You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A business man is aggressive; a business woman is pushy. A business man is good on details; she's picky. He loses his temper because he's so involved with his job; she's bitchy. He follows through; she doesn't know when to quit. He stands firm; she's hard. His judgments are her prejudices. He is a man of the world; she's been around. He drinks because of the excess job pressure; she's a lush. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks; she's mouthy. He exercises authority diligently; she's power mad. He climbed the ladder of success; she slept her way to the top. He's a stern taskmaster; she's hard to work for.
(Margrit Eichler, 1980; cited in Caplan, 1993)
Here, the same behavior, given different labels, interpretations and inflections, suggests a dual classification system for understanding men and women's behavior in the workplace, such that one could be persuaded to venerate his behavior and vilify hers. Language can serve as a potent and injurious tool against ambitious women in the workplace. Consider how often both men and women have thought or said “bitch” or other derogatory terms when describing a woman in a leadership position.
Freud once described mental health as the ability to love and to work. For many of these women, their work has also become their love, their passion. Working long hours, often working “twice as hard as men,” to be viewed as equally competent, perhaps sacrificing spouse and children in deference to career, these women have been inculcated into a patriarchal corporate environment, one in which they must act in a sexual dissonant
manner in order to succeed. And as they negotiate the male managerial model, they often come to view their own femininity in an objectified, disparaging way. They may defeminize their language and adopt a “more adversarial, information-focused style characteristic of all male talk” (Cortes, 1998, p. 295). Here is where the dilemma begins: If they conform to the masculine linguistic norms of the corporate envi