Several of my female friends working in various industries have recently expressed a similar disheartening sentiment: “It’s not that I prefer male bosses, but they’re the only ones who give me opportunities and successfully fight for me.”
The first time I heard this, I was outraged, but soon I started to worry if this is a belief that actually undermines female leadership. It’s troubling in a couple of ways, but most of all, how can female managers succeed if those who report to them don’t trust their ability to navigate workplace power structures? Put more pointedly, what if talented employees prefer and benefit from male leadership because professional culture enables men to have an edge in getting things done?
One of the common strategies for achieving greater gender and racial diversity in the workplace is to promote more women and people of color to leadership roles, in the hope that such people will promote diversity from within. In theory, women and minority leaders are likely to think about diversity more when making personnel decisions. They’re also thought to be better at identifying talented but overlooked job candidates and may push for workplace policies that could enable those women and people of color to thrive.
[For more of this story, written by Bourree Lam, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...us-diversity/477228/]
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