CHRYSTIA FREELAND, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, KATE WHITE, ELIZABETH WARREN, SUZE ORMAN, SHEILA BAIR, DONNY DEUTSCH, VALERIE JARRETT, CAROL BARTZ, BROOKSLEY BORN, AND JACK WELCH
FINDING OUR OWN WAY
M y own experience, and now the experiences shared by so many other women in these pages, convinces me that women can’t act like men and expect to be liked, to be able to lead, and to be paid what they’re worth. But we still need to accomplish all of those goals. Reuters’ global editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland notes, “We as women are still immigrants; we don’t speak the native language very well. It might not be that these male ways of behaving are, absent other factors, better, but they are the dominant cultural mode, and like all immigrants we have to conform to the dominant cultural mode. We can learn a lot from the men around us.”
Surely our demeanor and delivery have to be different,
and that’s our main challenge. Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington describes the situation succinctly: “In order to conquer the workplace as women, we need to approach it in our own unique way, not as carbon copies of men: briefcase-carrying, pinstripe-wearing career machines who just happen to have vaginas.” The way to get ahead? Huffington answers, “By learning how to play the men’s office ‘game,’ but tailoring it to our own style.”
A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
In addition to a career as the author of bestselling mysteries and thrillers such as Hush as well as nonfiction books such as Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do , Kate White is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. She has many stories to tell about what women in the workplace could learn from men.
“Some of the guys I’ve worked with have just had a really great sense of entitlement.”
—KATE WHITE
When she was the editor of Working Woman magazine, White hired a guy—let’s call him Jack—as a senior editor. There were three other senior editors, all women. When Jack was first hired, all the editors had their own offices, but soon, for economic reasons, the magazine moved into a new
building with less space. “It turned out that all four senior editors were going to have to work out of this big room that had once been the company library,” she says. White knew this would not go over well. “I went down to see what was happening, and discovered that Jack had slipped some money to the movers when all the furniture was being delivered,” she tells me. “He arranged for them to give him a big old bookcase, which he used to divide off his area, and then he got them to bring up a little couch from the basement. Brilliant. Suddenly he had an office. If you had walked in you would have thought he was the boss and the three women were in the typing pool. He just said to himself, ‘Okay, this isn’t the best situation. What do I have to do to fix it to my advantage?’ ”
White says many women think, “ ‘Hey, we’re following orders here, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do,’ whereas a lot of guys in the workplace make up the rules as they go along. Men scam the situation . . . Jack had an air of entitlement that said, ‘I deserve this, and I’m going to get it.’ I just laughed and thought, ‘What can I learn from this guy?’ ”
She’s right; a woman’s tendency is to fall in line and accept the status quo, even if it doesn’t benefit her. Women seem more willing to be accommodating than to insist on being accommodated.
“Someone needs to do this. Someone needs to mop the floor. Okay, hand me the mop.”
—ELIZABETH WARREN
Morning Joe regular guest Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard law professor. In September 2010 she was appointed Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position in which she will build the new agency that will oversee the rules on financial products such as mortgages and credit cards. She’s a
FINDING OUR OWN WAY
M y own experience, and now the experiences shared by so many other women in these pages, convinces me that women can’t act like men and expect to be liked, to be able to lead, and to be paid what they’re worth. But we still need to accomplish all of those goals. Reuters’ global editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland notes, “We as women are still immigrants; we don’t speak the native language very well. It might not be that these male ways of behaving are, absent other factors, better, but they are the dominant cultural mode, and like all immigrants we have to conform to the dominant cultural mode. We can learn a lot from the men around us.”
Surely our demeanor and delivery have to be different,
and that’s our main challenge. Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington describes the situation succinctly: “In order to conquer the workplace as women, we need to approach it in our own unique way, not as carbon copies of men: briefcase-carrying, pinstripe-wearing career machines who just happen to have vaginas.” The way to get ahead? Huffington answers, “By learning how to play the men’s office ‘game,’ but tailoring it to our own style.”
A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT
In addition to a career as the author of bestselling mysteries and thrillers such as Hush as well as nonfiction books such as Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do , Kate White is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. She has many stories to tell about what women in the workplace could learn from men.
“Some of the guys I’ve worked with have just had a really great sense of entitlement.”
—KATE WHITE
When she was the editor of Working Woman magazine, White hired a guy—let’s call him Jack—as a senior editor. There were three other senior editors, all women. When Jack was first hired, all the editors had their own offices, but soon, for economic reasons, the magazine moved into a new
building with less space. “It turned out that all four senior editors were going to have to work out of this big room that had once been the company library,” she says. White knew this would not go over well. “I went down to see what was happening, and discovered that Jack had slipped some money to the movers when all the furniture was being delivered,” she tells me. “He arranged for them to give him a big old bookcase, which he used to divide off his area, and then he got them to bring up a little couch from the basement. Brilliant. Suddenly he had an office. If you had walked in you would have thought he was the boss and the three women were in the typing pool. He just said to himself, ‘Okay, this isn’t the best situation. What do I have to do to fix it to my advantage?’ ”
White says many women think, “ ‘Hey, we’re following orders here, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do,’ whereas a lot of guys in the workplace make up the rules as they go along. Men scam the situation . . . Jack had an air of entitlement that said, ‘I deserve this, and I’m going to get it.’ I just laughed and thought, ‘What can I learn from this guy?’ ”
She’s right; a woman’s tendency is to fall in line and accept the status quo, even if it doesn’t benefit her. Women seem more willing to be accommodating than to insist on being accommodated.
“Someone needs to do this. Someone needs to mop the floor. Okay, hand me the mop.”
—ELIZABETH WARREN
Morning Joe regular guest Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard law professor. In September 2010 she was appointed Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position in which she will build the new agency that will oversee the rules on financial products such as mortgages and credit cards. She’s a
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