A recent poll by career portal and networking site womenintechnology shows that the majority of people in the IT sector favour a male boss over a female. Almost half of respondents (44%) – who were both men and women – preferred a man to be in charge at work, and another 38% had no preference. Only 19% said they would rather have a female boss.
There were many comments about bad experiences with female management. One woman said: “I hate to say it but I much prefer male bosses. I find women bosses tend to be emotional, vindictive and petty, with a tendency to be quite competitive with other females.” Another stated, “I have never had a good experience working under a female boss. I guess they feel threatened by my presence, which brings out the worst in them! This leads to irrational, small minded, obstructive behaviour, which really belongs in the playground, rather than a professional working environment.”
However there were also more positive ones: “My favourite three bosses – and those under whom I was most productive – were all women. Having said that, my least favourite boss was also a woman, so no simple correlation available! But I’d say that those woman bosses I had were very capable at drawing out experience and positive energy rather than the typical male command and control model. They also had a far healthier attitude to supporting a balance between work and private life, before it became a trendy recruiting slogan.”
Other comments included “I always preferred a good boss - didn’t matter what gender they were” as well as “Boy or girl? I don't care really as long as they are bright, fair, supportive, hard worker, fun, someone that inspires!”
“Given all the recent stories about the lack of female leadership and women bullying other women, we thought this would be a good subject to ask people about – and we definitely got some interesting responses” says Maggie Berry, Director of womenintechnology.co.uk. “It just comes down to personal experience – it’s a shame that there have been some negative ones but maybe we need to look at why that is, and what we can do to improve it. IT is such a male dominated environment that many women who have reached management positions have had to fight hard to get there and maybe that fighting mentality is having a negative effect on their ability to lead. What we need is more support and training for women so more of them are able to reach the top and are well prepared for when they get there.”
