April 19, 2021

Hello BOSLadies, Thank you to everyone who attended Tuesday’s meeting and to Jenn for hosting. We discussed Why Men Love Bitches and she had questions at the ready that gave me personally a different way of looking at the text. Very well done We now need a volunteer to host our May meeting! As a reminder, the role of the host is to pick the book of the month, the date and time for the meeting and to moderate the event. Please let me know ASAP if you’re interested. In lieu of the weekly three, here are discussion points and other items that came up on Tuesday, starting with those about the book: One of Jenn’s opening questions was if we see ourselves professionally as the nice, eager to please, “yes” girl or the strong, opinionated, so called “bitchy” woman? In what contexts does this change, such as client interactions or internal meetings? Do you think other people perceive you the same way that you perceive yourself? We all found value in the beginning parts of the book that advocate for women having confidence, setting boundaries and knowing their priorities. The rest of the advice in the book seemed to contradict that message since the author is describing how to change your behavior to win over (more accurately, manipulate) a man. We found that the men the author is teaching women to appease are congruous with insecure leaders. They need to be catered to, tip toed around, and don’t have room for or interest in anyone challenging or questioning them. If you have to behave the way the author suggests in order to make this person like you, then you should probably move on from that person. A mature and secure leader will listen to different opinions, want you to speak up and have a sense of self that you bring to your work. A good point was brought up about the silly “dinner” recipe of popcorn given in one of the first few chapters of advice. She says that the first time you’re asked to make dinner or offer to make dinner, you should serve popcorn. Set the bar low, and you’ll never get asked again. The author’s point was to not do too much too soon because then it becomes the standard. This has some validity in the context of work in the sense that if upon starting a new job, you constantly offer to stay late and take on new tasks, it will become expected of you. Our conclusion from the discussion on the book was that we don’t need to change ourselves, we need to change the standards. We don’t need to fit into a box or play games. A way to translate that into actionable items in the workplace is to only work for leadership that has these same values. This is of course a luxury that is not available to everyone, noting that not everyone is in a position to pick and choose employment opportunities. -the idea that you can be raised entitled in a positive way – you Deserve to express your opinions, you Don’t need to apologize for taking up space, you Deserve to have choices and options. This led to the discussion of how these qualities of “entitlement” like assertiveness and confidence aren’t always beneficial for women to exhibit. In Entitled, Kate Manne gives plentiful examples of this from the 2016 presidential campaign’s treatment of Hillary Clinton (articles authored by Manne here, here, here and here). As Catherine put it “male qualities being less promotive in a woman”. Happily, we also all agreed that we get to a point where likability is less important than being true to yourself. Then it’s a matter of finding a team and clientele that also agree. -do you have different communication habits when on Slack compared to email? The name of the program suggests it’s meant to be more informal but is there a big difference in your style? I personally do not use Slack so I found these articles about unwritten rules and things you're afraid to ask about Slack from Fast Company to be fascinating. Teams does not seem to go by these rules. -Catherine also mentioned a great test for bias– if someone can’t explicitly point out what they like or don’t like about someone or something, there’s most likely a bias at work. If you can be articulate about what you do or don’t like, that’s a good sign that your rationality is at work, not emotion or other reflexive responses. Thank you as always for reading, Amber