the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

One of the photos of me in my younger days as a manager sees me in the company of my then boss, Diane Santos. This was back in 1982, so 41 years ago now, and a friend, seeing it amongst my work photo album brought the question, “How did you get on with working for a woman back then?”, the assumption being that it was unusual.

It wasn’t. Diane was one of a long line of women that I had worked for, and she was not the last. Yes, there had been jobs that I had done where management was very much male dominated, but Diane was the third woman boss that I had had from the last four. Despite what people might want you to believe, there were plenty of women in management, or at least there were in my working life. For me a boss was a boss. They were either good or bad, and I learned from them all, but it has never made any difference to me what sex they were.

Back then I didn’t give it a thought. I suppose that I was used to women in authority; most of my schoolteachers were women, and I grew up around powerful women so perhaps I had just got used to taking orders from them. Whatever, I have never had a problem working for women, and still don’t. I do have a problem about working for ignorant or incompetent people but they can come in either sex.

I am an elitist, I believe in a meritocracy, so any move towards quotas I regard as discriminatory. I find such practices abhorrent, and do not believe that they advance the cause that they propose to promote. I have worked with, and for. enough talented women to know that they don’t need preferential treatment (I am married to one too).

Just to make it clear, I am a man. I was born male and have not, so far, had any doubts about my sex or heterosexuality. I may not that macho, although I have had my moments, and still do, but working for a woman has never left me feeling threatened, or in any way diminished my masculinity. I do not understand why there should be an issue.

The sad thing, for me, is that the friend who started this musing off is a lady who is a couple of generations younger than me. What she has been told, or taught, about the world that I lived in before she was born bears little resemblance to my experience of it. I have never had a problem with working for a woman in all of the fifty plus years that I have been at work. And yes, there have been women in charge throughout my working life, so don’t try am tell me that they weren’t.