The visual expression of zero sum mentality. For some to be at the top there must be some at the bottom. It's been a thesis research day today and I've been reading an article on 'venus envy'. The paper questions the Queen Bee label (a negative representation of senior women who do nothing to aid the progression of other women) and replaces it with the notion of bottom up female misogyny. Blaming the senior women is thus replaced with blaming the women further down the hierarchy. Junior women are positioned as envious whereas the selfishness of senior women is airbrushed out of the picture.
I accept that elite women leaders may not be interested in or see it as their responsibility to further the careers of other women. Fine if they never signed up for that. But I do find it a bit rich when women academics win a career boosting research grant based on a promise to tackle gender inequality but in practice use the funds as a vehicle to 'feather the nests' of the 'old girls club'. Saying one thing and doing another is bad faith.
Being professionals of discourse and explication, however, intellectuals have a much greater than average capacity to transform their spontaneous sociology, that is, their self-interested vision of the social world, into the appearance of a scientific sociology.
Pierre Bourdieu, 1930-2002
well, is more fun on top of the glass ceiling. also a lot of hard work. Something said to me when I was in real estate was some folk don't succeed because of the fear of success. It means more work, not less. More peer pressure. And unlike the bottom of the hierarchy where you have one boss or supervisor, the further up the ladder the more people you have to please.
ReplyDeleteYes the immense peer pressure to fit in with the top team at board level was what the article talking about - I've witnessed these dynamics and at no other level in the organisation are the behaviours of the school playground so perfectly resurrected. Still whatever their differences men do seem to bring other men along with them whereas women won't or perhaps can't do so.
ReplyDeleteYes there are people who coast along while grumbling about those at the top which is also bad faith.
The main function of the private sector is to make profit/provide shareholder value and there is a side argument that increasing the talent pool will help with this but it isn't central. Whereas asking for and getting taxpayers money to improve the position of women and then using it to improve your own and your mates positions is pretty cynical. Or is it? If men are able to milk the corporate system for personal gain and women are not then perhaps no wonder they fall back on the state (or taxpayer).
Sorry don't mean to give a lecture I'm thinking out loud. No wonder the thesis isn't done yet it's all so complicated. Good job this blog is anonymous :)
Some people never grow up or this behavior is so deep rooted in our brains that we have to be very aware of it to get around it.
DeleteI agree with the former :)
ReplyDeleteStrange how esteemed values take an exit ramp when money and/or power come into play.
ReplyDeleteand critique is brushed off with 'well you've got to play the game' how I wish that phrase had never been invented.
ReplyDelete