Sex and the MBA Students

We did it. I’m relieved that we finally did. The anticipation was killing me. In leadership class we hit the inevitably contentious topic of gender in business. Faced with a Harvard Business School case study of two leaders in a transitioning company, one of the leaders was an aggressive and effective COO named Kirk.

In reading the case, my classmates and I naturally assumed that Kirk was a man. The case was written such that we would make such an assumption. No pronouns, no physical descriptions, etc.

When I initially read the case, I liked Kirk. However, when I watched a video of the real Kirk in action, I was immediately turned off. She was over-caffeinated, talked fast and loud, and used clichéd analogies and vague business terminology. She tapped her pen repeatedly on the boardroom table. My classmates, both male and female, had a pretty strong negative reaction to the very aggressive, direct, and demanding woman.

Funny. I liked her on paper when her gender was ambiguous. Even after learning that she was a woman, but before actually seeing her, I was a big fan. As soon as I saw her in action, I was immediately turned off.

To my surprise, when reacting to the video, one of my female classmates, whom I’d expect to relate to Kirk, said, “She doesn’t seem to have many of the soft qualities that I’d expect to see in a woman.” Beyond surprise, the comment infuriated another classmate and the back and forth began.
As the discussion on gender differences continued, our professor presented us with a study on students’ reactions to a similar case of a female business leader. The leader was given a male name in this second version of the study and male and female students reacted identically – they rated the male version as highly likeable and the female version as highly aggressive and overbearing. Both the male and female were rated high on effectiveness and competence.

While I certainly wasn’t shocked, I was disappointed that I’d sold out my own gender so easily and unknowingly. Did I dislike her for her androgynous suits and no-nonsense shoes? Did she not smile enough? Am I the statistic I’m trying to fight against?

In my limited experience, I’ve found that we women, Southern women in particular, are taught our whole lives to be pleasant and gracious, but also humble and harmonious, keeping the peace often at our own expense. The lessons aren’t explicit, but implied from years of schooling and dutiful parenting.

So many of us play happily into that traditional female role, but many others go farther and play helpless damsel in distress or beautiful idiot. Still others rebel and take it to the other extreme and play hardball, deliberately rejecting anything typically thought of as feminine. I find myself engaged in a constant back and forth of where I stand on the issue, of who I am and who I want to be.

The topic of gender in business has far too much breadth and depth than we even began to touch on in class. I’m glad that door is open though and that we discussed it respectfully but candidly and didn’t pretend that the glass ceiling is gone. There are so few women in the class, only 11 out of 56, I don’t want it to become a case of us against them, or worse, us against us.