Still dancing “backwards and in high heels.” (To be considered equal, women actually have to be better.)

(Special thanks to Julie Reynolds for posting a link to the NPR story discussed below.)

There is an old quip that the famous dancer Ginger Rodgers did everything that her even more famous partner Fred Astair did… but that she had to do it “backwards and in high heels.” To be seen to be just as good as the man she was dancing with, she actually had to be better than he was. A recent news item suggests that this pattern continues today: National Public Radio (a publicly-funded network in the USA) ran a piece about how women often hesitate to ask for raises in the workplace. According to the story, this reluctance suppresses not only women’s current salaries, but perhaps their lifetime earnings as well.

(You can find the story here: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133599768/ask-for-a-raise-most-women-hesitate).

The piece also features the work of Carnegie-Mellon economist Linda Babcock, who explores how women who do in fact ask for a raise are perceived by others. Babcock conducted an experiment where male and female actors were videotaped asking the boss for more money. The script they read was exactly the same. These videos were then screened for others who were then asked to decide the actor’s fate: raise or no raise. The male actor was well-liked and tended to get the raise. The female actor – reciting the exact same lines – still got the raise but was perceived as being too aggressive and too demanding.

Babcock points out that being perceived this way can seriously hurt a woman’s chances of professional success. Even if she gets the raise, she may well find that her career path is blocked.

In order to be both financially and professionally successful, Babcock says wistfully, women still need to conform to traditional feminine stereotypes and to appear selfless. They should say things like: “My team leader suggested that I should ask for a raise,” or they should talk about how much they give of themselves to the organization. Women not only need to find within themselves the same assertiveness that it takes a man to go ask for a raise, but they also need to sweeten the request with generous spoonfuls of sugar and spice and everything nice!

The women have to do exactly what the men had to do, and then some. They have to do this dance backwards and in high heels!

Women as leaders: damned and/or doomed. The need for females to outperform males just in order to be considered equal also applies when the woman is a boss. In 2007, IBM sponsored a study called “The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t.” (http://www.catalyst.org/publication/83/the-double-bind-dilemma-for-women-in-leadership-damned-if-you-do-doomed-if-you-dont) This study showed that the demands of the female gender role present immense dilemmas for women who are in positions of workplace leadership.

“Because they are often evaluated against a ‘masculine’ standard of leadership,” the researchers found, “women are left with limited and unfavorable options, no matter how they behave and perform as leaders.” The sexist roadblocks that women leaders encounter include:

  • Women who act in ways that are consistent with gender stereotypes are viewed as less competent leaders, while women who act in ways that are inconsistent with such stereotypes are considered unfeminine and unlikable.
  • Women leaders are consistently held to a higher standard of competence, and, unlike men, women must prove over and over again that they have what it takes to be a leader.
  • Women in positions of leadership are typically either perceived as competent or as likable, but rarely both.

So it turns out that society punishes women who fail to behave in feminine ways, but then it also punishes them when they do behave in feminine ways! The dance continues…

Different songs, same rhythms. A lot has changed in the years since Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astair twirled their way across the silver screen. Now we dance in the club, not the ballroom. And the way we dance is a lot less formal. Men no longer direct every single move. But certain elements of the old ways remain: Women still dance in heels, and are generally expected to have better moves than the men do.

And, of course, usually it is still a man who chooses the music.