Culture, gender and power in the workplace


In my last article I talked tangentially about the workplace. But it is a vast topic. It tells an interesting story about our society, ourselves and the position we occupy in that society.

Let’s play a bit with it by adding two factors in: culture and gender.

The questions which arise are: What are the different rapports to the workplace as per the culture around? And do men and women have the same position?

For the sake of the demonstration, let's take two countries where hierarchy is overly important. France and Japan, for example. In both countries, one’s honor depends on their position in the workplace. But the stakes are different.

In France, it is power for oneself and – potentially – the inner circle.

In Japan, it is responsibility for the others.

In both cases, high position (therefore high power and/or responsibility) is associated with the dominant gender. Battles are fought against the other (men), from other circles or other clans. Those who have power or responsibility try to cling to them for as long as possible. And when they lose them, they must “keep face” i.e. act as if one still had them, for as long as possible..

But women tend to want, more and more, an official seat at the power – or responsibility - table. In the end, if they do a big part of the work (see below), why shouldn't it be recognized officially?

Step by step, their cause advances. However, this has been allowed by the men in power in exchange of some sacrifices.

In Japan, the women’ sacrifice is not to have kids in a society where the "mother" stands above all. In France, it’s an insidious question about “how” that woman got power in the first place. This is linked to the history of their informal power model in both countries:
  • In medieval Japan, men would send their spouses (mothers or not) to negotiate in their place, allowing them to be uncompromised when negotiations concluded.
  • In France up to the 18th century, political negotiations were done in the chambers, behind closed doors, sometimes in (unofficial) beds.
The workplace is a concentrate of society.

And you? Man or woman, what is your experience? (anonymous commentaries are now possible).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About founding scenes

Every group of people reunited in the borders of a country have a founding scene , coming with their founding figures. For some it is a fight against social injustice, irradiated by knowledge (France), for others it is taking their destiny in one's hand and renovating whatever was considered "normal" until then (United States).  For Romanians, it's all about resistance and resilience . Not active resistance, but passive, ironical, coming from the strong belief that "they have always been there and they will always be there", like in the times when Romans invaded "their" piece of land, when the Huns and the Mongols came by as well - leaving behind a new bloodline, when the Turks appeared, etc.  Don't get me wrong, some peopleactively fought against all those invasions . But the masses knew they had to protect themselves inwardly in order to ensure a future. Therefore these people are ones of the most stoic and resilient I have ever met...
Read more

You won't make it

"You won't make it”. I don't know about you, but I hear that a lot around me. Or told to me. Implied : “Don't do it, it's too risky”/ “Don’t do it you might fail”/”Don’t do it you might suffer” etc.etc. Of course, our internal voices are telling this to us all the time. But when there's - on top of it- a figure of authority saying it, it becomes much more complicated to NOT listen to it. The problem with this statement is not its intentions (to preserve us from something, an indefinite bad which might happen). It's the results - or lack of results I should say. Because experience shows that once you try to do something, you might fail or...you might succeed.   In both cases, experience comes with a key learning : either that you can try, fail, and still feel good about the whole trying experience, either that you can trust yourself because you have proved you can succeed in the past. So, my advice: listen to other people’ advice. But ...
Read more

The modern worker

Going back to the roots of this blog, and the list of Romanians present in France ( do you remember it? ), I will talk today about the “intellectual worker”(or modern worker).  As I was mentioning then, “the intellectual worker” is probably working in La Défense, like most “white collar” workers in France. The majority work in IT or engineering. What’s interesting about this category is its invisibility . Unlike others that “normal” people could cross in the streets of Paris, like Romanian sexual workers, beggars, thieves or construction workers, n o one remembers having crossed the path of a lot of Romanian white collars working in France . However, when I say that I’m Romanian, almost everyone in my friends circle can name at least 1 or 2 Romanians (mostly women) belonging to this category. Which means that they are more invisible than numerous. Why ? Several reasons to that : First of all, they are nor easily identifiable nor easily “taggable”. They look li...
Read more