Women, or the kind of women that the female-dominated HR department likes to choose for positions in corporations have a certain personality type. First of all, they have impressive résumés. They are also, most likely, unassuming, quiet, and have brilliant academic achievements. However, these are the types of women who like to keep the peace, who often, as Sheryl Sandberg says in her TED presentation, stand to the side and never sit at the table along with their male peers:
The problem with women who do well academically is that they learn to copy what the professor says and to never question him nor her. This translates into a good GPA and according to HR, good candidates for the corporate world. In theory, this may be true, but in practice, women who are quiet, or bookish, who never question authority, and have little social skills outside of academic performance tend not to do well in the workplace, yet these are the same women who are chosen to work for corporations.
Sheryl Sandberg is, of course, an exception. She is openly opinionated, has high emotional intelligence along with possessing academic achievements, and probably feels comfortable joking around with the boys, and could be a bit roguish at times.
Men, however, are held by a different standard. They are iconoclasts. They question, they take leaps in logic and strategy, they try things without making sure everyone is in complete consensus. This aspect works well for them in the corporate ladder because that is the personality type that the corporate world attracts, but not in women. Women need to be submissive and have multiple Ivy League Degrees, according to female HR managers. However, men can be college dropouts and simply be innovative.
The problem is female HR managers don't like women who break the rules, who are innovative, who question instead of copying what the professor says. However, female HR managers prefer male candidates who do the same, and isn't that pure sexism at its best?...when HR is ruled by the female criterion of submissiveness and academic achievement, which they probably idealise and probably never had themselves?
But let's move onto the actual workplace.
All the jobs I got was when there were no female HR managers to review my résumé. I jumped around a lot, mainly in start-ups that lost funding, I changed careers twice in my twenties, and I decided that I would pursue my passions instead of following the money trail. I travelled abroad to learn about different cultures and becoming fluent in different languages, often in fields that had nothing to do with my current vocation. It would've been easy for me to have been a corporate lawyer, but I chose the more difficult path, to be self-educated, and I was the type of candidate female HR managers hated:
"She has an Ivy league degree, and a Masters, but not for the job that is required, and she switches jobs a lot and never stays in jobs for more than a year, is opinionated and kind of arrogant."
However, these same qualities would be considered assets if I had been a male with the same qualifications:
"He has an Ivy league degree, and a Masters in a different discipline which gives him a more well-rounded view of the job that is required, and he switched jobs due to ineffectual funding, but has coped well to changing demographics and spends 24/7 working on several different projects. He's passionate, confident, ambitious and driven."
What the corporate world doesn't like to admit in public media is that women are the most prejudiced against other women. Women hold each other back, not men.
So let's move onto sexual harrassment.
As a beautiful woman, one has advantages and disadvantages. I've never considered myself beautiful nor attractive, and I've always considered myself average looking, but I have been asked out by a number of different men, and because I understand human interaction, I know how to diffuse tension and to politely turn down men I am not interested in. If I could file a lawsuit for every man who asked me out to lunch, dinner, coffee or otherwise tried to convince me to date them, I'm certain I would be a billionaire. But I did a lot of asking myself. When my S.O. or boyfriend was out of town, I would often hang out with my male friends or colleagues, and we would talk about all the things right and wrong with our company. This would be aptly named: Happy Hour.
When I first worked for a financial firm with mainly male colleagues, the director asked me specifically if that would bother me, and I said, Hell no! Truth was, working with men I found easier than with women because men weren't catty nor gossipy. They only cared about our performance. I had been the only female in the company but that didn't bother me because we would laugh and joke and drink beer together.
There had been an instance in my career where I had been fired because my boss had been interested in dating me, and was disappointed that I had a boyfriend. I only stayed 3 months at that particular company, but I had to admit, he and I didn't have a good working chemistry. People tended to work with people they liked. I didn't like him. He didn't like me. He annoyed me to no end with his loud, obnoxious, booming phone voice, and tended to be competitive with me in areas where I had been far superior. He probably felt I was laughing behind his back, which I was. After all, he was an IT guy who couldn't connect his laptop to the printer. After 3 months, he fired me, and I said, thanks for the experience and left. There were bigger fish to fry. I did not feel bitter over the fact that he had a crush on me and was competitive with me. I thought he was dumb and incompetent. I said, Goodbye. Sometimes we still see each other at work functions and we are still friendly with each other. He's fun to talk to at parties, but I wouldn't work for him again or with him ever again. He's simply incompetent in my mind and had that personality I detested working for: a dog-eat-dog mentality. If I had been his boss, I would've fired him too, simply for having an annoying voice. Is that gender discrimination? Or it is that people tend to want to work with each other because they like each other, regardless of gender?
Later, I found out from colleagues that he told people he fired me because I was inexperienced. Truth was, I was younger than him but far more accomplished and competent than he had been. He fired me because I was too competent. I outshined him, and that was a big No-No in the corporate world. Never outshine the master. It took me a few years to understand this concept. I always thought the world was logical and efficient. It appeared that the world was illogical and inefficient and that they preferred people who had average abilities but just got along with different types of people, and liked to drink and party, especially if you had a boss with the same mentality.
I've found women in the corporate world also don't like to consider their colleagues their "friends" whereas male colleagues think of their co-workers as "my closest friends who have my back." This is a fundamental psychological difference between men and women in the workplace. Women like to go home and avoid social work functions because their friends are often, their closest childhood friends. Men look forward to social work functions because they are friends with the people they work with and like to relax with people they are in contant contact with. So it isn't surprising then, that men who ask for raises often get them; women never ask and they never socialise with their co-workers because they separate work from their personal lives. Men never do; work friends and childhood friends are still friends whereas women make a distinction between the two.
Last week, I read about one of my favourite authors, Randy Komisar being part of a lawsuit of alleged sexual harrassment at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers where he is a senior partner by former Kleiner Perkins junior investment venture capitalist Ellen Pao.
Of course, I thought this accusation should be taken seriously, but upon examination, and after reading the document of her allegations, I found the accusations against him without merit.
First of all, Ellen Pao claims that it was sexual harrassment that Randy Komisar gave her a book by Leonard Cohen "The Book of Longing" as a present and asked her out to dinner. I decided to check out this book for myself.
Ellen Pao alleges in her lawsuit that this book was sexual in nature, but when I read this book, I found that incredulous. I personally couldn't find any sexual material. In fact, one had to be completely delusional to think this book had explicit, sexual content. Rather, the book was a beautiful study of soul-searching through the perspective of Zen Buddhism and the healing power of music. If a senior colleague knew I was going through a hard time at the company and was unhappy in many aspects, and he or she presented this book to me, I would've been thankful at the thoughtful gesture.
Since when is giving a co-worker a book a sign of sexual harrassment? I always thought sexual harrassment entailed some sort of inappropriate touching and verbal abuse. Ellen Pao also alleges that Mr. Komisar asked her out to dinner. Well, a lot of people ask friends and colleagues out to dinner, regardless of gender. I sometimes ask my Silicon Valley friends and colleagues a catch up over dinner. Was this unusual and inappropriate? It seemed to me that because Randy Komisar was a mentor to many people, and inspirational through his unique perspectives on corporations infused with Eastern philosophies that his good will was being turned to use against him by an opportunist.
Here is a guy trying to help a colleague from a tense situation which is affecting the morale of the entire company and she accuses him of sexual harrassment as well, for simply being nice.
Ellen Pao, as academically accomplished as she may be, could be that stereotype of that awkward teenager when it came to simple human interaction. A beautiful woman will tell you that when a man shows romantic interest in her, and she wasn't interested, that she smiles and dismisses him. However, another woman who isn't used to the attention might consider it sexual harrassment and start blowing things out of proportion. It is not my intention to dismiss Ellen Pao's accusations, but however, because I too, am a woman, I have to assess her allegations from my own point of view.
We can never know what happened in her intimate relations with Mr. Ajit Nazre, one of the Kleiner Perkins junior members, but it was certain that their relationship was a mutual one that left hurt feelings on both sides. In her lawsuit, she also alleges that she "succumbed" to having sex with him. "Succumbed" sounds to me sort of "erotic and exciting." Does she mean that, or does she mean she had been raped and forced to have sex with him beyond her will? Because "succumbing" to sex is sexy, being raped, however, was criminal.
After an independent investigation, Ajit Nazre, who bore the brunt of Ellen Pao's accusations, might've been found to be a kind of Type A personality douchebag who could've been at times, vindictive or competitive and might've had a thing against women who didn't want to date him. However we do not know the full story, or even why a senior partner suggested that the two co-workers marry. It appeared everyone at the company was trying to assuage the broken lovers' relationship, however, but because Ajit had probably been quietly asked to leave, no one can know for sure exactly what happened, aside from the ensuing drama of two former lovers who had ended their relationship in a messy way, infecting the morale of the company.
It could've been that Ajit Nazre was asked to leave due to all the negative press it was attracting for Kleiner Perkins, marring its reputation. But I have to assess the likelihood that Ellen Pao's allegations of sexual harrassment against Randy Komisar were most likely grudge based, perhaps because he had been chosen as a board member for one of the companies she worked on due to his extraordinary interpersonal skills and likability. Not to mention, he tried to help her, but she had a way of turning everyone against her, thanks to the influence of her litigious husband, the infamous Buddy Fletcher, who had his own history of collecting on discrimination. But this year, the Ellen Pao-Buddy Fletcher duo had more incentive to do so since the court ordered liquidation of his hedge fund because it was ruled as being insolvent, or rather bankrupt.
I read back to my copy of Randy Komisar's The Monk and the Riddle and remember this section on the deferred life plan:
Perhaps there are those women who choose not to do what they really want in life. Perhaps there were those women who chose the path of security and safety, and think that they will be financially rewarded later. Perhaps life to them was about getting straight A's, and doing everything by the textbook of what they were supposed to do as told to them by other people. I certainly know that as a woman, I have never followed the straight and narrow path. I knew I was never perfect, and somewhere along the way, I learned to not hide my flaws but to take pleasure in them.
I think though, that only identifying with one's gender could be flawed thinking in itself. Wouldn't it be better to identify ourselves as human beings, and finding common ground instead of looking for perceived slights and injustices because of who we are? I realise though that as a society, we will never have a genderless society, but I didn't mind. I liked being a woman.
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