Women are not taken seriously. Always considered too capricious and instinctive, little inclined to rationality and subject to an instant change of opinion, for many men they remain a dark continent, unknowable and questionable. It is no coincidence that Sigmund Freud himself, the father of psychoanalysis and the theorist of, among other things, the so-called “penis envy”, said the following phrase about the female sex: “A big question that even I have nothing to do with.” managed to answer, despite thirty years of long research, this is what a woman wants? Well, here we can try to answer this age-old question: women want the same thing as men. It may seem surprising, but at least at work, a female leader is fueled by the same ambition and desire to succeed as a man, and just like a man, she expects only the best from her employees. However, many still find it hard to believe.
It’s about stereotype faced by female bosses after breaking through the glass ceiling and being able to sit on top of a company or startup. A study published in July and published bloomberg underscores this far from unconscious bias: employees do not seem to expect female leaders to be as demanding as male managers, demanding long shifts, and respond poorly when asked to do so. Partly because women are expected to be more empathic, attributing to the employer an innate ability to identify and care even compared to employees, and partly because women often do not take their managerial roles seriously enough.
Study author Olenka Kachperczyk, along with two other researchers, studied the work time data of almost 250,000 employees of more than 58,000 start-ups in Portugal over a decade and found that workers worked about 7% less overtime when the boss was a woman and 1% less during regular hours.. “In a way, this is a very depressing discovery,” he says. bloomberg Kaperczyk, lead author of the study, is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London Business School. “Even if we fund women and put them in incubators or accelerators, there is an employee bias that determines whether their new venture will ultimately be successful.”
To take things a step further, the researchers designed an experiment in which they hired employees online for a fictitious data analytics company. At the end of the job, the fictitious founders asked the employees to do extra work. When the request came from the male owners, the workers basically agreed. However, if the demand came from women, employees were more likely to refuse, and even when they agreed, they did less. As a result, it turned out that there are no differences in the quality of work – tasks are performed equally well regardless of whether the boss is a man or a woman – but the amount of work performed by women is noticeably lower.
When asked to explain his behavior, workers basically said that you can refuse a woman. “People are more comfortable turning it down and saying, ‘Well, I have family obligations, you have to understand that,'” says Peter Junkin, associate professor of management at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business. worked at the studio. “With men, they just assume they have to say yes, and male founders will not understand work-life balance and will punish them in the future.” In short, the so-called notorious female empathy turns out to be a double-edged sword for women. who, after battling the gender pay gap and managing to lead a company, still have to fight for credibility.
This problem is common to all women entrepreneurs, but it is especially felt by startups, where additional work is a common and widespread practice for business consolidation.. Less productive employees do less work, which can lower sales, profits, and long-term results. “High growth is due to the fact that employees make these efforts at their own discretion,” says Kaperchik. Startup leaders need to be able to motivate their employees to work overtime, he says, realizing that the typical employee pay structure means that if the firm is ultimately successful, they will all reap the benefits, whether the boss is male or female. . Again, the desire and work for women’s success helps everyone.
Source: Elle