The collective comfort zone of masculine business and leadership models is not only exhausting, but exacerbating the already bumpy path toward gender equality and positive social change.
It’s being called “the humanization of business,” this notion that our long-held generalizations about the masculine and feminine can not only thrive together within business and leadership models, but also in the workplace. Whether it’s competition vs cooperation, speed vs long-term strategy, profit vs people or size vs effectiveness, our traditional definitions of the precursors for success have historically veered more toward the masculine side of things.
We’ve written at length about the unsustainable consequences of these biases, such as the socioeconomic, environmental and health impacts of gender inequality across disciplines—including the event industry. Recent research conducted by cognitive scientists and linguists at MIT, the University of Potsdam and the University of California, San Diego, has added a new variable to the gender bias mix: pronouns. More specifically, they found an unconscious bias toward “she” and our collective unconscious assumptions about women in power among the study’s 25,000 participants.
When asked to choose between he, she or they when considering the scenario of choosing a pronoun for president of the United States, “they” was preferred to “she” at 50 percent to 10 percent, despite political affiliation. This remained the case, with the added element of reluctance by participants who chose “she” to use “she,” even as polls were shown indicating a decisive lead for the female presidential candidate. Likewise, reading the word “she” within the context of a female president caused a delay in reading comprehension vs “he” in that same context. A UK version of the study found little gender bias when considering the next prime minister.
So what’s with all this resistance to the hypothetical “she” in the US?
This is a loaded question, but much of the head scratching over “she” in US business environments, business culture and women in leadership roles, and in finding value in the feminine within these systems, seems to stem from the overall lack of representation of women in positions of power. If women were more fairly represented in significant leadership positions at local, state and national levels, it wouldn’t feel so challenging, confrontational or simply audacious to use “she” when referring to her role. Even in professions with fairly equal representation of men to women, “she” is still severely underused vs “he,” the study also found.
Ditching Gender Expectations in Business
Truth be told, our perceptions of gender roles are deeply influenced by culture and belief systems. Finding balance among the array of stereotypes within our perceptions of the masculine and feminine is key to forging sustainable business and social paradigms. Just like the human body, which functions at its best with two eyes, two arms, two hands, two legs, etc., the optimal company culture and leadership strategy seeks to create a sense of balance and wholeness among the best of its parts. And just as men can be empathetic and cooperative and women quick to move and highly goal-oriented, the ecosystem of your business or leadership style can be built on a deep appreciation and harmonization of both without the need for gender attribution.
