Women in Innovation Summit: What I Didn't Like

Right, so it was a good summit and all. But you know me: grumpy feminist, never satisfied. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

No, the thing is, here is an actual question from the summit:

"How can we bring femininity to the workplace?"

And that sounds innocuous. And maybe it is; maybe I'm reading too much into it. But we'll contextualize by saying that one of the panelists then said something to the effect of "when I'm in my masculine mode, I'm getting stuff done; when I'm in my feminine mode, I'm enjoying the ice cream I bought." I find that super problematic. Useful skills are not, by definition, masculine; feminine skills, by definition, are not non-skills and indulgences.

For everyone who knows me, I had that look on my face when this was said.

Similarly, it was floated that "women's" collaborative style wasn't always as appreciated as "men's" competitive style. What now? My college roommate and I had a sheet of paper where we would write down, ahem, unusual or otherwise characteristic statements made by either of us. (I still have this paper, Caitlin....) One of mine was, "You want to make the other person say UMMMMMM." That is, you want to be irrefutable, unanswerable.. You want to push their argument face-first into the mud.

Which is not to say that I'm mean. (OK, that does kind of sound mean, but it's metaphorical! Not the actual person.) I am, however, pretty ambitious and, dare I say it, competitive?

But, like a well-balanced person of any sex, I ALSO know how to work as part of a team. I do value "soft power" and getting everyone on board and all the rest of the collaborative approach. It's important. But is it "feminine?"

It is such a touchy question, though. People always ask "do women have to become 'one of the boys' in order to succeed?" So I guess the tension is between rejecting the idea that any of these behaviors (being competitive, any other work skills) are inherently gendered vs. accepting that women have special skills (and intuition?) and considering them equal to those possessed by men.

It just gets my hackles up to go to an ostensibly-feminist/womanist conference and find myself being told that I'm probably not very competitive, but it's OK, because I have other womanly skills, like "leading with love." What, am I supposed to be leading my team of colleagues in manicure sessions? Hardly.

But, in conclusion, it is REALLY HARD to go three hours without saying something dumb, so maybe these comments came out as less nuanced than they were meant to be.