (and also perceived them as more stereotypically feminine) than
they did when larger percentages of the pool were female—showing
that women are more likely to be devalued when their numbers are
relatively small.35
This means that the higher a woman rises in an organization, the
more likely she is to encounter stereotyped responses to her behavior—
because there don’t tend to be many women at the higher levels of
most organizations. There are of course exceptions—highly visible and
influential women who have achieved enormous success despite the
persistent discouragement encountered by so many others. But these
women are exceptions. A study by the economists Marianne Bertrand
and Kevin Hallock, which looked at the top five highest-paid executives
in firms of varying sizes between 1992 and 1997, found that women
held only 2.5 percent of these posts.36 In an article in Fast Company
magazine, Margaret Heffernan, a former CEO at CMGI, an umbrella
organization for several different Internet operating and development
companies, described encountering a young woman in an elevator
when she was at CMGI. After inquiring if she was indeed Margaret, the
young woman said, “I just wanted to meet you and shake your
hand. . . . I’ve never seen a female CEO before.”37 This was not 15 years
ago, but in the year 2000, and this woman’s experience, Heffernan
points out, is not unusual. “Most men and women in business have
never seen a female CEO—much less worked with one.”38
Another problem women encounter is that the more power and sta-
tus involved in a job, the more “masculine” the job is perceived to be—
and therefore, as the Schein Index studies show, the less likely people
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are to see women’s qualities as suitable for that work.39 As a result,
women may be perceived to be doing good work only as long as they
are toiling away at less important jobs. Once they qualify for and start
asking for more important, and therefore more “masculine,” jobs, their
work may begin to be devalued and their “personal style” may suddenly
become a problem. This could explain why the women who are sent to
the Bully Broads program usually hold high positions in their organiza-
tions—they’re vice presidents, chief financial officers, and senior part-
ners, all jobs that until recently were almost universally occupied by
men. Presumably, for a long time these women were thought to be
doing a good job, otherwise they wouldn’t have been promoted again
and again. But because the jobs they were doing were less important,
they were less identified as “masculine” jobs—and their presence in
those jobs posed less of a problem for their peers. Once they reached
positions of significant power in their organizations, positions that are
seen to be the province of men, their “style” became a problem.
Until she became CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a staunchly male com-
pany, Carly Fiorina’s work was highly regarded. Then, all of a sudden,
Fiorina’s “style” became an issue. As Adam Lashinsky wrote in a Novem-
ber 2002 issue of Fortune: “Internally, rumors began to swirl. She had a personal trainer and personal hairdresser at her beck and call. She’d
bought a new Gulfstream IV jet. She had her exercise equipment
flown on a separate plane. She treated employees imperiously. None of
this was true.”40 During the proxy fight that ensued when Fiorina de-
cided to merge HP with Compaq, she was portrayed in the media “as a
ruthless decision-maker—haughty and cocky.”41 Yet six months after
the proxy fight was settled, Lashinsky followed her around for a few
days and found her listening sympathetically to the concerns of a
group of employees, teasing a sales manager and his boss, and getting
an audience of “6000 sophisticated tech buyers eating out of her
hand.”42 The impression conveyed is of an engaged and capable man-
ager, not an arrogant, take-no-prisoners prima donna. Although one
might conclude that Fiorina is smart enough to conceal her ruth-
lessness, hauteur, and cockiness when there’s a reporter around, an-
other interpretation also seems possible: that in the almost exclusively
male world of proxy fights, where women hardly ever dare to tread, the
ugly and inaccurate rumors about her behavior were provoked more
by negative stereotypes aroused by her token status than by anything
specific that she said or did.
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Not Just Your Imagination
Although women may suspect that they’ve been the victims of negative
attitudes toward women, they can rarely prove it and often have no
recourse. But a few studies have at least confirmed that women’s suspi-
cions are correct. In one, the economist David Neumark sent men and
women with equally impressive backgrounds and reśumeś to apply for
jobs as wait staff in the upscale restaurants of Philadelphia. He found
that women were 40 percent less likely to get called for interviews and
50 percent less likely to receive job offers if they did get interviews.43
In an even more dramatic example, the economists Claudia Goldin and
Cecilia Rouse looked at symphony orchestra auditions. They found that
the use of a screen to hide the identity—and thus the gender—of audi-
tioning musicians increased by a full 50 percent the probability that a
woman would advance in the audition process. They also found that
the likelihood that a woman would win an orchestra seat was increased
by 250 percent when a screen was used. Goldin and Rouse credit the
switch to blind auditions as a major factor in the gains women made in
the top five U.S. symphonies between 1970, when women filled only
5 percent of the chairs, and the year 2000, when that number had
grown to 25 percent.44
In Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, Virginia Valian looked at
earnings and advancement in six occupations—sports, law, medicine,
business, academia, and engineering—and discovered that men earn
more money and attain higher status than women in each of these pro-
fessions. Although Valian conceded that many factors contribute to this
“sex disparity in income and rank,” she concluded that “gender always
explains an additional portion. Women are required to meet a higher
standard.”45 This requirement makes it harder for many women to ask
for and get what they want as freely and fairly as they should. And
given what we know about the “accumulation of disadvantage,” this
requirement represents a huge barrier to true gender equity.
The “C200 Business Leadership Index 2002,” a publication of the
Committee of 200, an organization
of women in business, includes sev-
eral statistics that support the theory that women frequently encounter
roadblocks in conventional business environments. First, the number
of women-owned businesses grew 14 percent between 1997 and
2001—twice as fast as all privately held businesses. Second, during the
same period, the average size of women-owned businesses grew at the
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extremely rapid rate of almost 17 percent a year, compared to 2 percent
per year for all businesses. Noting that both of these rates of progress
far outstrip gains in the percentage of female Fortune 500 corporate
officers, the C200 Index observes that “this comparison indicates a
greater ability of women to succeed outside the constraints of the corpo-
rate environment.”46 Although several factors probably contribute to
this reality, the likelihood that subtle forms of sanctioning deter wom-
en’s progress cannot be overlooked.
Even though much of the available data in this area can tell us only
that a gender gap in earnings exists and not why, this we do know:
Women as a group earn less than men, progress more slowly through
the ranks of most businesses, and rarely rise as high. Looking at weekly
earnings for full-time workers during the years 1994 to 1998, the econ-
omists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, in a National Bureau of Eco-
nomic Research publication, found this to be true not only in the United
States, where women’s earnings total only 76 percent of men’s, but in
Canada (where women make 70 percent of what men make), in Britain
(75 percent), in Japan (64 percent), and in Australia (87 percent). The
gap between the earnings of men and women is narrowest in Belgium,
where women earn 90 percent of what men earn.47 Researchers have
yet to identify any country in which women’s earnings equal or exceed
men’s. Using different data and looking at different occupations the
answer is always the same—women are paid less.
Margaret Heffernan, the former CEO at CMGI, described her own
experience of how gender can influence a woman’s career in upper
management—and limit how much she is paid—without her knowing
it. “For years,” Heffernan reported, “I was the only woman CEO at
CMGI. But it wasn’t until I read the company’s proxy statement that I
realized that my salary was 50 percent of that of my male counterparts.
I had the CEO title, but I was being paid as if I were a director.”48
When the Punishment Is Hard to Miss
Sanctions such as some of those described above may be difficult to
pinpoint and attribute to gender. Women may suspect that they’ve been
unfairly evaluated but can’t prove it. They may feel generally discour-
aged from asking for what they want and yet be unable to say why. But
sometimes the sanctioning—the punishment—is hard to miss.
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Sandy, 41, a full-time mother who spent part of her career working
as a commercial lending officer at a bank, told this story. The bank was
interested in persuading an important customer (an aluminum smelting
company) to borrow a large sum from the bank. Other banks were also
courting the client, and competition was fierce. Sandy had worked with
the president of the smelting company, a man in his fifties, for the past
year, during which time he had treated her in a condescending man-
ner—tolerating her requests for information but making it clear that he
was not happy to be working with her. When Sandy brought up the
subject of the big loan, however, he railed against her and said he would
not talk to a woman about his business needs. Women were not “busi-
ness material,” he shouted, and he would terminate his relationship
with the bank if she were not replaced with a man.
Sandy returned to the bank and described the meeting to her boss,
a man in his early thirties, and to his boss, a man in his early forties.
Both said they supported Sandy and offered to meet with the smelting
company president and sort out the problem. At this meeting, with
Sandy present, the president of the smelting company repeated his re-
quest that she be replaced in a loud, verbally abusive manner. Sandy
said, “I don’t recall if he called me a whore, but I wouldn’t be surprised
if he did because I was so utterly shocked by his behavior—it seemed
suited to a back alley brawl!” The two bank managers immediately
buckled to his request and said she would be replaced. Afterward, they
refused to explain their behavior. Sandy was punished—not merely
taken off this important account, but insulted and humiliated without
protest from her superiors—simply for asking this man to do business
with her. From his point of view, it was outrageous for her to think she
could perform an important job, a job that he thought should therefore
be a man’s job. Sandy observed that “this experience fit into a general
prejudice that I had against men in the workplace—that their attitudes
and perceptions of women made it difficult to ask for what was fair and
right. I definitely had difficulty with the men I knew at the bank in
asking for what I felt was fair for me.”
The punishment for venturing into “masculine” jobs can be equally
severe at the other end of the social spectrum, in blue-collar fields that
have long been male-dominated. The journalist Susan Faludi, in Back-
lash: The Undeclared War against American Women, reports the experi-
ences of Diane Joyce, a widow raising four children on her own. Joyce
landed a job on a Santa Clara, California, county road crew, coming in
third out of 87 applicants on the job test.49 When she showed up for
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work, the experienced drivers of the county’s bobtail trucks who were
supposed to train her gave her unclear, conflicting, and at one point
dangerous instructions; her supervisor refused to issue her a pair of
coveralls (she had to file a formal grievance to get them); and her co-
workers kept the ladies’ room locked. “You wanted a man’s job, you
learn to pee like a man,” her supervisor told her.50 Obscene graffiti about
her appeared on the sides of trucks, and men in the department
screamed at her to “go the hell away.”51 When Joyce later applied for a
more senior road dispatcher’s job, they gave it to a man with three years’
less experience. She complained and got the job, but the man who lost
it sued for reverse discrimination—and pursued the case all the way to
the Supreme Court. He lost at every juncture, but this didn’t stop Joyce’s
coworkers from continuing to harass her.
Faludi writes, “Joyce’s experience was typical of the forthright and
often violent backlash within the blue-collar workforce. . . . At a con-
struction site in New York . . . the men took a woman’s work boots and
hacked them to bits. Another woman was injured by a male co-worker;
he hit her on the head with a two-by-four. In Santa Clara County . . . the
county’s equal opportunity files were stu
ffed with reports of ostracism,
hazing, sexual harassment, threats, verbal and physical abuse.”52
Professor of management Judy Rosener offers this explanation for
the intensity of men’s resistance to seeing women move into realms
that have traditionally been male: “The glass ceiling for those below it
is the floor for those above it. When we take away our ceiling, we take
away their floor, and they have a fear of falling.”53 As a result, high-
powered women who are too self-assertive are sent to programs such
as “Bully Broads,” women working at middle levels of management are
paid less and promoted more slowly than their male peers, and blue-
collar women are threatened, ostracized, and undermined in their ef-
forts to perform their jobs. All of these forms of punishment discourage
women from asking for the same things men want and get and enjoy,
whether that is attaining high levels of success in their fields, getting
paid the same as their peers, or simply being allowed to do the jobs
they want to do.
Although our interviews produced numerous stories of “punish-
ment” similar to those included here, overt sanctioning of this sort has
rarely been the topic of systematic analysis, in part because it is less
likely to emerge in the bright light of the laboratory. This is especially
true because so much research is performed on college campuses, where
the populations available for study are particularly sensitive to issues of
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“political correctness” and have learned to refrain from voicing or acting
out their prejudices. But even though many members of our society
have become more cautious about expressing their prejudices, this
doesn’t mean those prejudices have ceased to influence their actions.
Danger! Danger!—The Message Is Everywhere
Even women who have themselves escaped overt forms of punishment
for pursuing their ambitions cannot ignore the messages from every
side that it’s risky for women to try to become too successful. Susan
Faludi argues that this is because for many people the core meaning of
masculinity is threatened by the improved economic status of women.
This view is supported by the results of a 1989 poll, in which most
people (men and women) defined masculinity as “being a good provider