A true to life story goes that a lovely
young lady with a fairly achieving career path got tired of hearing time and
again that the real reason she gets the job is her gender, and more
specifically her good looks. Fearing that she might just fall into self doubt
after hearing such, she decided to carry out an experiment. She
interviewed for a job, which she did not particularly care for, but was
perfectly qualified for. She looked her professional best at the interview, but
did not interview like she really wanted the job. For most part, she decided to
smile, be pleasant and answer the questions just about adequately. Did she get
the job? No, she did not.
She was vindicated. And all room
for self-doubt vanished.
This is a common barb that women,
especially young women, get to hear in the workplace. If they are attractive,
the problem gets compounded. I have lost count of the number of women who have
spoken about this over the years or the number of men who have said that about
women, either in by the way conversations or with actual conviction.
The lady in question, of course has
proven otherwise.
So what drives the perception?
As someone who has had the good
fortune of working with many sharp as nails women here are my two cents. While gender
and good looks don’t guarantee a job, unless it is in glamour or we are talking
quotas, attractiveness can inform personality. Good looking people more likely
find others gravitating towards them, going out of their way for them and
generally being nicer to them from very early on. As a result, many develop
socially secure personality types. They meet people expecting it to turn into a
positive equation, they expect that if they ask for help, they will receive it
and more generally, begin to expect positive outcomes for whatever they reach
out to in life.
Needless to say, they often carry
this personality trait into the workplace as well. And this goes not just for
women, but for men too. While it is not true for every single case, the fact
remains that more often than not, they tend to be more forthcoming, pleasant
and therefore easier to engage with.
However, since social acceptance
for these individuals is quite high, they often don’t develop an early knack
for engaging in a manner that makes their brains shine, possibly because they don’t
need to. And the converse is often true as well. The catch is, that they may as
well be equally bright, but that aspect just stays undetected unless they are
expected to perform. So women, often outperform the men in exams, for instance.
The same is true of job interviews.
Further, given the tendency towards
stereotyping, if an attractive girl says something that is not particularly
smart, she is branded quite easily as dumb. Not as having a bad day, or a blond
moment. A leeway that is often given to others, especially men. But makers of hiring
decisions often know better. And it is never as simple as a
looks-based-criterion.
There is actually a lesson in this for
everyone – just working on those features of our personalities that encourage
security and confidence can be quite nurturing for us and give us exactly that
extra edge.
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