Lifestyle

FEMALE COLLEAGUE: FRIEND OR FOE?

An insight into whether ‘queen bee’ syndrome is fact or fiction.

In a survey of 60,000 American professionals, conducted last year by the US news channel MSNBC and Elle magazine, three out of four women said given a choice they would rather work for a man than a woman. In fact, the survey revealed that working women still faced “a bonanza of stereotypes” in the workplace, with those polled labelling them as “moody”, “gossipy”, “emotional” and “catty”.1 It is a damning assessment of the way women view and treat other female colleagues, and one hinted at by a number of women in law contacted prior to launching this publication. It begs the question – do women face greatest discrimination in the workplace, not from male colleagues with out-dated views, but from other women with a point to prove? We asked two women – Margaret Heffernan, author of THE NAKED TRUTH: A Working Woman’s Manifesto about Business and What Really Matters and HOW SHE DOES IT: How Female Entrepreneurs are Changing the Rules for Business Success and Rebecca Maslen-Stannage, a partner at Australian law firm Freehills – to discuss their views on the matter:

ARE OTHER WOMEN OUR WORST ENEMY IN THE WORKPLACE?

YES

OPINION: MARGARET HEFFERNAN
In the first Legally Blonde film, the gorgeous Elle Woods (played by Reese Witherspoon) is dismissed by fellow female law students as an airhead because she’s pretty. But her toughest opponent at Harvard Law School isn’t a man, it’s a woman – the brainy Vivian. The two characters hate each other on sight and spend most of the movie competing for classroom attention, internships and, of course, a guy.
I’d like to say that that is just a fantasy, that real life is different – but I’m not so sure. I can’t help but remember my first female boss. Straight out of university, I was working at the BBC in a lowly position from which I hoped to advance. I’d get my assigned work done quickly and, in my spare time, teach myself how to edit soundtracks. Catching me at this one day, my boss rather huffily said to me, “since you don’t have anything better to do, you can go get my dry cleaning.” She pushed the cleaning ticket towards me and I left the office, steaming. I was shocked that she didn’t see that it was better for me to develop my skills than to pick up her clothes. But what really gets to me after all these years is that she was a she. How could she not, as sisters should, support and encourage me? Because she didn’t see me as a sister, but as a threat.
Whenever I address women’s groups about careers, sooner or later the same bewildered question arises – if women are so great, why was my worst boss female? The answer isn’t simple. Some of it is history – for centuries, girls have been brought up to compete against each other for the attention of men. Think of Jane Austen. Think of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie fighting over Ashley. Think of Fatal Attraction. But much of it also has to do with the fact that, in many places, women are still the exception rather than the rule. Really successful women often find themselves alone at the top table – and they like being unique. And so we do to each other what my boss did to me. At best, we ignore one another; at worst, we actively exclude one another. Having climbed the ladder, we pull it up swiftly behind us – think of Margaret Thatcher and you’ll get my drift.
More recently, Lucy Kellaway, the Financial Times columnist, confessed how much she’d hate it if another wonderful female columnist joined her paper. I admire her candor – but I condemn the attitude. One very good reason why men have the power and influence they have is because they know how to help each other and they don’t take competition personally. We still have a long way to go before we can say the same about ourselves. As recently as last year, I was asked to advise Hillary Clinton’s campaign on the same issue. The biggest single problem the campaign faced was that women who were like Hillary didn’t support Hillary. And she discovered what we have all learned over time: that being exceptional never makes up for the huge disadvantage of being alone.
I hope that the advent of women’s networks means that this ‘queen bee’ syndrome will soon feel as anachronistic as the manual typewriter with which I started my career. There isn’t a woman in the world whose work isn’t enhanced by allies. Strong networks aren’t built overnight, but they are powerful because individuals and events can’t break them. They grow when you are asleep, exhausted and distracted. Networks keep you in the loop, when you’re out of the room or out of the country. I remember one female executive telling me that, when her organisation started laying people off, it was the women with networks who survived. You need to know people who know more than you do, people you can turn to for advice and introductions.
It’s intriguing to consider that, at home, mothers know all of this. We recognise instinctively that we have to stick together in order for our children to have friends, get invited to parties, be picked up from school or looked after in emergencies. We are actually very good at supporting each other when we’re looking after our loved ones. But all those same nurturing and protective skills are just as potent, and just as important, at work. We will know we’ve really succeeded not when we’re sitting alone at the top table, but surrounded by the men and women we’ve helped to put there.

NO

OPINION: REBECCA MASLEN-STANNAGE
Has gender, be it my own or that of those around me, played a part in the trials and tribulations of my career in law? After canvassing my colleagues, both male and female, my hunch was confirmed – there are supportive and unsupportive people in law firms, no doubt, but gender of the offending party was not seen as an underlying theme. In particular, I had not encountered any senior women who sought to impede or stifle my career – the so-called ‘ladder pullers’, who make the passage for those who follow difficult. Make no mistake, women can be as effective as men in undermining a junior lawyer’s confidence and even putting them off a career in law. However, in my opinion, such individuals have been rapidly disappearing from professional services firms. Why?
First, that type of behaviour may well be against the law, either in its own right or by virtue of occupational health and safety and workplace regulation. In New South Wales, Australia, our Law Society has, in recent years, focused much of its ongoing training of lawyers on issues of bullying, equal opportunity and occupational health and safety, to a point where every lawyer admitted to practice in the State must attend training on these issues every three years. As is often the case, I believe, education leads to a better and more permanent, positive outcome.
Second, the current downturn has intensified the war for talent, building on the momentum of recent years. It is now too bad for the firm’s image, and therefore bad for business to tolerate partner or solicitor behaviour which was undermining of others.
In that environment, law firms have become much more attuned to talent attraction and retention. Most sophisticated performance reviews of partners include an assessment of staff perceptions and review. Issues tend to be flushed out, discussed and steps taken to resolve the matter in a relatively short time frame. Partners who do not nurture and develop talent risk themselves being seen as underperformers.
Finally, firms are now much more sophisticated in promoting the cause of women in the law. For example, while I was a junior partner, senior partners Stephanie Pursley and Rebecca Davies embarked on a campaign to have ‘Women at Freehills’ established – a focus group to investigate why women were not reaching the senior ranks at Freehills at the same rate as men. They presented a business case so compelling that they won the support of senior management and the programme continues to this day, stronger than ever and embedded in firm culture.
Then just a few years ago, the firm became involved in the Chief Executive Women’s (CEW) mentoring programme, which aims to get more women to chief executive level in corporate Australia. And since that time, CEW has also gone on to launch the CEO Kit for Attracting and Retaining Women. Through such programmes, I have benefited from women introducing me to business relationships and instructing me to advise on their M&A deals.
I have also benefited from an inspirational female leader. Just before I was accepted to the partnership of Freehills, Professor Fiona Stanley (an amazing medical scientist and visionary) invited me to join the board of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, based in Western Australia. It had such a positive impact on my confidence and self-perception that such an inspiring and successful woman would select me. I resolved that were I in a position to offer the same type of opportunity or inspiration to others in the future, I would.

It is, it would seem, a contentious issue with opinion very much divided. So what do you think? Are women our greatest enemy in the workplace or is this opinion true of only a small minority? If you would like to share your experiences or have any comment for our letters page, you can contact me at lmcnulty@ark-group.com

References

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17345308/ visited November 2008