This makes sense only in the illogical world of
exploitation. Yes, it is a hoop we have all grown accustomed to jumping through
and by hoop I mean Heritage of Oppression.
As Bob Marley sang: “they take the chains off your body and put the chains on
your mind,”Clearly once our minds are conquered, the rulers no longer
need actual chains.
Women as bosses are usually harder to work for, especially
for other women. They tend feel less secure in positions of power
to begin with, so, when they get there, they exert more of a need to prove
themselves. Being hard-nosed and to-the-letter strict is a natural outgrowth of
this attitude.
I have experienced this with women physicians who have been to
say, modifying a prescription slightly to make it more affordable and cost
effective, while the male doctors I have gone to don’t even blink at
suggestions like this. Of course, men are subjected to a lot less personal scrutiny and are inclined to possess a indefatigable
sense of entitlement.
As women we have survived by learning to read the small
print of other people’s psychology. Because marriage was the goal for our
gender for so many years, we learned, Darwin
style, to master the art of passive-aggressive manipulation. While your average
heterosexual man, may be a bit thick and a bit of a buffoon, there is a what you see is what you get quality to
him that allows, for example, male lawyers to vehemently argue two opposing
sides of a legal case in a courtroom and then go to the gym and play racket
ball together as though it were the most natural thing in the world. For women
with conflicting views, it is more likely that they would dismiss each other
coolly when passing in the hall, than to even consider going out for a drink
together.
The other huge problem is that everyone is raised to think
less of women so both women and men prefer men. Just as every person is
socialized to prefer straight folks, and all races conditioned to prefer white people, women
consciously or unconsciously assign more status, more credibility to men even
when they don’t particularly like them. Female bosses are inclined to be harder
on women employees, often subjecting them to a different standard or
infantilizing them with micromanagement pettiness that they are embarrassed to
apply to males
Sometimes simply the potential friendship model just gets in
the way. When I worked at the library, I had a boss who was a part of several
communities of which I was also a member. We had been equals in the lesbian
community but when she was appointed to head the Gay and Lesbian center at the
library, all traces of our human connection vanished.
Of course my boss had to prove herself. And when it comes to
love, war or livelihood, fear is firmly in place. Yes, we have to humanize the
way we live and it must begin in the family and move to the workplace, an
environment in which we spend so many hours of our lives.
We are not all that far from the world of the 1950s in which
I was raised. It was a place where women were sexualized and our opportunities
for employment were severely circumscribed. The legacy of our history persists
in spite of our best efforts to change it.
