WordSisters

Author: Ellen Shriner

  • Beware of the Queen Bee

    In her Wall Street Journal article, “The Tyranny of the Queen Bees” Peggy Drexler reports that a 2011 American Management Association survey of 1,000 working women found that 95% of them believed another woman at some point in their careers undermined them. Drexler cites a number of other surveys in which women bosses were bullies, and most of the time their targets were other women.

    The Queen Bees’ favorite tactics are making snide remarks about another woman’s appearance, holding subordinates to unreasonably high standards, gossiping about them, and generally acting like high school mean girls. Various sources in the article theorize that Queen Bees bully because they are insecure and view up-and-coming women as threats.

    Screen shot 2013-03-27 at 10.24.04 PM

    My first reaction was dismay. As a baby boom woman, I have vivid memories of the days when men often disrespected women in the workplace and discriminated against us. How could a woman who’d lived through workplace bias treat another woman so poorly? I expect middle-aged women to know and act better. And I HATE IT when women act out negative stereotypes (catty, bitchy, etc.) Not only is their bad behavior galling, but it also makes it harder for the rest of us to succeed.

    But after some reflection, I realized that while I believe Queen Bees exist, and I’ve known people who have been hurt by them, I know far more women who are supportive of other women and willingly mentor younger women.

    One friend was a senior leader at a Fortune 500 and she was an active part of a corporate women’s mentoring group. Another friend, a successful business owner, is very generous with her time and advice. In addition to mentoring professional women, she volunteers with organizations that reach out to younger women. My middle-aged coworkers and I are very willing to mentor.

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    What’s interesting is that the youngest women in the department (recent grads) seek out several of us for mentoring, while the women who have a little bit experience are fiercely independent and prefer to go their own way. Sometimes I have watched in horror as some of them do things the hardest way possible. But they don’t want advice, so I don’t antagonize them by offering any.

    While I believe Queen Bees exist and can wreak havoc, I think generous, supportive women outnumber them. The dynamics of women in the workplace are as varied and complex as women are themselves.

    What’s your experience as a mentor or mentee?  Have you ever dealt with a Queen Bee?

  • You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

    I’ve never met Kathy Mayer, but we have the Toledo Fire Department in common.

    In 1984, she was one of the first women firefighters to join the fire department, where my Dad had been a fire chief until the late 1970’s.Screen shot 2013-03-12 at 10.04.35 PM

    According to a recent article in the Toledo Blade, Mayer is retiring after 28 years. Whether she meant to or not, she broke barriers, and she has much to be proud of.

    In the early 1980’s, firefighters worked 24 hours on and 48 hours off. Firehouses were a men’s club—the men slept dormitory-style and there was one bathroom. I don’t know what accommodations were made for women firefighters when they came on the department.

    From what I know about fire department culture, I’m pretty sure that in the early years, she and the other women put up with a lot of guff and practical jokes at the very least and outright hostility at the worst. And it wasn’t just the firefighters who resisted women firefighters—some of their wives also worried about their presence. Would living in close quarters lead to affairs? During a fire, would their husbands have the same backup from a woman as they would from a man? Although I count myself as a feminist, I think those were legitimate concerns.

    However, the women had to pass the same physical tests as the men: rolling a fire hose (heavier than you think, especially with the metal couplings), pounding a sledgehammer on a target more than 50 times, climbing several flights of stairs in firefighting gear while carrying a hose, and also carrying a 100-pound weight (the assumption was, that if the person being rescued weighed a lot more than that, the firefighter would be expected to call for help).

    At first, Dad resisted the idea of women firefighters. Although he retired before that issue came up, he still identified with the fire department. But because my sister and I were in our twenties then, and Margo was interested in being a firefighter, he had to rethink his views. Even though he was skeptical, he didn’t want Margo to be discriminated against. But I suspect he was relieved when she decided not to pursue a career as a firefighter.

    Despite the inherent challenges, Kathy Mayer persevered.  She joined the fire department, later became a paramedic, and eventually gained the respect of her coworkers. I give her a lot of credit for making a 28-year career out of the fire department.

    Like the 1970’s Virginia Slims ad headline said, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

    Kathy Mayer embodies the vision so many Baby Boom women had when we joined the workforce in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s—women holding their own in nontraditional fields. That is the subject of my memoir-in-progress, Colette’s Legacy.

  • Lemonade, Anyone?

    For years, a hand-painted Nippon china lemonade set has had a place of honor in my dining room. My grandmother, who was born in 1885, gave it to me. Mimmie, as we called her, had a 4th grade education (hence the spelling “Mimmie” instead of “Mimi” as others might have spelled it). Screen shot 2013-02-24 at 2.04.44 PM

    Mimmie’s maiden name was Margaret Zoe Mominee. She was born in a log cabin in Mominee Town, which is east of Toledo in Northwest Ohio. Mominee Town was at the crossroads of Corduroy Rd. and what used to be called Big Ditch Rd. (perhaps the names were descriptive of the roads at the time). Family lore has it that Mimmie’s French Canadian ancestors came through Windsor, Ontario, past Frenchtown Township in Michigan and settled a little south of Lake Erie.

    Map circa 1900
    Map circa 1900

    Mimmie was an easygoing cheerful woman. She laughed easily and didn’t fuss when her grandkids (my two older brothers, younger sister, and I) grew restless and squirmy during. Every week, we drove across town with my Dad for a visit. There was nothing to do at her house, but she’d pull out an old red rubber ball for us to bounce outside.  Or my sister and I could look through the button collection in the drawer of her treadle sewing machine. When we’d had enough, she’d offer root beer floats, which she called “brown cows.” We also got chalky pink or white mints from the covered candy dish that sat on the built-in china cabinet in her dining room.

    Centered inside on one shelf was a yellow lemonade set painted with violets and a gold rim. On another shelf was a blue and white chocolate set that was painted with pink flowers.  It was also Nippon although it looked like Bavarian china. Nippon porcelain was made between 1891 and 1921 in Japan. It was a less expensive version of the European tea, lemonade, and chocolate sets popular at the time. The pieces could be collected at Sears, Montgomery Ward, grocery stores, gift shops and dime stores. These porcelain sets were some of the few fancy things Mimmie had, and more than likely, she bought them a piece at a time. When my sister and I admired the sets, Mimmie told us they’d be ours one day.

    Looking back, they’re a puzzle.  Mimmie was very practical and down-to-earth. She made many of the cotton house dresses she wore. She’d create a pattern from the old dress and “run up a new one on the sewing machine” as she said. She only wore jewelry with her one good dress—a navy blue crepe dress with a white lace collar. And she only wore her good dress to church or family occasions.

    She was a good cook and liked to bake, but she made Boston brown bread in empty vegetable cans, banana cupcakes (to use up bananas going bad), and oatmeal cookies, our favorite. Mimmie was not one to make shortbread cookies or fussy foods suitable for a ladies tea. But I wonder if she ever invited her sisters or women friends over for lemonade. And if she didn’t use the sets, but kept them for good, did they meet some yearning for nice things? A yearning I share, which I why I coveted the set as a girl.

    Today, the sets are collectible and valuable. But after dusting them and keeping them for good for 30 years, I’ve decided to invite friends over for lemonade this summer.  And if a cup gets chipped, so what? Except for my sister, no one will ever care about this set as much as I do, and she has her own set!

    A book called The Secret Life of Objects by Dawn Raffell inspired this blog. I’ve decided a lot of my things have stories to tell, too.