Article originally published in February 2018
When you move in the tech world, you quickly notice that there aren’t many women. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I’m not telling you anything new. In professional settings, I regularly hear women tell me “I prefer working with men, girls are too gossipy”, or “I like my boss to be a man and not a woman”. And my personal favorite: “too many girls on a work team and productivity goes out the window”.
I don’t need to tell you that I always feel uncomfortable when a woman says that to me, but, mea culpa, I said a variation of that when I was in my twenties.
I wonder what the problem really is with having too many women in a workgroup, especially considering how few there are in IT. In Quebec, in 2016, women represented 20% of professionals in this field, according to the TECHNOCompétences report published at the beginning of February 2018.
Is it better to work with a majority of men than women? My short answer is: the best thing is to work in a diverse environment.
When you work in a diverse company, with people of different genders, backgrounds, religions and sexual orientations, it fosters a pleasant working atmosphere where you feel free to be yourself.
A Danish survey by Stepstone found that 60% of respondents aged between 30 and 50 said it was “important” or “very important” for their workplace to be diverse and inclusive. What’s more, in companies where diversity and inclusion are open, employees are much more likely to feel committed to their work.
A 2013 Pew Research Center study further shows that most Americans argue that the gender of their coworkers doesn’t matter, but for those who do have a preference, men say they prefer working with men and, of course, so do women.
Why are women more accepting of a male superior? The answer will make some people cringe, but I agree with Anju Jain. In her article, she explains that, a priori, this thinking is based mainly on old stereotypes and prejudices, such as men being seen as more of a leader or being able to manage a team better. Women, on the other hand, lack confidence and feel threatened by the good performance of their subordinates. And yet, as women, we want more women in management positions! Do you see the aberration in this situation?
Other reasons why some women prefer to work with men include..:
- Male bosses “speak more directly” and “are less prone to mood swings”, according to the results of a British survey of women.
- Other specialists have found that women sometimes exclude other women from opportunities in order to gain a competitive advantage.
- And finally, women tend to bully only other women in the workplace, not men.
Much of this can be attributed to decades of discrimination in the workplace and in society. Women tend to face what is known as the “reaction effect”, the theory that women can only get ahead at work if they act like men, and therefore discriminate against women. This situation is a terribly vicious circle: to stand out from the crowd, women pound on other women.
So what should you do? If you’re a woman who doesn’t like working with other women, ask yourself what the real reasons are. Have you had a bad experience with a particular woman, or is it women in general that you have a problem with? Would it be different if it were a man? Surprisingly, you don’t like working with almost half the population of Quebec! That’s a lot of people, and a lot of different personalities.
