How the hell would I know? I’m not Chris Brogan. Pity he didn’t take a similar approach in his recent posts, “Learn What Women Want” and “Women in the Workplace.” Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs, while blogging about working women, cited this stat from the Center for Work-Life Policy: while 47 percent of college-educated entry-level corporate professionals are female, women comprise a mere 21% of senior executives, 17% of Congress , and 15% of board directors. And followed it with this comment, “But in my recent effort to learn what women want, I found that not all women want to lead.”
Brogan seems to mean well. He writes about the women who do want to lead, “we should be very clear and helpful in making sure that women have the chance/choice to lead.” But he qualifies that statement by suggesting we support the “qualified and capable” women, even while acknowledging not all male leaders possess those qualtities. He writes, “so maybe that’s not even a consideration we should have.” Maybe.
Speaking of maybe, Brogan wonders if maybe the data reflects a “need for improvement” or maybe it reflects the fact some women aren’t climbing the ladder to success. In a follow on piece, Brogan defends his posts saying the point he was trying to make was, “that maybe women don’t want to lead in the traditional sense that the posts mentioned,” and that, “Hey, women have choices and maybe they don’t want to be in a box.”
Maybe I’m making the same mistake Brogan did by pointing out the obvious: not all men fully grasp the challenges working women face – both major barriers and subtle discrimination. But the reason I single out Brogan is he has a major platform. His “Women in the Workplace” post was tweeted 257 times. He has 138,137 followers on Twitter and 4,832 friends on Facebook.
Brogan knows a lot about a lot of things. Just check out his “About” page on his site. But working women doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Chris thanks for responding here. What concerns me is not that you wrote about women’s work issues and interests but that the “many women don’t want the corner office” theme is so pervasive in the media and can be so detrimental to women’s advancement. I’m not putting those words in your mouth, but I did pick up on that idea in your post. Yes, 100 women might give you 70-80 different answers about their career goals. One hundred men might too. That’s no justification for the lack of women at the top.
So no, my intent was not for you to not talk about women. My intent was to call out the generalizations.
We want the same thing – a dialogue. Shall we keep talking?
It wasn’t about men. It had nothing to do with men. By shooting at that, it’s not really going at it.
Here’s the weird thing: why get up in arms about someone wanting to talk about women’s work issues and interests? I write about it, and then people want to poop on that. So, you’re saying back to me, “Don’t talk about women. Don’t think about it. Just go on doing your own thing and let’s not think about it.”
Seems kinda short-sighted to poop on me for writing a post that takes interest in what might or might not be behind the current work environment.
But what do I know?
Know what I wanted? An interesting conversation. Oh well. : )