Each time I read another piece about why Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, was fired, my blood pressure rises. It is perfectly clear that she was fired because her second-in-command, Dean Baquet, wanted her job and knew how to play politics well enough to get it. Abramson may have inquired about her salary, which was somewhat less than her male predecessors, but that was not enough to get her fired.
Abramson is 60 years old--right in my range. Like me, she grew up in the 1950s Betty Crocker culture where women wore housedresses and heels to clean and were always there when the kids came home from school. Husband and father came home to a martini and slippers while Betty got dinner on the table. But as Jill and I were coming of age, that culture shifted. Suddenly, on top of the Vietnam protests, we had a growing feminist movement that pushed women to get an education, get "the pill," and go to work in the same offices that had long been filled with WWII veterans and motherly secretaries.
It took a few decades for women to get schooled on how to succeed in the workplace, but some were so culturally bound to Betty Crocker that they never got the hang of it. They hadn't the courage to speak up in meetings, they could not speak up when men took credit for their work, and they could not deal with an eight-hour work day and all the housework and childcare, so they retreated to the lives their mothers had led. The women who stuck to it were those who really needed the money, and those who didn't care to find a husband.
What did it take for a women to succeed in the 1970s workplace? I'm still not completely sure. I have never felt that I truly succeeded, although as I look back over more than 40 years of employment, I did okay. In 1970 the primary necessity for any working woman was a navy blue or a black suit (or both). Dress it up with a scarf tied in a bow at your neck (mimicking a necktie, of course), and wear stockings and three-inch heels. Carry a leather purse, wear a full face of makeup, and type 80 words a minute. Keep your mouth shut in meetings, and for heaven's sake, never embarrass your male boss.
In 1980 women began to get different titles: "Administrative assistant," "Office manager," "Customer relations clerk." Those who were well educated and quite attractive started to find themselves becoming "Director" of a department--closely overseen by a male assistant vice president--and they occasionally sat in on meetings, where, because no man would do it, they were forced to take minutes. Being the best writer in the group, I always took minutes.
In 1990, we began to see women bank managers, women assistant vice presidents, lots of women fundraisers (nothing brings in money like a good-looking female fundraiser). Then our culture shifted again, this time to technology. The workplace became much less hierarchical when the world discovered that men and women were equally skilled in using operating systems, Windows, Excel, and the steadily growing family of software. As companies were forced to send employees to training, the workplace differences in men and women began to even up, because it was clear that most women could type 80 words a minute, and men still couldn't.
After 2000, the workplace became more equal, except in one way: salaries. Our workplace cultures demand that we not share our salary amounts, a practice that I have broken several times, each time causing major upset. Women still make only 77 percent of male salaries, unless they find a way to speak up for themselves. Younger employers are more willing to listen, but until all the baby boomers retire, there will still be obstacles to the goal of income equality.
I did some major errors in my working years: telling my salary, gaining weight, getting pregnant, wearing sneakers because my feet hurt, wearing my hair short instead of long, and telling several men that they were wrong in their approach to a variety of issues. I was always proven right, but not until I had been chastised. I was never fired, but I quit three times because my immediate superior was unfair, bad at their job, sexist, and just plain wrong.
So if Jill Abramson lived through the same decades I did, well all I can say is, well-done, sistah!
If she was paid unfairly, if her wise counsel (for which she was hired, by the way) was ignored, or if the man biting at her heels finally brought her down, she still deserves credit for all that she accomplished. Men were told for decades that they should be first, and they learned to compete to prove it. Maybe that's the next step for women in their long journey to equality.
Abramson is 60 years old--right in my range. Like me, she grew up in the 1950s Betty Crocker culture where women wore housedresses and heels to clean and were always there when the kids came home from school. Husband and father came home to a martini and slippers while Betty got dinner on the table. But as Jill and I were coming of age, that culture shifted. Suddenly, on top of the Vietnam protests, we had a growing feminist movement that pushed women to get an education, get "the pill," and go to work in the same offices that had long been filled with WWII veterans and motherly secretaries.
It took a few decades for women to get schooled on how to succeed in the workplace, but some were so culturally bound to Betty Crocker that they never got the hang of it. They hadn't the courage to speak up in meetings, they could not speak up when men took credit for their work, and they could not deal with an eight-hour work day and all the housework and childcare, so they retreated to the lives their mothers had led. The women who stuck to it were those who really needed the money, and those who didn't care to find a husband.
What did it take for a women to succeed in the 1970s workplace? I'm still not completely sure. I have never felt that I truly succeeded, although as I look back over more than 40 years of employment, I did okay. In 1970 the primary necessity for any working woman was a navy blue or a black suit (or both). Dress it up with a scarf tied in a bow at your neck (mimicking a necktie, of course), and wear stockings and three-inch heels. Carry a leather purse, wear a full face of makeup, and type 80 words a minute. Keep your mouth shut in meetings, and for heaven's sake, never embarrass your male boss.
In 1980 women began to get different titles: "Administrative assistant," "Office manager," "Customer relations clerk." Those who were well educated and quite attractive started to find themselves becoming "Director" of a department--closely overseen by a male assistant vice president--and they occasionally sat in on meetings, where, because no man would do it, they were forced to take minutes. Being the best writer in the group, I always took minutes.
In 1990, we began to see women bank managers, women assistant vice presidents, lots of women fundraisers (nothing brings in money like a good-looking female fundraiser). Then our culture shifted again, this time to technology. The workplace became much less hierarchical when the world discovered that men and women were equally skilled in using operating systems, Windows, Excel, and the steadily growing family of software. As companies were forced to send employees to training, the workplace differences in men and women began to even up, because it was clear that most women could type 80 words a minute, and men still couldn't.
After 2000, the workplace became more equal, except in one way: salaries. Our workplace cultures demand that we not share our salary amounts, a practice that I have broken several times, each time causing major upset. Women still make only 77 percent of male salaries, unless they find a way to speak up for themselves. Younger employers are more willing to listen, but until all the baby boomers retire, there will still be obstacles to the goal of income equality.
I did some major errors in my working years: telling my salary, gaining weight, getting pregnant, wearing sneakers because my feet hurt, wearing my hair short instead of long, and telling several men that they were wrong in their approach to a variety of issues. I was always proven right, but not until I had been chastised. I was never fired, but I quit three times because my immediate superior was unfair, bad at their job, sexist, and just plain wrong.
So if Jill Abramson lived through the same decades I did, well all I can say is, well-done, sistah!
If she was paid unfairly, if her wise counsel (for which she was hired, by the way) was ignored, or if the man biting at her heels finally brought her down, she still deserves credit for all that she accomplished. Men were told for decades that they should be first, and they learned to compete to prove it. Maybe that's the next step for women in their long journey to equality.
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