Advice for Working Women
In her New York Times op-ed, Joanne Lipman, a former deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal and the founding editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, encourages women to be more aggressive, and notes that in her time as editor many men asked her for a promotion but not a single woman did.
It got me thinking about at what age women are taught to be passive.
I remember schoolteachers (both male and female) rewarding bold and even bad behavior from boys but expecting obedience from girls. It’s as though yelling out and talking back in class was considered male human nature and hand raising and note taking was considered female human nature.
One of my closest friends in high school disliked one of our teachers because she said that he only taught the boys. He only looked at, joked around with and called on the boys. I disliked a different teacher in that department because he told me I would never be an A student. I still can’t believe he told me that. (As an aside, I got A’s outside of his class).
I question if he would have managed my expectations if I weren’t a girl.
Clearly there are gender differences that cause boys and girls to act, and act out, in different ways. But as Lipman writes:
Women need to take risks — and to realize that at some point they will fail. This is an incredibly hard thing to do, especially for women brought up in a culture that celebrates unrealistic perfection in every sphere, from beauty to housekeeping.
It is also a hard thing to do in a culture where women are taught to be passive without even realizing it.
