There’s a permeated fallacy going on in corporate America that women are less competent than men in virtually every area. It’s common knowledge that every work place is essentially a boys club. Even the female dominated industries like teaching or fashion are still ruled by men. Boys always come out on top much to the demise of women. What is keeping women out of the workplace? The answer is an indoctrinated lie. 5 indoctrinated lies to be precise. Here are the myths about women that keep them down in the workplace.
1 Women are too concerned about consensus to make the correct call.
This myth stems from the perception that aggressive, if not stubborn, decision making is the way to go. Even in our media, we’re saturated with hardass men in movies like Die Hard or the men of Mad Men who follow their own gut without the permission of others. The connotation is manliness, self assurance, and confidence. Women, on the other hand tend to be the opposite. Women ask for advice, try to talk out problems with the people involved in order to come to a mutual agreement. If women are the opposite of men in this regard what does that say about them? They are feminine, self doubting and insecure.
2 Women are limited by their ability to take charge due to poor self-confidence.
This myth is completely false. In the Personality and Individual Differences Journal, a study by Robert Loo was done, A psychometric evaluation of the General Decision-Making Style Inventory , that followed 3,345 graduates of top business schools who were implementing the “correct” business tactics. Some of these tactics included finding mentor or sponsors, asking for promotions or higher salaries, and a willingness to sacrifice their weekends for work, all of which take confidence to do. The results concluded that women who strove to do each one of these acts still moved up the corporate ladder much slower than their male counterparts. According to smallbusiness.chron.com, “Leaders must be able to adapt based on the group they are communicating with at the time. Effective communication skills are an important aspect of any leader’s portfolio of skills and experience.” These are qualities of women. Yet when they express them, they are looked down on.
3 Women are unable to handle stress over men.
According to a study featured in The New York Times, Mara Mather, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, and Nichole R. Lighthall, a cognitive neuroscientist now at Duke University, conducted several studies to see how men and women deal wtith stress individually. They found that men and women handle stress much differently. “…Researchers asked participants to draw cards from multiple decks, some of which were safe, providing frequent small rewards, and others risky, with infrequent but bigger rewards. They found that the most stressed men drew 21 percent more cards from the risky decks than from the safe ones, compared to the most stressed women, losing more over all.” Stress actually tends to make women focus much better than men do and make more rational decisions than men.
4 Women are quicker to leave their jobs for their families than men.
One of the most unfair and insensitive reasons many employers either won’t hire women or refuse to promote them is because it is commonly believed that women have a higher loyalty to their families than they do to their jobs. Mic.com says “Women do not leave their careers only because they would like to stay at home with their children; women and families are left with that choice. If women’s wages were equal to that of their male counterparts in their respected fields, it is guaranteed that more women would decide to continue their careers and pursue leadership, even after having children.
5 Women are indecisive.
It would do women justice to define “decisive.” Being decisive means “having or showing the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. In her book, “How Women Decide”, Therese Huston interviewed Diana, a female police officer, about how decisive her male or female coworkers were. She went on to give an example of a male and female police duo who go see two people arguing and threatening violence. “Many guys try to run in head first to get the situation under control. Their decisions are action oriented. They might say ‘What’s going on here?’” When asked the same question for women, Diana said “A woman might walk in and say, ‘Hi. You know what happened? What’s going on?’…A woman is going to be thinking Who’s the biggest person in the room? Can I take him down if I need to?” By definition, men and women are both indecisive. Because a decision is made quickly doesn’t necessarily mean it was made effectively. Similarly, if a decision is made from analyzing a situation, it won’t necessarily be made quickly.
