Women in Leadership III

(And no, I do not hate, resent, or disrespect women. If I did, my wife would jack-slap me. With a steel pipe. That would have been before she married me.)

I was a freshman cadet at the military academy. There, all cadets have to take three classes their freshman year in the Department of Physical Education: Swimming, Gymnastics, and Boxing. One of the gymnastics instructors was a blonde officer in her late twenties/early thirties, whose name I cannot recall, so I’ll call her Major Wilson. She was in excellent physical condition, could outperform most cadets in gymnastics and aerobic tasks, and also was professional in her demeanor, bearing, and appearance.

So what was the opinion of her throughout the corps of cadets?

“Major Wilson is hot.”

There you have problem #1 with women in leadership. No matter what qualifications they bring to the table, they are still perceived by men as women first. She was well qualified physically to be in that position, but that was little regarded.

I’m sorry, ladies, but this tendency of men does not go away as we age. We merely learn to keep quiet. It also is not contingent upon a certain level of physical attractiveness. Well, calling her “hot” maybe, but the “She’s Always a Woman to Me” mentality is not. Women in leadership are called one of two things by most males beneath them (I, of course(!) would not be one of these males): A b$tch, or soft. While males are certainly capable of being called soft if they are weak leaders, they are never called the B-word. Problematically, the type of leadership exhibited by those women called B’s is often the same that gets a grudging respect for a male who does the same thing – “That Colonel Shaw, he a hard man!” In most organizations that I object to women being leaders in, ‘hard’ leadership is the best. That doesn’t mean it is mean and nasty, it merely means unyielding adherence to standards of performance. For a man who does it, he is respected and perhaps feared. A woman who does the same is vilified and disrespected.

It’s not fair – but it is a fact of life. It is one that “education” cannot change. You can tell someone that women are, indeed, as capable of good leadership as men, but when Major Wilson punishes a soldier for an infraction, in the back of his head he believes he can physically outperform her, and therefore she is somehow “unqualified” to be in leadership over him.

In non-physical organizations it is less of a problem, but a problem nonetheless. Major Wilson would be looked at as a woman first, a supervisor second. However, because women are no less mentally capable of the performance required to move up in the business world (they may be more so!), the incongruity between performance ability and advancement is not there to produce resentment. In most organizations, overcoming the initial male hang-up will merely take a little time, because experience will prove the boss as capable.

So what do I advocate? Simply this – merit based selection for leaders in those occupations that have a significant physical component. While many may recoil at the idea, don’t we already select our leaders based upon intellectual merit? If physical performance is an important part of the organization, it should also be a part of the selection process.

However, you may notice that I advocated the wholesale abolition of females from these professions. The reason is simple – it is more socially acceptable to say “women cannot be in the infantry” than it is to say, “she is well within the Army’s acceptable level of relative physical fitness, but still isn’t good enough because she can’t do the job.” Sad, but also true.