“The share of women in heterosexual marriages who make as much or more than their husbands has nearly tripled over the past five decades, according to the Pew Research Center,” The Washington Post notes this week. Another report from last year found that women now comprise almost half of managers in the United States, an increase of more than 50 percent from 1980, and one that is occurring across a host of professional categories. And, as was reported last month, women accounted for almost all new job hires in August.
Feminists laud this as an unqualified victory in the march toward equality in all things. But is it good for work? What we know about female leadership, and my own experiences as a manager, would suggest perhaps not so much.
When Men Lead Well, Everyone Benefits
“This has been beyond a doubt the best office I have ever worked in.” As a supervisor, the comment was an honor, but it was particularly remarkable coming from a woman in an office culture that was almost entirely male. My employee was a hard-charging, demonstrably successful young woman with a graduate degree from one of the most left-wing private universities in the country. She was not the only woman (or man) to express such a sentiment during my time as a supervisor in that particular position.
When I was part of an office leadership team that was almost exclusively male, the dynamics were about as antithetical to the stereotypes as you can get; indeed, a significant body of research shows there is little-to-no difference in abusive male versus female supervision. There was no “toxic masculine” chest-thumping, nor was there any sexual harassment or innuendo. There was no observable favoritism toward certain men. All the male managers were family men, though apart from me, none of them were particularly religious. All of us had served in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Without a doubt, this male-dominated leadership fostered a result-oriented, assertive, competitive, and risk-tolerant environment whose successes made it the envy of other teams in the organization. As Doug Barry and Daniel O’Connor observe in their recent book First Line of Defense, “Men are fighters. … [They] were made for risk and adventure.”
That work environment was also, no surprise, not a particularly emotive or “chatty” work culture. Meetings were comparatively few and short, and managers voiced their annoyance with those incapable of getting to the damn point. Yet, also contrary to the stereotype, it was famously accommodating to those with family responsibilities. As long as the female employees did good work, no (male) manager ever questioned pregnant or nursing mothers who required time for medical appointments, pumping, or other maternal necessities.
So why did so many female employees — who, so the feminist narrative tells us, are suffering under patriarchal societal structures — tell my fellow male managers and me how grateful they were for what they acknowledged was a superior professional structure? Some of the reason was simply that my fellow male managers were decent men, the kind who recognize that while employees need professional challenges to keep them engaged, they also need to feel appreciated, respected, and free to have a fulfilled personal life. And, as many female employees told me, they were quite surprisingly not getting this when they were led by female supervisors.
Challenges of Female-Dominated Work Environments
Women, so the research tells us, are more nurturing, empathic, and communicative. One would think these would be unmitigated benefits in professional environments. In many cases, they are. But these qualities can also be a double-edged sword for the workforce, as qualities typically associated with women — including agreeableness, conflict avoidance, and risk aversion — are disadvantages for supervisors.
I certainly heard complaints from male employees about previous work cultures that were female-dominated, in which they felt excluded or bullied, feminist bosses seemingly having decided to direct all of their anger over supposedly centuries of patriarchal oppression on some hapless new male hire. But by far the most complaints I heard about female-dominated work came from women I managed. Women who had been pregnant or had little children told me their female bosses were less sympathetic to the various needs related to motherhood than male counterparts who seemed more willing to grant mothers some slack. They told me how they tired of cattish work cultures defined by inscrutably complex cliques.
The reason for this, as even recent research supports, has as much to do with a feminine overreaction to the “evil patriarchy” as it does with certain feminine qualities that prioritize personality and communication style and thus ostracize those who fail to navigate female-dominated social structures. Women who, for the sake of their careers, never had children or placed careers over their kids — research refers to them as “queen bees” — not only lack sympathy for those colleagues who do, but seem to punish them, perhaps because they feel the loss of not having kids of their own. This is likely aggravated by female leaders thinking they need to manifest male qualities such as assertiveness or hiding their emotions. One first-time nursing mother told me a previous female boss told her that if she wanted to have a successful career, she shouldn’t have any more children.
The Future Female-Dominated Workplace Will Be a Dystopia
I have no desire to apply rose-colored glasses to a past, male-dominated work environment in which women were routinely subjected to derision and sexual harassment, nor to the obvious fact that men today remain just as capable of doing such terrible misdeeds when given the reins of power. Rather, my point is that men, because of various qualities more common to their sex, also possess the capacity for transformative, self-sacrificing leadership. As a sex, they are generally more able to overcome resentment and bitterness, to overlook slights, and to exemplify physical, mental, and emotional resilience. When properly formed, they can be inspired to what Teddy Roosevelt in 1899 called “the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife,” willing to risk failure to avoid being labeled a “man of timid peace.”
As men’s influence over work wanes — especially as woke ideologues claim that “historic wrongs” demand a reverse, female-dominant workplace — I suspect we will see less of a utopia of so-called gender equality and more of a feminist dystopia, as essayist Helen Andrews last year provocatively warned us. Those workplaces will be more cliquish and more beholden to gossip and personal grudges. They will be defined by micromanagement, indecision, and an aversion to risk. And, counterintuitively, the attempt to exhibit masculine traits will make them less welcoming to women seeking a balanced family life and the freedom to be engaged, devoted mothers.
How ironic that the feminist labor movement that promised to liberate women to discover fulfillment and flourishing in a competitive career may actually vitiate their happiness and undercut the successful work they hoped to find.
Jack Danielson (a pen name) has almost 15 years of managerial experience in a variety of jobs in the United States and abroad. His writing had been featured in many publications. The Federalist verifies the identities of its pseudonymous authors.