GENDER BENDER
Can women succed in energy corporations without needing to “act like a man”?
At a recent Houston conference for women in the oil and gas industry, a keynote speaker, Pamela Beall, the chief financial officer for MPLX, a pipeline company, gave a presentation on how to “communicate powerfully” in the business world.
One of the most important ways, Beall said, is with your appearance. She summarized the attitudes she has heard from male colleagues this way: “For women in business, the more flesh you show in a meeting, the less credibility you have.”
She said she was disappointed when she saw young women held back from key opportunities because they did not dress “appropriately.” This is something she wanted to be sure her audience got right, because otherwise, she warned, no one will listen to them.
“What are the men focused on?” she asked, implying it would be something other than the business presentation’s content.
Beall isn’t giving bad advice. In fact, it is well-informed and wellintentioned, based on decades of working her way to the top of huge energy companies.
But even with women in the C-suites of Houston’s most important companies, we are still concerned about where our male colleagues’ gazes fall. After all this work to add women to corporate boards and the roster of top executives, the underlying message at conference after conference is: “Yes, you can be here, but only if you act like a man.”
I followed up with Beall to ask her take on this. She responded, “Whether a male- or femaledominated organization, my message is, ‘Consider the personal image you want to project and ask yourself if your dress is consistent with that image.’ ”
At various women-in-energy events in Houston, I heard women taught to communicate “powerfully.” Be aggressive, ask for what you want, don’t worry about others and have a strong voice (but not too strong) are just a few examples of the advice speakers gave. It turns out that communicating powerfully is a lot like communicating like a man.
Feminine characteristics, such as care, sensitivity and interpersonal communication are not mentioned in such talks — at least, I’ve yet to hear someone give advice to be more emotionally vulnerable with your boss.
When women are told to wear a suit and dark colors in order to give a presentation, to postpone having children in order to get a promotion and to learn to play golf in order to network, what we’re saying is that to be successful, women have to be masculine. Consciously or unconsciously, corporations are still asking women (and men) to squash feminity in the workplace.
Often, I speak with women in the energy industry who say: “I’ve never felt treated differently because of my gender.” But if you fundamentally alter the way you speak, the way you dress, and even go so far as to change your hobbies to fit in, then the reason you may not have been treated differently is that you chose to assimilate rather than challenge a norm.
The reality is that many women had to learn to “play with the boys,” so to speak, to even have a shot at being the first woman in a corner office. But once they have a seat at the table, it’s their responsibility to keep working to change the culture that made it so challenging to get there. If money and independence are achieved through a rejection of feminity, then any gains in representation are minimal at best.
“Powerful” and “masculine” are still deeply synonymous in Houston’s top corporations. When will the energy industry’s men and women at the top begin to change the definition?