Women are taught from a very young age to undermine themselves and their talents. When they are open about their success, talents or the things they know they’re good at, more often than not they get labeled as aggressive, rude, cold-hearted, etc. It’s been taught that women can’t be mutually successful and loving, caring, nice, etc. Women are taught that those things are in our nature and can’t coexist in a business or professional setting.
This idea that women can’t separate their feelings from their decision making leads to women in business constantly have their successes undercut, ideas blown off and their presence flat out ignored, except when convenient for the men in the room. Under any other circumstance, we are simply over emotional. We see this even more when dealing with women in a position of authority; she is not taken seriously and cannot show any weakness or emotion if she wants the respect men are so readily handed. Anything a women does in a position of power is manipulated against her.
One reason this has become so big is because women are taught to be polite and wait for others to speak, we are told to never make a scene or do anything that might make others uncomfortable. Women cannot give input or ask for recognition without starting drama. We cannot react without overreacting. If we do anything other than listen and agree, we’re suddenly manipulative and emotionally unstable.
There’s another awful habit of successful women being pitted against each other, as if one women’s success is a threat to another’s. This goes along with the idea that if one women is successful, it undermines every other women’s success. It’s a manipulation tactic that has women taking other women down because they’ve been taught to believe there’s a limited number of spots for successful women at the top. As a result of this we are being trained to view other women as our competition and oftentimes find ourselves proud to be the only woman on top. This is not to blame anyone in particular it’s something that we’ve been shown pretty much forever. This crazy notion is being supported by men as they constantly label women as emotional and catty and imply that women can’t get along with other women without some kind of strings attached.
It is hard enough to worry about the men in business, we don’t need to be taking down other women too, that just gives further provocation to the false idea that there is limited room for women at the top. Women need to support each other and I know that is easy enough to say but harder to do, especially when everything you do and say is manipulated against you.
Taylor Swift, one of the most successful musicians and business women of all time, recently spoke in an interview about how at the beginning of her career she did not talk about how involved she was on the business side of her career. She didn’t want people to know that she was the one behind her own success. This is the same woman who made $266 million with one tour alone, was scared to tell people she was involved in the business of her brand and label. As sad as that is, it does makes sense though as every successful women who has gone into business has been scrutinized and told that her work was fake or did not matter. Even in the face of major success, broken records, and sales to back up her power as a business women to men she will always be a women first.
This trend of women being misrepresented and misperceived in business has no limits; Tati Westbrook the CEO of Halo beauty (a company and product she built) is also a beauty YouTuber with videos 3 days a week. She created her brand and image in both Halo Beauty and her YouTube channel. She puts in so much work to do what she loves and there are still people who assume that she has a giant team, or that someone else writes a script or that her husband plans videos. She recently spoke in a video about how despite her success she still sees comments that her husband is behind stuff or how when she goes to do business things as the CEO of Halo Beauty, she finds people still looking for “the man” in charge first. Tati has changed the game for women in multiple ways, with massive amounts of success in two different industries and yet in each case her accomplishments and hard work are pawned off on some man or team that isn’t there
This doesn’t just affect celebrities; it affects any and all women, especially those who are successful or in a position of power. I worked at six flags over Texas for three years as a supervisor, and there was another girl who was also a supervisor. We would work together from time to time, and I liked working with her; we would talk a lot about our struggles with getting people to take us seriously and just how hard the job was. It was hard being in a position of authority at sixteen, but especially as a girl. No one wanted to take us seriously, and team members would either be creepy or rude to us. If we said anything to upper management, we were told we were overreacting or that we should try being nicer. Anytime I tried to manage I was told I was too rude or too harsh among other things. One particular time a man told me that people might listen to me if I smiled more. This also continued in meetings too, anything I or any of my female co-superviors said was either ignored or just flat out told it wouldn’t work. Nobody even considered 95% of our ideas and the few times they did the credit would go to a male supervisor who just happened to repeat our idea at the right moment.
Working like this was hard and frustrating so I would talk to the other female supervisors to ger advice, or just try and figure things out. People quickly started to label this as gossip and start drama that wasn’t there. At one point, another girl and I were both candidates for a promotion to upper management, and there was two open positions. We were both good at our job and excited for the other. Once news got out that we were both being interviewed for the position, a lot of the men started making comments and rumors about the other girl to me. They would make stuff up and say things to irritate us, and most of it was just “oh, she’s doing a better job than you, she’ll get the promotion,” and eventually I got so tired of it. I asked her about it and I found out that she was getting the same kind of comments. This struck me as kind of odd because we were totally fine with each other and got along great, but because we were good at our job and succeeded in the management aspect everyone assumed we hated each other and tried to get one of us to drop out of consideration because the other girl is going to get the job anyway.
This idea that there is limited room for women at the top is so incredibly toxic, and feeds into the trope of the heartless business women who either doesn’t have kids or neglects them. This has to stop, we have to know our worth as both women and as business minds/associates. We need to stop caring about making people uncomfortable with our success. Your success is yours alone, do not minimize yourself for the comfort of others. If men feel threatened by your success and confidence, it usually means you’re doing something right.
You need to make yourself heard in business meetings, and demand the respect that you deserve; don’t let anyone convince you into downplaying your ideas and achievements. Your voice and mind is integral in shaping our future– don’t let it go unheard because you were being polite or didn’t want to make a scene. Make a giant scene, make yourself seen and heard even if it terrifies you. If we do not demand the attention and the respect we deserve for our thoughts and contributions, nothing will change. It is up to us to correct these misperceptions of women in power, business, leadership etc. Do not let anyone or any man stop you from reaching the jobs and success you know you can, be the one that changes things be you to your full, unapologetic extent.