Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s not a well-researched study. And it certainly isn’t an exercise in finger pointing. This is just a reflection on something I hear talked about a lot that I have yet to actually witness.
The narrative goes like this: “Women don’t feel welcome in (insert male dominated industry of choice) because other women don’t lift each other up. Women are actually harder on women then men.”
Words like these get regurgitated to me in all kinds of settings: at meetings, mentorship events, with clients and yes, I read it all over the web too. It’s a weird and insidious narrative that we have to reframe because I think it comes from something that is inherently programmed into women early on in our lives: it’s this notion that there’s only room for one. When we look at that hard, I think most of us don’t feel this way. But it’s projected onto us. And so we accept it and don’t argue with it.
It doesn’t matter that most of us (or none of us) don’t feel that way. When you work in a male dominated industry and you’re the only woman, a second woman being added means a microscope turns onto the two of you. Your actions and interactions are analyzed and if you’re not best friends, suddenly you’re enemies.
We all know this isn’t true. We all know this is bullshit. We all know that there is room for professionalism and cordiality and camaraderie without close friendship in the workplace. Yet this is the standard women are held to. Men are not held to this standard.
To put it simply: two women who work well together, but aren’t best friends, aren’t considered to be supporting one another.
Two men who work well together, but aren’t best friends, are considered to be colleagues.
See my point?
Women are expected to be kind, friendly and cordial in all settings. Women are expected to be peacekeepers and team builders. Women are expected to have “soft skills” - and so we take these things on. We allow them to become our narrative. And we don’t reevaluate it.
So how do we fix this? I think we start by cheerleading neutrally. Being excited when other women are brought into the room. Lifting each other up in front of bosses and clients and colleagues for purely fact based reasons that don’t have an emotional connection. And I think we fix it by talking about it more. By forcing ourselves to face that we have probably not done enough to shut this kind of thinking down.
This doesn’t mean changing how we behave. It just means changing how we perceive and process our workplaces and being proactive about how we talk about each other. I have been really fortunate in my career to have a wealth of incredible male and female mentors. I have worked in environments where I was the only woman on the team and in others where there was only one or two men. It was amazing how each group perceived two or more women’s relationships as fodder for discussion when the men’s relationships were never up for debate. It’s because it’s just not interesting. We need to get to that point where women’s interpersonal dynamics in their careers are just not an interesting subject of conversation.
In one job early in my career, I was the only woman on a team of 8. When another woman was brought on, we weren’t friends and we never became friends. She and I just weren’t going to get drinks together after work - but that didn’t meant that we weren’t great colleagues. At first, I noticed my own weird biases and tried to shut it down. If I’m being brutally honest, I liked the dynamic of being the girl that got in with the boys and earned their respect. That was not the right attitude and I think it happens more often than we care to admit. BUT, this doesn’t mean I didn’t want more women in the field. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to be a team player. I did my best to welcome her, be kind to her and even point out to others when she was doing good work. This paid off. The gossip about in-fighting between women never existed at that job, and I’m proud of that.
I should say that it sucks that I had to be so over the top about it, but it helped to prevent any kind of ideas brewing that may cause others to believe there was any sort of beef there. But I’m glad I was aware of my own behavior. Because guess what: if we support each other in non-emotional, purely professional ways, we’re all going to win.
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