Contributors

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Who's the Boss?

Last week a study published by Gallup found that 35% of Americans preferred a male boss, 23% preferred a female boss, and 41% had no preference. Articles -- and the authors of the study itself -- have been touting this as "more Americans would rather work for a male boss."

Which is inaccurate: more Americans have no preference. The study found that 51% of men had no preference (vs. 29% male boss), and 40% of women preferred a male boss (vs. 32% no preference). Democrats were evenly split male 33%/female 33%/no preference 34%, while Republicans are split male 40%/female 16%/no preference 42% (reinforcing the Republican War on Women motif). Finally, people who currently have a female boss were almost twice as likely to prefer a female boss (32%) than someone who has a male boss (17%).

I'm one of the majority of men who have no preference. I worked in software for many years, and only had one female boss, and she was more of a lateral supervisor, the programmer among us who "manned up" and took responsibility for herding the cats (most technical people are more interested in doing the actual work than moving up the corporate chain -- you get paid enough not to need promotions to make enough money). In software, however, you have a lot groups working together on larger projects. Many of the bosses of the other groups I worked with were women. So, though I didn't have many women bosses, I worked with enough to have no preference.

My wife, who worked in integrated circuit design and manufacture, started out as an engineer and moved into management after several years. She never had a female boss, but she was one of the very few in the companies she worked for. My wife's most salient observation about corporate management is how utterly dishonest the men at the top are (they were all men). Only "team players" (those who lie, cheat and tell management what they want to hear) get ahead.

Now, I'm always skeptical about surveys, but this survey has been showing slowly evolving results for 50 years so I have no real reason to distrust it. Starting in the early '90s "no preference" took over from "male boss:"



The question is why anyone would prefer one gender over another. I can think of several: 
  • People who think women shouldn't be in the workplace at all, and should be at home tending the children.
  • People who generally perceive women as incompetent or emotionally unfit for the job (a conservative woman friend once insisted that a woman cannot be president).
  • People who think women aren't "tough enough."
  • People who think that a man/woman should be boss in order to give the right impression to outsiders.
  • People who want to be told what to do may feel more comfortable with a more dictatorial management style, which is socially more acceptable for men to adopt ("bossy" women always get put down).
  • People who have had a personality conflict with a female/male boss in the past.
  • People who believe that a female/male boss won't be fair with them or won't understand them. 
  • People who believe they can more easily manipulate a man or woman to get what they want.
  • People who feel they would be in some kind of competition with a boss of a certain gender.
  • People who are afraid of a romantic or sexual situation developing with a boss of a certain gender.
  • People who believe that women should have greater responsibility in business, and want a female boss to promote equality.
  • People with jobs that specifically cater to or consist of one gender or another and believe that a man/woman would not be able to properly perform. For example, the manager of a women's wear department, or the boss of an all-male construction crew.
Some of these are reasonable concerns, some are downright sexist, and some are social engineering. But some sexist reasons were true at one time: before women had engineering degrees they would make terrible engineering managers. Even the social engineering is becoming necessary: women are becoming the primary breadwinners in many families, and their children (and husbands!) need them to become bosses to make more money.

But times change. Women are getting college degrees at a faster clip than men, and women are coming back from job losses after the last recession faster than men.

It's also true that different jobs need different kinds of bosses because you have different kinds of employees and different work environments. In technical fields you have a lot of hard-working, self-motivated, highly-educated people. In minimum-wage retail jobs you have a lot of discouraged, uneducated or unmotivated employees. In high-pressure sales departments you have a bunch of hard-driving cut-throat salesmen. In construction you have a lot of rambunctious, often hard-drinking and physical rowdies.

So it may be the case that, at this point in time, women are better suited to be bosses in some industries than others. Women often have better social skills than men, and may better as bosses who need good facilitation and listening skills. Men are often more monomaniacal than women, and may be better bosses in professions that require extremely focused management styles. In occupations where an intimidating physical presence is helpful, burly male bosses have an advantage. We shouldn't have workplaces like that, but reality is sometimes uncooperative.

The question has always been whether sex-based tendencies are are simply a matter of upbringing and social indoctrination, or a genetic and physical difference between the sexes. But it's obvious now that both men and women can have any of the skills and personality traits required of a boss: the only question is how people to react to them.

In the end, what matters is whether you can do the job: every person should be judged on their own merits, not other people's prejudices.

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