{"id":562,"date":"2014-12-11T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=562"},"modified":"2014-12-11T09:00:49","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T13:00:49","slug":"women-are-discouraged-from-supporting-other-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/women-are-discouraged-from-supporting-other-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Are Discouraged from Supporting Other Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[One of my first jobs after college was as a researcher in a small mental health research institute where about half the staff was female and the senior leaders were both men. At that point, I had been active in various social movements, including the women\u2019s liberation movement, for several years and had learned about the importance, for me, of women supporting each other. As I was newly hired and in need of support, I did what I knew how to do and organized the other female staff to go out for a \u201cwomen\u2019s lunch\u201d so that we could get to know each other better. When word got back to the men in senior management that the women were going out to lunch together for the first time, all hell broke loose! I was surprised at their reaction\u2014we were just going out to lunch\u2014but we were ordered to cancel our plans. Not only did we not go out to lunch, but the other women barely spoke to me for the rest of my tenure at the institute. They appeared to have gotten the message from the male leaders that being too friendly with the other women was not good for their careers, and I was a person who had dangerous ideas that were, somehow, threatening to the established order.\nWhat happened to me is part of the story about why women don\u2019t support each other more at work. Women are discouraged from supporting each other in the masculine hierarchical workplace for a variety of reasons. The first reason is an obvious one when you consider that there are very few women at the top. Only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, a percentage that also holds true for CEOs in nonprofit and government organizations. In addition, only 14 percent of executives at Fortune 500 companies and 18 percent of elected officials in the United States are women. The gap is much worse for women of color. When very few women are at the top, predominantly men control the rewards. Grace, a white technology manager in her fifties, one of my research participants, explained that it is easier for women \u201cat the bottom of the pyramid\u201d to support each other. She said that when women move into more senior positions,\n\n\n<blockquote>You\u2019re playing a game with men because there are no women at the top\u2014so you can\u2019t get too buddy-buddy with women because that takes away from your ability to climb the corporate ladder.<\/blockquote>\n\n\nShe went on to explain that because there are few women at the top, men need to see you as a team player. In other words, they need to feel comfortable that you are going to be able to fit in as \u201cone of the boys\u201d and will not threaten the established order. Shantel, another research participant, explained why she does not participate in women\u2019s support activities at her company:\n\n\n<blockquote>I work in a very male-dominated profession, and my goal is to learn to operate within that environment. I have trouble being interested in \u201cthe women\u2019s this\u201d and \u201cthe women\u2019s that\u201d because my life is focused on how can I get recognized and rewarded by the guys.<\/blockquote>\n\n\nAn excerpt from my book,\u00a0<em>New Rules for Women<\/em>, available at Amazon (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/<\/a>).]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[169,207,222,418,557,612,634],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","category-excerpt","tag-emotions","tag-feminine-values","tag-friendship-rules","tag-new-rules","tag-support","tag-women","tag-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}