Middle Ages

Every once in a while I read a story that gets me FIRED UP. This happened recently when the fantastic Dr. Kristine Ehrich texted me this: Stereotypes of middle-aged women as less ‘nice’ can hold them back at work. This article is based on research by UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business professor, Dr. Jennifer Chatman. Like a lot of great research, this project was inspired by something Jennifer was experiencing in her own life. Since hitting her 40s, she saw a decline in her teaching evaluations (and so have I). This seemed weird to her because her knowledge of the field, comfort in front of a class, and all the other things (theoretically) necessary for great evaluations were better than they had ever been. What the hell? Turns out that the problem was that she was a woman over 40 who wasn’t matching up to her students’ expectations of how she “should” behave towards them. You see, there are descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes regarding gender. The descriptives are about what men/women “typically” do while the prescriptives are about what we SHOULD do; this is where issues arise in the classroom and at work. The prescriptives are not based on how women ACTUALLY act and that disconnect is where women get dinged in their teaching evaluations, performance reviews, and ability to advance in their careers. The general expectation (stereotype) is that we should be warm (definition = enthusiastic, affectionate, kind) and caring so when we do not act in accordance with that, people don’t like it and we are punished. When women enter their 40’s we start getting hit with gendered ageism; the super cool combination of being discriminated against for being both “old” and a woman. In society we disappear from TV (yes, there are exceptions but they are few and far between), movies show us as the grandmothers, and advertisers ignore us. Once you hit your 40s the world has very few acceptable options of what you can do with your life because, OMG you guys, that is so old!! Since being 45 makes me an expert in this topic I have made you a list of your options ladies:

Settle in under a pile of cozy blankets you knitted, never show your (wrinkled) face in public, and wait for the sweet relief of death. 

Sweetly and earnestly encourage the hopes and dreams of everyone around you (because yours are dead you hag!) and then use all the time you have no longer trying to achieve anything to bake cookies for everyone around you. You are now basically Mrs. Claus but without that weird bonnet. Unless you are into bonnets-those are actually ok if you are over 40 because no one is looking at you. 

Retire, move to someplace warm that isn’t Florida with your besties, wear caftans, have afternoon cocktails on the lanai, do puzzles, die.*

Spend the majority of your time ensuring that everyone around you is comfortable. This is most easily done by taking care of all the pesky things no one actually wants to do. You can clean up after everyone, make tasty/healthy meals, run errands, maybe mow the lawn. Definitely make sure that nothing you do brings you any joy or fulfillment. You are too old for that, you selfish monster. 

Start a coven. Cast spells. Wreak havoc. 

Become invisible and literally just disappear because your thoughts, feelings, and ideas no longer matter. 

Men and women are seen as more effective and capable as they get older. Makes sense. But only women are seen to be less warm as they age. So, when talking about teaching evaluations the perceived lack of warmth translates into complaints about their female professor’s personality which turns into lower teaching evaluations. This is something because I have met some male faculty with truly terrible personalities who maintain great teaching evaluations. Put simply: it’s not fair. Women are judged more harshly than their male counterparts based on these stereotypes. According to the research, the peak (or rock bottom) of our lack of warmth/inability in the classroom comes at age 47. Can’t wait!

Student evaluations are flawed in so many ways. They are biased against women and minority faculty and when you add in pregnancy it gets worse. Additionally, the people evaluating our teaching (students) don’t actually know the subject matter so evaluating our ability to teach it to them seems problematic. What this means is that teaching evaluations are often more of a likability measure. Research has shown that the most important characteristics of a professor include getting to know students, being seen as a life-long learner, and being a role model. Additionally, most students prefer the teachers who are not strict with their classroom rules and who are pretty generous when scoring student work. Cool so the “measure” of whether I am good at teaching has absolutely nothing to do with my teaching and is more about learning their names and being an easy grader. A logical response would be to either try and fix them or get rid of them all together but this is academia so neither is going to happen! The big issue here (aside from the overt discrimination) is that these evaluations are used to evaluate faculty performance. Every year our teaching evaluation scores, research productivity, and service activities are taken into consideration as the basis for our pay increases.** 

I have a theory of why all of this is happening. It’s because, by the time we reach our 40s we, as women in academia and beyond, are simply sick of your shit.

Truly. Fed up. Over it. No longer willing to entertain it. This feeling of not engaging with ridiculousness is what started the idea of tightroping in the first place. We don’t want to change the behavior that (finally!) feels right to us. Personally, I started feeling my “warmth” fade after I had Leo and went back to work. There I was (age 38) trying desperately to be all the things to all the people. I was juggling my career and being a Mom and not dropping any balls ever yet I had students (very earnestly) telling me that they couldn’t get their assignments done on time because they had a formal to attend. I’m managing all of my responsibilities and keeping a human alive and you would like an extension on an assignment that has been on the syllabus for months? No. My willingness to excuse unprofessional behavior and engage in general nonsense had simply vanished by that point and this is where I believe the concept of warmth gets twisted and used against us. To students, warmth is doing whatever they need in the name of “caring.” Warmth is moving deadlines, spoon feeding, hand-holding, and generally bending over backwards. To me, warmth is caring about them and their ability to succeed. Letting them blow off deadlines because they didn’t manage their time properly isn’t helping them and it’s certainly not setting them up for success. Unfortunately, as soon as our versions of warmth don’t match up and we stop conforming to sexist standards things get dicey for women in and out of the classroom.

None of this is ok. Everyone’s work should be evaluated by performance, not their ability to conform to stereotypes. Though I don’t have a surefire solution to these issues, I do think that women refusing to tightrope can help us start making a shift. We don’t have to be “warm” to be good at our jobs. We don’t have to smile. We don’t even really have to be nice (how many male jerks have you worked with?). What we have to be is competent, prepared, and ready to execute the tasks our job requires. Nothing more. Nothing less. Now that I think about it, maybe pay equity and gender parity might help warm up our our old, cold lady hearts!

*My preferred scenario

**Tee hee. What is a pay increase?

A skill is a skill

In college I was a bartender at a place on campus at the University of Pittsburgh called Fuel & Fuddle. I got this job by lying. A friend put in a good word for me and the job application I filled out was me writing my info on a cocktail napkin. I said I was 21 (I was several months short of 21). I said I had previous bartending experience (I didn’t). No one checked and I was hired! Hooray for the 90s! Every Tuesday and Thursday I would go to my 9am philosophy class and then straight to my shift to restock the beer and get ready for the lunch crowd. I also worked every Saturday and Sunday for brunch which made for some particularly trying bus rides and shifts.* But at that age you are resilient! 

I often tell students that, no matter what job you are doing, you can learn skills and pick up ideas applicable to other jobs. These types of transferable skills are things you can highlight in your resume and discuss during interviews. Sure, being a bartender seems like it has absolutely nothing in common with being a professor but I learned many useful skills behind the bar. I had to communicate, work with a team, adapt to new situations and managers, and pay attention to detail. Those are useful things for any job! Of all the things I learned though I think these are the most important:

How to think on my feet

Every once in a while people would order a drink I had never heard of. Rather than actually telling them that, I would engage in some very stealth on the job learning. Some might call it faking it until you make it. I would duck behind the bar, open the bartender book, and make a rough approximation of what they ordered, usually with a heavy pour. Guess what? People don’t usually complain about their drinks when they get extra booze! This allowed me to build up my cocktail repertoire over time and I never had to show my (slightly incompetent) hand.

Pro tip: If you find yourself bartending and someone who really wants to feel terrible the next day orders a Long Island Iced Tea just pour a little bit of about four types of random liquor into a pint glass and add the tiniest splash of Coke. Et voilà! Bonus points if you can hold and pour all four bottles at once. I could. This isn’t really a transferrable skill.

There are pros and cons to this approach but in this situation it worked beautifully. In a corporate setting faking it until you make it can be far dicier and isn’t recommended. Instead of pretending you know what you are doing, ask for help! I know asking for help can feel weird and many of us like to figure things out on our own but sometimes it’s the most straightforward solution. It also turns out that asking for help has a lot of benefits and there are some fairly easy ways to do it without making yourself feel like a failure. I ignored this advice in favor of tips.

Multitasking

As a bartender you have to keep everyone at the bar happy and make all the cocktails for the rest of the restaurant. I can remember being on the phone (it had a cord and was attached to a wall) while inputting a take-out order (there was no internet!), while grabbing food, and filling drinks. If you don’t multitask (#hustle) you won’t get tipped and then you can’t pay your rent. 

This all comes in handy while teaching classes. Faculty have to constantly scan the room checking for facial expressions and body language. We monitor this to see if students are confused or checked out. We need to be ok with being stopped in mid sentence to answer questions and then get back on track. We have to use the classroom technology in a way that is useful and not distracting. Oh, and we have to be engaging. That’s a lot to ask while also delivering actual course content so if you can’t multitask you are going to have a rough time teaching.

Managing unruly individuals 

Drunk people can be a handful. At the bar I mostly had obnoxious people acting a fool and saying stupid (i.e., sexist) things to me. I often handled it with exceptionally dry humor and sarcasm and tried to never show that I was ruffled. There were times when that was hard because I also encountered some inappropriate and handsy jerks who assumed I wouldn’t cut them off and have them thrown out. They were wrong. So sarcasm and threats of not being able to come back to the bar helped. 

You know who else can be a handful? Students! Sadly, I have had similar experiences in class. I have been insulted, had my credentials questioned (how could a lady have a PhD and be teaching an MBA class?!), and encountered exceptionally disruptive students.** You know exactly who I am talking about. They over-contribute and dominate class discussion (often having not actually read the material) and they love to play “devil’s advocate.” They are combative with other students and say inflammatory things because they love to stir the pot. They are annoying and it is our job to manage them without alienating them or the rest of the students. So in comes the dry humor and sarcasm. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it often helps to make the situation more manageable. When that doesn’t work, I bring on the threats. Luckily, I have only had two instances where that was necessary. 

Once a student walked into my class 20 minutes late carrying a red Solo cup and nothing else. No backpack. No pen. Nothing. He was clearly drunk and proceeded to “contribute” for about 40 minutes and then left early. He had been slightly obnoxious before but this was BOLD. This was the last class before Spring Break and I sent a doozy of an email to him. I believe I alluded to the fact that his behavior could be “cause for dismissal.” He freaked out and wrote a lengthy apology email and then apologized to the class. See? Sometimes threats are helpful!

Making cocktails

My Bloody Mary game is STRONG thanks to having to make them by the pitcher at brunch. My exceptionally dirty, shaken, vodka martinis are masterpieces. I own a cold smoke gun and can make you a smoked Old Fashioned. Give me some mezcal and I will whip you up a treat. You have no idea how much this skill transferred during quarantine!

There’s a great quote, “Hire for character. Train for skill.” from the former CEO of Porsche, Peter Schultz. I am a firm believer in this idea and not counting people out. Especially when you are hiring. Take those fundamental transferable skills a promising candidate has (no matter what industry they are from) and teach them the rest of what they need to know. Keep in mind the systemic and physical barriers that many people face when trying to get hired in the corporate world and look for the skills. Shifts like these are what produce more diverse, equitable, and ultimately profitable organizations. Just make sure you check their age and employment history ;) 

*Ever gotten really sick and wickedly hungover from drinking something like Captain Morgan and then had to make drinks with Captain Morgan several hours later? I do not recommend it. Unrelated, even smelling Captain Morgan still makes me feel queasy.

** In case you were wondering, yes they were all men.