Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2014. The statement that “never before in business history have there been so many women at the head of large listed companies” is a 2014 claim made without figures.
I believe in equality. I believe there are competent men and very competent women in every profession. In the same way, I believe there are incompetent men and women in every profession, and obviously among business owners too.
Kathryn Minshew, a co-founder of a tech company, says that at an event for entrepreneurs and investors, an investor told her he was interested in her business model, and after arranging to meet her, the investor tried to hit on her, setting aside any interest in this entrepreneur’s project.
It is an anecdote that reopens the debate about sexist culture in the business world, where women believe that in a world of male investors they are not taken seriously, and that these investors’ intentions may be different when they are negotiating with men than with women.
That is when the various associations that defend women’s rights raise the roof.
And the truth is that this subject is nothing new. It is the same one I have been hearing in the world of sales for many years, and it wears you out when you see feminist associations inventing a war that does not really exist, and fighting a battle for an equality that I honestly believe has been in place for a long time.
Women have proven their worth many times over. Full stop.
Crying that you are being discriminated against for being a woman really shows an enormous weakness.
Business is a game. Don’t cry: play, and prove your worth. In business and in life, people can discriminate against someone for being fat, bald, gay, Jewish, too tall or too short.
Never before in business history have there been so many women at the head of large listed companies.
Every time the associations concerned make a scandal out of a specific case, they are doing women as a whole a disservice, because the business world is not a school playground where you go to complain. It is a battlefield where you fight with every strategy men and women have at hand.
Do you want to be respected as a woman and as a businesswoman? Then behave like a woman and like a businesswoman.
The fact that Kathryn Minshew ran into an idiot does not mean that all venture capitalists are idiots who put their zipper before business, because they are there to make money. But I am sorry to say that Minshew did not behave like a true businesswoman by making a scandal out of a negotiation that went wrong with an idiot.
If women are equal to men, then negotiate and fight in the negotiation the way men do. The fact that someone tries to hit on you does not mean you cannot do business, if you cut that person off in time and make things clear at the first warning sign. You don’t have to run away scared every time someone tries to hit on you, or fall into the trap of thinking that because they tried it, they are not fit to do business with.
Personally, I admire women who know how to put a man in his place, with or without diplomacy, and carry on doing business.
Welcome to the business world, where if you don’t want to be the weaker sex, you will have to learn to respect yourself as a businesswoman and a professional, and to deal with the same jerks the rest of us, men and women, deal with every day, except that in the fight we don’t cry like children in front of a rude client. We do business, we thank them or we tell them to go to hell, but we don’t cry or complain.
Suppose I visit a gay client and he tries to hit on me. And I go around publishing that my rights as a straight man are being violated. Sounds ridiculous? It is exactly as ridiculous as the tiresome, tedious talk about sexism in business and in companies.
Pro-feminist speeches are garbage from the same family as sexism, and they are not helping anyone. In fact, as a woman, they are mutilating you by implying that there is a difference between the sexes in a world where men and women have competed for years with a single requirement: their worth as professionals.
I understand there are still some sexist jerks and plenty of idiots who think with their flies, but I hope these words are not twisted, because they are meant solely as support for women who fight as women and as professionals.
Video: a lesson for a “male chauvinist”
Watch: A lesson for a “male chauvinist” (YouTube)
Read: The 10 richest women in tech
Featured image: Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
