Reading this I was thinking about a woman I reported to for all of a month. She was old enough to have attained her professional status at a time when women were told that to succeed in business they had to act like men. This would also have been a time when there were so few women in management that they a) had to distinguish themselves from the regular employees even in their manner of dress, and b) might easily see other competent women as competition.

This study flies in the face of all we are told nowadays about women being nurturing, consensus-building problem-solvers. And while that is also a generalization, it is closer to my actual experience.

The woman I mentioned above came into her new position from outside the company and attempted to clean house by degrading and insulting all the top performers (all women) who now reported to her. Her own boss (also a woman) caught on to what she was doing and swept her out of a job.

"In other words, the media rarely investigates the study,choosing instead to report the findings and then rely on their readers to determine whether or not the study has validity."

Findings of studies are, as you point out, often presented as fact with no discussion of the design or methodology used. At a minimum that information should be given but some inclusion of the relative validity of the findings would be nice.

Nick Gillespie writes: "My guess is that the Boss Beasts'
horribleness was a product of being in the first large wave of women
with professional educations. They were raised to be wives and mothers
but they never did that, and resented like hell those younger than they
were who managed to combine the two life-patterns. My current boss was
raised in a much more open climate. It will be interesting to track
these results over time."

He does not hesitate to offer grand conclusions based upon a 3-person sample.

What I especially find interesting, though, is that the implication is that women bosses are bad, not that these non-mentoring bosses have a thing or three to learn. What about all the bad male bosses? I've had some pretty awful male bosses. Where do I get my poster for that?

Laura Scott
design, snap, blog

One has to be careful when reporting on a study not to editorialize it. However, often times the editorializing, like lies, are in the omission. I don't think most studies deserve investigative reporting, however, if one is going to run such a sensational headline, there do need to be facts supporting it, even it’s just posed as a question to readers.
My 2c.

That being said, I formerly worked in a publication ran entirely by women. Every tier. It was emphatically the most hostile place I've ever worked and I cannot be tortured to say a single positive thing about the women with whom I worked.

Dana
Mamalogues.com
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Pop Mama
Since Eve

Some of the best bosses I ever had were women. One is still my mentor, 11 years later.

Some of my best bosses were men. One is still a close friend of mine, 12 years later.

Some of my worst bosses were men or women. Both were bad managers in general, although they were very nice people.

Hard to find a pattern here, isn't it? If pressed, I'd say that some people are good bosses, and some aren't. I want a poster, too!

Suzanne, BlogHer Contributing Editor - Feminsim & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

Pet peeve: inevitably bad women bosses, employees, leaders, speakers, etc. somehow are made to represent "women", meanwhile bad male bosses, employees, leaders, speakers, etc. are just bad bosses, employees etc.

They're allowed to individuals not cultural representatives.

Perhaps we'll really be advanced when I can suck without worrying about sucking for all woman-kind!!

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Talking about pet peeves -- let's describe the leadership characteristics of women and men using gender neutral language. Is there a male equivalent to a Queen Bee? I'd like to see that in a headline.
Bad, aggressive, controlling, pig-headed, pushy,tough, back stabber-- pick your description , just make it a gender neutral description. As long as we have gender specific terminology to describe female characteristics in a negative way we will continue to stereotype women as "naturally less than" men when it comes to leadership.

elana
Blogher Contributing Editor,Business&CareersFunnyBusiness

It would be sooooo grand if we could predict our happiness at work simply by knowing the genital configuration of management. BUT, as Suzanne pointed out, there are just as many bad male bosses and female bosses. In the completely unscientific and unoffical reasearch that I call LIFE, I would say that petty, insecure, stressed out and generally angst people make bad bosses. I would also say that overly competetive and artificially constructed workplaces help to create petty, insecure, stressed out and generally angst people. But, what do I know. I, a young female, run a company made entirely of men who are 20 years older than me. At least once a week, one of them says, "working with you is really different than what I'm used to." Then again, I let my 8 year-old daughter write our corporate conduct code because I wanted to run the kind of company that she'd be happy in. I guess it's the mommy in me.

That said, I do know that people are watching how I do things. Right now it's mostly my staff and our investors. But soon it will be the business world at large. And it makes me really sad to think that whether I am liked or not liked, successful or not successful, discussion of it will be qualified by gender. I will fail or succeed as "woman boss" first, and then as a business person. To pin my success on my gender is to ignore the very real strengths that make me successful and have nothing to do with my gender. To pin my failure on my gender is unfair to women everywhere and takes the responsibility off of whatever decisions I made, as a person, that led to my failure.

It's time to take personal responsibility out of our pants and pin it squarely on our actions. Period. (And I mean that as a gender-neutral period.)

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