Comments on: Women in business

By: Juliet Brain

Juliet Brain — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:33:54 +0000

I have had a female theatre director/boss who was bullying and awful to work for/with and agree that the acquisition of power tends to sit uncomfortably with women – but I don’t think an equality policy is the answer, it simply creates a sense of unfairness. Women have to learn to support each other and the male colleagues who are comfortable in working with them. In the arts there are a lot of women “in-charge” but the pay sucks and you often hear the comment – they’re only there because a man wouldn’t work for that level of pay. POWER = BIG ISSUE lets hope women find their way into successful leadership sometime this century, after all we’ve got some years to catch up on and the “old boys” are already taking on ‘dinosaur’ characteristics, ‘extinction’ here they come!

By: ::noreen::

::noreen:: — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:52:49 +0000

I agree! Thanks for posting about this article, likewise I wouldn't have come across it otherwise. There is a movement of women in business who are starting to get together to share a different vision of entrepreneurship – based on more feminine values. See Lynne Franks' Seed Networks as just one example. It's a delicate path to tread without falling into the scary man-hating feminist camp, but do-able (I want to think so anyway!)

By: Jane

Jane — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:34:51 +0000

I couldn’t agree with you more! I think though that there’s a wider aspect to this as well which is that a lot of people think that to succeed in business or a career you have to dehumanise yourself and become some kind of business automaton. Which just doesn’t help anyone or anything, frankly. But it does seem that women are often worse at this than men, due to the overcompensation for inequality etc.

By: Amy Thibodeau

Amy Thibodeau — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:10:03 +0000

I wonder though how many of those bad powerful women were promoted by men, looking to fill positions in the image of themselves. I think patriarchy (and I do believe in it) runs deep and I think Brooker is being facetious when he says appointing women to power will solve all the problems. That said, I do wonder if true equality is achievable without some kind of formal equal opportunity measure. The problem – the measure will still be implemented by the old boys club.

As you can see, I don’t have any answers, just questions. Thanks for writing about the article – I wouldn’t have come across it otherwise. Hope you’re well!