WOMEN NOT POPULAR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 144, 20 June 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMEN NOT POPULAR

AS BOSSES THEY ARE FAILURES. Why is it that a man is usually less unpopular as a boss than a woman? An why do women dislike being bossed by a member of their own sex’ asks Walter Ashley in the Sunday News. There is no doubt that many women intensely dislike being “bossed’’ by other women. This does not, of course, mean that many men do not equally dislike being “bossed” by other men. 1 have known quite a number of workmen, soldiers, servants, and clerks whose regard for their immediate superiors has been singularly free from devastating devotion. Women supervisors certainly have i.o monopoly of unpopularity; neither is th. arrogance which begets it their close preserve. The hatred inspired by their notebooks and pencils may be intense, but hardly more so than that provoked by Foreman {Smith’s bowler hat or Head Gardener Thompson’s whiskers. The fact is, of course, that no one ot cither sex particularly enjoys being “bossed” and the nearer the boss the less the enjoyment. The manager is not disliked less than the supervisor because he is a man, and she is a woman, but because he is not quite so much in evidence. He has usually other things to think about than the length of Joan’s lunch-hour or Gladys’ skirt. The worst kind of boss is the boss whose whole time and thought are devoted to bossing —and such a boss may be of either sex.

It is none the less undeniable that, other things being equal, a man is usu ally less unpopular as a boss than a woman. With men employees this is understandable. But women usually dislike working for a woman almost as much. Why is this? 1 think there are two main reasons In the first place, a woman is too much like themselves. They would prefer not to be bossed by anyone. If they must have a boss, they want one as different from themselves as possible. This is true in all departments of life. I remember, in France during the war, thinking what an immense pull the officers must have who had served for years in the ranks and eventually earned his promotion over the young subaltern straight from school. I was quickly disabused. The men much preferred to take orders from the young subaltern. The ranker officer was too much like themselves to inspire respect. “Who is he, anyway?" they would ask. The same is true in a factory. “How the men must hate that new young manager with his university drawl," 1 thought in a big dye works in Yorkshire; “how much they would prefer to obey a man like themselves, who has worn an overall and worked from 6 to 6." Again I was wrong. They rather liked that drawl. I found. It made its owner sufficiently unlike themselves for them to accept his orders without losing their own self-re-spect.

Women, again, are generally far too personal to direct other women without endless friction. To control a large staff justly needs a certain detachment. To take a personal but unbiased interest in many persons under your direction, you must yourself be almost impersonal. You must be the same to nil. You must not get involved with anyone more than with any other one. You must not lunch with Elsie Smith unless you can be sure of lunching with all the others also. You must on no account discuss one junior with-another. Intuition and instinct, commonly regarded as peculiarly feminine qualities, make, I. suppose, for a more personal attitude towards a staff than predominate in men. And a man the colder reason which is supposed to whose success has been due to intuitive rather tha. rational qualities is usually wise, for the same reason, to delegate matters of personnel to another. Those of my women friends who, themselves brilliant exceptions, success fully direct large staffs will probably reply that the only men who really succeed must have so large a measure of feminine intuition, and the only women who succeed so largo a measure of masculine reason, that their differences cancel out! And that a staff is as safe, or in as great danger, with the one as the other.