Ah, the female boss. That's both the name of Tulisa's debut solo album, and the subject of a controversial new piece on the American website Politico. Jill Abramson is the editor of the New York Times, running one of the most powerful newspapers in the world. But according to Politico, she's "losing the newsroom" with her "unreasonable" and "impossible" behaviour. But is Abramson's behaviour really so bad? Or is she being judged differently to male editors just because she's a woman?
The description of Abramson's behaviour doesn't look particularly extreme for the boss of a huge company - she's brusque, she's tough, she's demanding, she can be condescending. There's no suggestion that she's incredibly mean, or an angry bully, a claim often made against the (male) editor of the biggest selling paper in the UK. According to the Politico piece, NYT staffers complained that Abramson wasn't "approachable" or "charismatic" enough. But as Emily Bell asked in the Guardian, "When was the last time the approachability of a male editor made for copy?"
And the thing is, Abramson is clearly doing a good job at the paper. A few weeks after one of the bust-ups described in the piece, tthe New York Times won four Pulitzer prizes — for Investigative Reporting, Explanatory Reporting, International Reporting, and Feature Writing . This is the third biggest Pulitzer win in the paper’s history.
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Even some of her own editors think she is treated unfairly. David Basquet, who has clashed with Abramson at meetings, told Politico "“I think there’s a really easy caricature that some people have bought into, of the bitchy woman character and the guy who is sort of calmer. That, I think, is a little bit of an unfair caricature." But it's one that people really do buy into. I've heard both men and women claim they don't like working for female bosses, but the bad experiences they've described could - and do - apply to plenty of male chiefs I've known. I've worked for male and female bosses, and while luckily none of them have ever been really awful, if I really had to choose, the female bosses were easier to work for. And contrary to the stereotypes, they weren't bitchy. I used to work in an all-female office where the atmosphere was fun and good humoured.
So are we less fair on female bosses? And are women judged differently from men for behaving in exactly the same way? And most importantly, will any depiction of a female leader top Luck Santangelo in Jackie Collins's literary (and TV) classic Lady Boss?
