Day: May 12, 2002

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Jeneane Sessum just posted a note that had me going “say what?” about half way down.

I can sympathize with Jeneane that she misses her husband while he’s working in Japan, but I can’t agree with her when she generalizes her own personal sense of lonliness and temporary loss of his presence with sayings such as:

Look, the absence of testosterone in a household, combined with an overabundance of estrogen, is just not a good thing. I’ve seen it in companies I’ve worked for. Those places where the first meeting in the morning means two or three women crying, or at least one of them walking out in a fit of rage, punctuating their departure with a slammed door.

I haven’t worked at a lot of companies that are controlled by women at the top, primarily because I’ve worked at larger corporations and control of these types of companies is still male-dominated. However, I’ve worked at a significant number of companies where my upper level management is female, and I’ve never noticed a difference in the number of women “…crying, or at least one of them walking out in a fit of rage…” at these companies.

To be honest, I’ve not really noticed that much of a difference, good or bad, in overall behavior of a group based on the sex of the upper management.

Regardless of the preferred expression — tears or words or actions — excessive emotionalism at work occurs in both sexes. Sex of the boss, number of men or women in the group, sex of your co-workers — none of these purely sex-based characteristics play into this one.

Group dynamics is a lot more complex than basic rutting behavior.

To say that women need to have men to somehow “balance” them in the work place or home because of an estrogen/testosterone thing is to support stereotypes that can only hurt both sexes, professionally and personally.