There's a moment in the much-admired movie "Iron Lady" when Meryl Streep, playing Margaret Thatcher, says quietly to a friend, "I have always preferred the company of men."
I deeply admire Meryl Streep and even Margaret Thatcher, but I found this the saddest line in the entire film. Of course, Thatcher (assuming she actually said this, and it wasn't invented by the screenwriters) was a particular person in a particular time, and her comments are hardly representative.
But they bring to mind a refrain I've heard far too often, from women of all levels of success and achievement, which is, "I really prefer the company of men."
One doesn't need to look far to observe that by and large, positions of open power in society still seem to be dominated by men. Even in industries where women make up a large percentage of the workforce, men still rule the roost - they are more likely to be heads of publications, government and corporations.
There is a wealth of research into why this is so, a lot of it summed up very adequately by Larry Summers in the now-infamous speech that might have cost him his job at Harvard. I'm not concerned about this research, or about whether or not Summers was right, but more about the pernicious effect this kind of observation can have on a young woman with a lot of ambition.
For reasons I've mentioned before, I was never all that keen on conventional definitions of gender; when I was younger - and even sometimes now - it struck me as offensive that people are ever mandated to behave in a certain way. When I was 16, I remember getting upset at a friend for describing me as a "woman," I felt like "person" was a more than adequate term. Which would have been fine, except that somehow - and I don't know why or how - I decided early on that I had to choose between being a "smart person" and being a "woman." Smart people cared about politics, social inequality, literature. Women cared about boys and makeup.
I didn't really encounter the social pressures that society - and often, women - exert on each other to be "feminine" until I was in college.
I think that was fortunate, and I can cite two reasons for it: my parents, whose respect for conventional gender norms was about as nonexistant as mine and who encouraged me, always, to think as deeply as possible, and my schools: from the time I was eight years old, I attended magnet and IB programs, safe cocoons where students are celebrated in proportion to their nerdiness. I am told - by friends and popular culture - that this kind of environment is not the norm. (I still remember the time my 13-year-old cousin, a cheerleader, emphatically told me that when a man compliments a woman on her intelligence, it means he will never like her. At the time I thought this was funny; in retrospect, maybe I should have told her she was wrong.)
I was 23 years old when I first began to realize that gender - even by conventional standards - isn't always a handicap. I was the youngest reporter in the (mostly older, male) political department of a major newspaper, and one of my co-workers told me that I could get away with asking politicans questions that my male colleagues couldn't.
I still don't know how much this is true, but I began to see that being a young girl - and the associated ways that people take you less seriously as a result - could be an advantage. Sure, people might have underestimated me, but that left me the option of deciding how and when to show them the error of their ways.
Oddly enough, the working world - and maybe age, and maturity - have made me so much more comfortable with the word "woman." I have seen the many ways in which women too have power in society, and not just when it comes to producing children or deciding how to spend the grocery money. I look at examples of women - people! - who change the world, and can't help but realize that at the end of the day, life is the sum of what you want from it.
In that same infamous speech, Summers observes - as a casual fact - that aptitude studies of 12th-graders demonstrate that by and large, out of students who perform four or five standard deviations above the mean, only 1 out of 5 is a woman.
The end result of these kinds of observations - whether or not they reflect or create bias in society - is that being a nerdy or driven girl can sometimes feel like an isolated experience. I still remember a particularly burly college economics professor turning to the class during a live demonstration and calling for female volunteers with the phrase, "Come on ladies! We need more estrogen up here!" Interestingly, out of the roughly 25% of the class that was female, only a few raised their hands, suggesting that even in these situations, women tend to put themselves forward less than men, even when called upon. And economics was not the worst. The female engineers I knew were in an even more skewed environment.
I often felt like my failures of comprehension were the failures of my gender, and as a result I tried to hide them. I was fine with not understanding words or emotions, but I would have died rather than admit that the graphed relationship between exchange rates, interest rates and inflation really confused me. At a recent leadership meeting, I remember looking around the room and realizing that out of the 25 people present, only 4 were women - fewer than 1 in 5. (And by the way - this had nothing to do with sexist hiring or promotion practices at the organization in question)
And still. No disrespect intended to my male friends, but I have always enjoyed the company of women. Occasionally, well-meaning friends forward me studies about how women tend to regulate their emotions better and form deeper relationships than men. Thanks, all, but this isn't the battle of the sexes and (not to sound like a woman) in this instance, I don't need research to confirm or deny what I already know. The women I know run the gamut - they are PhD candidates, heads of companies, entrepreneurs (yes, even that!), aspiring politicians, high-powered lawyers and foreign correspondents. They aren't 1 in 5, they are 1 in 5 million. And that's all great, and very impressive. But they are also the people I turn to when I'm unhappy, upset, disappointed, or totally confused (not to sound like a woman) by which direction to turn on a road I've traveled five or six times before. We may be hard on each other, but we help each other, too.
Without the women I know, I would not be who I am, and without their support, I would never have the courage to dream of anything or the determination to follow it through.
And for the record, even though when I was growing up my Dad often told me he thought of me as a son, the highest compliment I've gotten to date was when a man whom I admired told me, "if my daughter turned out like you, I would feel like I had done a good job as a father." He was not the first person to tell me that, and I hope - with all my mind and heart - that he won't be the last.
---
Disclaimer (you know, for fun): I've also benefited from knowing a lot of amazing and awesome men. What can I say? This post is about people - the people known as women.
I deeply admire Meryl Streep and even Margaret Thatcher, but I found this the saddest line in the entire film. Of course, Thatcher (assuming she actually said this, and it wasn't invented by the screenwriters) was a particular person in a particular time, and her comments are hardly representative.
But they bring to mind a refrain I've heard far too often, from women of all levels of success and achievement, which is, "I really prefer the company of men."
One doesn't need to look far to observe that by and large, positions of open power in society still seem to be dominated by men. Even in industries where women make up a large percentage of the workforce, men still rule the roost - they are more likely to be heads of publications, government and corporations.
There is a wealth of research into why this is so, a lot of it summed up very adequately by Larry Summers in the now-infamous speech that might have cost him his job at Harvard. I'm not concerned about this research, or about whether or not Summers was right, but more about the pernicious effect this kind of observation can have on a young woman with a lot of ambition.
For reasons I've mentioned before, I was never all that keen on conventional definitions of gender; when I was younger - and even sometimes now - it struck me as offensive that people are ever mandated to behave in a certain way. When I was 16, I remember getting upset at a friend for describing me as a "woman," I felt like "person" was a more than adequate term. Which would have been fine, except that somehow - and I don't know why or how - I decided early on that I had to choose between being a "smart person" and being a "woman." Smart people cared about politics, social inequality, literature. Women cared about boys and makeup.
I didn't really encounter the social pressures that society - and often, women - exert on each other to be "feminine" until I was in college.
I think that was fortunate, and I can cite two reasons for it: my parents, whose respect for conventional gender norms was about as nonexistant as mine and who encouraged me, always, to think as deeply as possible, and my schools: from the time I was eight years old, I attended magnet and IB programs, safe cocoons where students are celebrated in proportion to their nerdiness. I am told - by friends and popular culture - that this kind of environment is not the norm. (I still remember the time my 13-year-old cousin, a cheerleader, emphatically told me that when a man compliments a woman on her intelligence, it means he will never like her. At the time I thought this was funny; in retrospect, maybe I should have told her she was wrong.)
I was 23 years old when I first began to realize that gender - even by conventional standards - isn't always a handicap. I was the youngest reporter in the (mostly older, male) political department of a major newspaper, and one of my co-workers told me that I could get away with asking politicans questions that my male colleagues couldn't.
I still don't know how much this is true, but I began to see that being a young girl - and the associated ways that people take you less seriously as a result - could be an advantage. Sure, people might have underestimated me, but that left me the option of deciding how and when to show them the error of their ways.
Oddly enough, the working world - and maybe age, and maturity - have made me so much more comfortable with the word "woman." I have seen the many ways in which women too have power in society, and not just when it comes to producing children or deciding how to spend the grocery money. I look at examples of women - people! - who change the world, and can't help but realize that at the end of the day, life is the sum of what you want from it.
In that same infamous speech, Summers observes - as a casual fact - that aptitude studies of 12th-graders demonstrate that by and large, out of students who perform four or five standard deviations above the mean, only 1 out of 5 is a woman.
The end result of these kinds of observations - whether or not they reflect or create bias in society - is that being a nerdy or driven girl can sometimes feel like an isolated experience. I still remember a particularly burly college economics professor turning to the class during a live demonstration and calling for female volunteers with the phrase, "Come on ladies! We need more estrogen up here!" Interestingly, out of the roughly 25% of the class that was female, only a few raised their hands, suggesting that even in these situations, women tend to put themselves forward less than men, even when called upon. And economics was not the worst. The female engineers I knew were in an even more skewed environment.
I often felt like my failures of comprehension were the failures of my gender, and as a result I tried to hide them. I was fine with not understanding words or emotions, but I would have died rather than admit that the graphed relationship between exchange rates, interest rates and inflation really confused me. At a recent leadership meeting, I remember looking around the room and realizing that out of the 25 people present, only 4 were women - fewer than 1 in 5. (And by the way - this had nothing to do with sexist hiring or promotion practices at the organization in question)
And still. No disrespect intended to my male friends, but I have always enjoyed the company of women. Occasionally, well-meaning friends forward me studies about how women tend to regulate their emotions better and form deeper relationships than men. Thanks, all, but this isn't the battle of the sexes and (not to sound like a woman) in this instance, I don't need research to confirm or deny what I already know. The women I know run the gamut - they are PhD candidates, heads of companies, entrepreneurs (yes, even that!), aspiring politicians, high-powered lawyers and foreign correspondents. They aren't 1 in 5, they are 1 in 5 million. And that's all great, and very impressive. But they are also the people I turn to when I'm unhappy, upset, disappointed, or totally confused (not to sound like a woman) by which direction to turn on a road I've traveled five or six times before. We may be hard on each other, but we help each other, too.
Without the women I know, I would not be who I am, and without their support, I would never have the courage to dream of anything or the determination to follow it through.
And for the record, even though when I was growing up my Dad often told me he thought of me as a son, the highest compliment I've gotten to date was when a man whom I admired told me, "if my daughter turned out like you, I would feel like I had done a good job as a father." He was not the first person to tell me that, and I hope - with all my mind and heart - that he won't be the last.
---
Disclaimer (you know, for fun): I've also benefited from knowing a lot of amazing and awesome men. What can I say? This post is about people - the people known as women.
This post certainly goes out to all those Women (who certainly have all the traits of being a "person" as defined by you but yet not taking it further)
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