„Ich will keine Frauen mehr einstellen“

Eine Frau klagt über weibliche Angestellte:

I don’t want to hire any more women.

Yes, I said it. You cringed when you read it and I cringed when I wrote it, and even more so when the thought first occurred to me. I am a woman, a feminist, a mother, and a passionate entrepreneur. I don’t just stand for equality – I have crashed the glass ceiling in every aspect of my life. I get extremely angry when I come across articles that insist there are gender differences that extend beyond physiology. I am fortunate to have had female role models who taught me through their own examples that I can accomplish absolutely anything I desire.

Da liegt sie falsch – Männer und Frauen sind im Schnitt unterschiedlich. Aber das ändert im Endeffekt wenig, sie führt es dann eben auf eine unterschiedliche Erziehung zurück.

Over the years, I have hired outstanding women – educated, intelligent and highly articulate. Yet, I am exhausted. I have become profoundly tired of being a therapist and a babysitter, of being drawn into passive-aggressive mental games and into constantly questioning my own worth as a manager. I have had several women who quit to stay home to “figure out what to do next”. No, not to stay home and care for children, but to mooch of a husband or a boyfriend while soul searching (aka: taking a language class or learning a new inapplicable skill that could be acquired after work). Incidentally, I have not had a single male employee quit with no plan in mind.

Männer haben eben das Sicherheitsnetz des Versorgers eher nicht, da sie gleichzeitig an Status verlieren, wenn sie so etwas machen würden.

I have had women cry in team meetings, come to my office to ask me if I still like them and create melodrama over the side of the office their desk was being placed. I am simply incapable of verbalizing enough appreciation to female employees to satiate their need for it for at least a week’s worth of work. Here is one example to explain. My receptionist was resigning and, while in tears, she told me that although she was passionate about our brand and loved the job, she could not overcome the fact that I did not thank her for her work. It really made me stop in my tracks and so I asked for an example. “Remember when I bought the pictures with butterflies to hang in the front? And you just came and said ‘thank you’? That is a perfect example!” – “Wait”, I said, “So, I did thank you then?” – “Yes! But you did not elaborate on what exactly you liked about them! Why didn’t you?” She had bought them with the company credit card and I actually did not like them at all, but I digress.

Ich vermute, dass das gleichzeitig ein Problem ist, weil sie eine Frau ist, einem männlichen Chef gegenüber würden sich die Frauen nicht so benehmen, sondern es eher darauf schieben, dass er ein Mann ist.

I have developed a different approach for offering constructive criticism to male and female employees. When I have something to say to one of the men, I just say it! I don’t think it through – I simply spit it out, we have a brief discussion and we move on. They even frequently thank me for the feedback! Not so fast with my female staff. I plan, I prepare, I think, I run it through my business partner and then I think again. I start with a lot of positive feedback before I feel that I have cushioned my one small negative comment sufficiently, yet it is rarely enough. We talk forever, dissect every little piece of it, and then come back to the topic time and time again in the future. And I also have to confirm that I still like them – again and again, and again.

Klingt schon krass. Vielleicht liegt es auch daran, dass sie selbst eher männlich denkt und insofern wie eine Fremde in der Welt der Frauen ist, die es übertreiben muss.

I am also yet to have a single male employee come to my office to give me dirt on a co-worker or share an awkward gossip-like story. My female employees though? Every. single. one.

Frauen die lästern? übles Klischee

When I opened my company, I was excited for many reasons. One of them was wanting to make it an amazing place for women to build their careers. After all, we were two women, both mothers with very small children, opening a company in a very competitive industry. I was going to celebrate the achievements of my female hires, encourage them to find their voices, celebrate their pregnancies and year-long maternity leaves, be understanding and accommodating when they would have to juggle work/daycare/school schedules. Yet, I had no idea that the problems women faced in their workplace were often far removed from the typical inequalities feminism continues to address. It is not men who sabotage women and stump their career growth – it is women themselves!

Immerhin ja eine interessante Einsicht.

Ich muss sagen, dass ich viele weibliche Kollegen habe mit denen ich sehr gerne Zusammenarbeite und die auch mit gegenüber diese Eigenschaften nicht zeigen.

Ich weiß aber auch bei einigen dieser gleichen Frauen, dass es untereinander auch gerne Zickereien und Lagerwechsel gibt, die nur nicht bis zu mir durchdringen.

vgl. auch:

• Eine Firma mit nur weiblichen Angestellten