curious case of woman on top

Should a girl become ‘one of the boys’ to make it in today’s corporate world?

No matter how far the world has evolved (assuming this is no longer a dark age), reality is it is still damn tricky to be a female in a corporate world where predominantly it is run by the so-called boys club.

Main problem is gender bias does exist, no matter how you want to deny it. It creates so many other issues, including how: female is easily misjudge if acting outside the socially accepted female behavior while she is also expected to be more political and be more like the boys to get the top exec position.

Here’s one simple difference between girls and boys as an elementary student that create such a huge gap later on.

Boys are used to play team sport since they were little. They learned from such an early age on how to separate friends and allies in order to win the game. They could be an allies but not a friend outside the game, and vise versa. The cycle then repeated every time they played sport (which was often I believe), writing this in their DNA.

Girls on the other hand were brought up at the other end of the spectrum. We played nurturing games and were expected to be friend with everyone. Then if we don’t get along, we just stop playing together and find a new friends.

ONE of the reason why girls are less comfortable being involved in office politics is: because some of us prefer to be friends with people who we are getting along with and at the same time trying not to be considered the witch by people who we don't get along with. However, this ONE also lead to the result of why there is less female exec in the world.

I guess, if we, girls, really have the drive to play the game (liking Niko in Lipstick Jungle –the Book, not the Series), we could just.. have it ALL. Look at the example of Indo current top exec: Sri Mulyani a.ka the Iron Lady (see what I mean about gender bias?) our own Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economy. Or the newly appointed Pertamina Director, Karen Agustiawan. If these ladies can do it, so do the rest of us, yes?

Well, just remember that success come with sacrifice and being brought up a nurturer it would be bigger sacrifice for women. But really, it is up to each individual preference on what to achieve in this world, no?

I found this interesting article few short tips for those who want to get to the top.

Oh, this stuff is so serious. *wink*