When I was a child and even a teenager the idea of empowerment was both very distant to me, and also something I did not realize I would need to embrace. I grew up in a family with all sisters, granted a traditional, even old world, mother - and a very supportive father. I did not get a sense of things I was foreclosed from pursuing. I went to girls' school for high school and did not experience what many women begin to experience in earnest there - any favoritism to young men, or steering of young women into more traditional areas. Certainly in a school run by nuns one would expect there to be much traditionalism, and there was, but we were all also supported in striving to succeed not just academically, but in life. We were nurtured to thrive.
Maybe nuns, especially those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the ecumenical movement was still very vibrant and neo-conservatism had not taken hold, were more than merely passive feminist symbols. And I use the term 'feminist' in the context of supporting women - not in any radical manner meant to marginalize men. Quite to the contrary, half the battle those nuns had was to empower us while still restraining those elements of freedom that were more about abandon. Our wings were opened to flight, but we were admonished to keep our legs tightly crossed.
So, it may be that my initial context going out into the wide world that begins with the uniquely safe realm of college, was one of not understanding the setbacks to come, not always reading the subtle undertones meant to connote inferiority or even subjugation, and also of perhaps being more shocked by the more overt ways in which women were sidelined and in which they sometimes sidelined each other. I didn't fling myself headlong into the world of material success and power right away, although eventually I gravitated in that direction. I did see and experience different treatment, different expectations. Fortunately, I had strong female mentors and very supportive female colleagues, especially in my early years at a regulatory agency. I had no context in the late 1980s that the two women who mentored me of their own volition, had weathered ragged battles in the 1960s and 70s - one as a divorced mother being slighted because she should be home with her children and should have held her marriage together, and the other for working outside the home at all when her husband made a very good living. The children of these women were my peers, maybe a few years older than me, and it sent a strong message to me that their children were also successful, making their own ways. I had strong male mentors too, and they were mentors devoid of any paternalistic notions or any ulterior motives for taking a much younger professional woman under their wings. There were certainly pairings of older, higher ranked men in our agency ending up married to or having relationships with younger women they had mentored, but even in those situations more were random occurrences without intention than were in any way predatory.
It is important though that women mentor each other in situations like that, give each other good counsel. Spending too much time with the boss or with anyone too senior to you to the exclusion of other colleagues doesn't advance your career well, and it can establish a pattern. One of my good friends at that agency had an older, higher ranking colleague who took a shine to her, and as her intentions were only friendship and to be a colleague to him, she made a point of including others in activities with him and also of spending more of her time with other colleagues than she did with him. They ended up having a lifelong friendship and a strong professional bond. She ascended in the organization at a pace commensurate with her significant talents, even if it was probably two or three years slower than the pace of some of our male colleagues. Another colleague, who was very gifted, befriended mostly men. She was more comfortable around men. She wasn't a chummy, girlfriend sort of person. She ended up in the middle of a couple of marital break ups for being too friendly with the husbands of colleagues, and through no direct fault of her own was also the recipient of numerous uninvited advances by men in our agency. She eventually left and went elsewhere, and she did rise to a position of authority - but her career stalled at a level where she would have moved on to having management oversight of numerous other employees. There was a perception that she favored men over women candidates for jobs, and that she recommended promotions for men over women as well. In her defense, she once told me that she didn't really know many of the women who worked with her well but men seemed to really connect with her. I suggested she look for female mentors and spend more quality time with other women, especially socially in work situations. She gave that a try but wasn't very successful at it - she had a difficult time being both social with women in the workplace and also working alongside them or collaborating with them, but she did not have this same issue with men.
I think about those two women a great deal, and I am in contact with both of them still, although not as often as I would like to be. They are both women who do not have a problem working in male dominated areas and they are equally as comfortable around men as women. I'm like that too. The difference is - one of those women has lifelong female friends - friends who knew her as a child, a teen, a young mother. Her relationships with her friends changed over time - but she always went back to them, always kept them close. The other woman does not have close ties to childhood and high school friends, colleagues of may years past, who are female. She doesn't look them up or make it a priority to stay in touch. If she sees them or asks them about their husbands or families, or their parents, it is perfunctory. She's told me that - 'you have to ask, right?' She also doesn't dive in to help a friend emotionally in tough times - like the loss of a parent, a divorce, an illness. She sends a card, maybe brings by a meal (although it would be prepared by someone else). Now, you can support and empower other women without having to be a 'chummy girlfriend sort of person' - but to really empower other women you have to be engaged with them. You have to want to understand them, empathize with them.
I was at an event two weeks ago with two colleague from a law firm I worked at over a decade ago. The younger colleague told me how much she was enjoying the event, a women sponsored event, because it just had a more comfortable feel than so many of the events we have to go to night after night in our profession. It felt 'real', and she felt like people were genuine with each other, men and women alike, because anyone who was there wanted to be there and wasn't attending out of obligation. I think that's what empowerment comes down to for women - we have to want to help and nurture each other. We have to leave the high school dance ideal behind us - the one where the boys get to go around and around the room searching out the right partner dance after dance while all the girls sit in their chairs straight backed, chests out trying to look pretty, like flowers waiting to be plucked. We find out in life that the best dances are the ones where the women get out on the floor and dance together, the dances where you see your friends and smile and as your husband gets a little winded or he tires of shifting from left foot to right, you tell him he can sit down for a while, and then you join your girlfriends and it isn't about looking pretty or standing out or being chosen, it is about dancing the way you want to dance in a circle of women who are also dancing the way they want to dance.
I think of those four women I've mentioned and I can tell you if an event came up and music began to play, with three of them, our eyes would find each other and we would not hesitate to dance together, and they would keep opening the circle wider for others to join in - men and women alike. But one woman would be sitting by the bar or talking with a group of men, and even if she was the best dancer among us - she would not join that circle. It would be too much abandon. Even if someone took her hand and pulled her in, it would not feel right or natural to her. Lots of meeting rooms and conferences and hiring committees are like a dance. Women need to feel empowered to be themselves, their best selves, and they also need to empower other women in the same way. If we stiffen, don't engage other women, aren't candid with them the way a girlfriend is (although certainly much professional candor is not 'girlfriend talk'), well we're missing opportunities. And at the end of the day, at the end of a long career, many of the opportunities we missed will really limit how far each of us goes professionally and how much we grow as human beings and as women. There is no purpose in pushing forward to get a place at the table for oneself if you can't also elbow out a place at your right and your left for others yet to join, and then lift them up to the table too.
No comments:
Post a Comment