MIT’s Sloan Review is reporting on the latest Women in the Workplace report from LeanIn.org and McKinsey. The numbers are pretty damning: women leaders are leaving their jobs at a rate 41% higher than men for a variety of reasons:
- compensation/benefits
- work-life balance
- leadership
- learning & development
- colleagues
- health & well-being
- toxic culture
- collaboration
- honest discussions
- agility
- communication
- execution
- perks
- job security
- technology
- innovation
- ESG
- performance
- strategy
- goals
- global opportunities
Most of these are, according to the report, issues that women discuss more negatively than men. Apparently there’s still a pay gap between women CEOs and men. And women supposedly experience more toxicity at work than men do.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn if women CEOs get paid less than their male counterparts. CEOs are a whole are grossly overpaid compared to the people actually doing the work, so they can all go fuck themselves regardless of sex or gender.
I’m marginally more interested in the claim that women experience a toxic work culture 41% more than men do. I’m not convinced this is actually the case, but not because I think women don’t experience toxicity at work. I’ll gladly stipulate that they do. However, I think men experience the same toxic work culture that women do, and as much as women do. A bully is going to bully whoever they can get away with bullying. If they can’t use your gender, they’ll find some other excuse.
I think that what we’re seeing in this report but not understanding is that women are 41% more likely to object so strongly to toxic work culture that they’ll vote with their feet by quitting. However, since this is LeanIn.org (an organization promoting “girlboss” feminism) doing this report with McKinsney & Company, a management consulting firm that has been “has been criticized for its role promoting OxyContin use in the context of the opioid crisis in North America, its work with Enron, its work for authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Russia, and for its involvement in government corruption scandals” according to Wikipedia, I’m not inclined to put too much trust in either the data or the conclusions drawn from it in the report.
Here’s what I think: I think the reason more women than men object so strongly to workplace toxicity and other issues that they’ll quit their jobs comes down to one fundamental issue: many men will tolerate any abuse, no matter how egregious, if they regard the ability to endure such abuse as integral to their identity as men. Why is this the case? Remember that boys generally grow up learning that their feelings don’t matter to anybody but themselves. These boys become men who ignore their feelings and tolerate what they must to earn a living, especially if they have a family to support.
I saw this with my late father. At every job he ever had, he had to put up with at least one asshole boss who mistook him for a punching bag, and what would my father do? Whenever he got served a shit sandwiches at work, he’d take David Lee Roth’s advice: eat ’em and smile. What did he get for his stoic endurance? Giant Food Stores accused him of theft to justify firing him after 20 years of service, and he had to retrain as a truck driver to earn a living. He died of pancreatic cancer at 63. My father didn’t even get to retire.
America, fuck yeah! C’mon! Everybody sing along!
Or better yet, forget what JFK said and try asking a question too many of us have left unasked for too long: What has your country done for you lately?
Let’s be honest here: most of us — men and women alike — work too damn for too damn long, get paid too damn little, and pay too damn much in taxes on what little we do make. Most of us are getting a raw deal out of life. It’s just that men and women get a different raw deal, and it’s way too easy to mistake different for better.
I put up with shit just like my father did, even though I chafe against it. I don’t necessarily say, “I’m a man; I can take it,” but what I do say isn’t much better: “I’m a New Yorker; I can take it.” Why do I stay in a job that makes me unhappy? Because my wife needs me. I make more money than she does, and if I’m not working we’re fucked. Sure, I could get another job, but job hunting sucks even more than working.
I shouldn’t have to take shit just to make a living, and neither should anybody else regardless of sex or gender. However, we see more attention paid to women who suffer at work because men’s lives matter as much as their feelings do (which is not at all). If you have any doubts on this point, remember that many of those who excoriated Hillary Clinton for suggesting that “women are the primary victims of war” have been men. Here’s the quote if you don’t believe me.
The experience that you have gone through is in many ways comparable to what happens with domestic violence. Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.
Hillary Rodham Clinton: First Ladies’ Conference on Domestic Violence, San Salvador, El Salvador (17 November 1998) (as delivered)
Never mind that it’s generally men who are first called upon to wage war and men who are primarily mained and killed at war. They might never get to come home and see their children, let alone help raise them. Those who do often find that “home” doesn’t exist any longer even if they’re fortunate enough to survive the war and return to civilian life.
And never mind that just as 1 in 3 women have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner, so have 1 in 4 men according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence — and that number might be higher because a lot of men won’t admit to having been victimized, especially if they were abused by a woman, for reasons I suggested above.
Let’s not forget the suicide rates. Women might attempt suicide more often than men, but men succeed at killing themselves far more often. Why? Because when a man is desperate enough to seriously consider making his own exit, he doesn’t fuck around. He makes damn sure to do it right the first time because he knows nobody gives a shit and will resent him for having failed the attempt and “surviving”.
So you will have to pardon my cynicism if I doubt that companies only fail women. A cursory examination of the world under late-stage capitalism suggests that companies are failing everybody. It’s just that men grin and bear it because what the fuck else are we going to do? Nobody’s going to help us. So it’s time we helped ourselves. But we can’t do it by sabotaging women’s efforts. That won’t help anybody.
Remember: no war but class war. Identity politics are a distraction. While men and women argue over who is more oppressed, the richest among us laugh all the way to the bank.