For a long time, women were taught to "act like men" to get ahead at work, donning shoulder pads and boxy suits, acting out qualities such as authority, decisiveness. But a new breed of women is upending those rules, embracing empathy and collaboration
And yet there is also a body of work, including research by a Harvard Business School professor, Amy Cuddy, and colleagues, which found that women can offset that bias by combining these characteristics — essentially, conveying warmth along with competence.A new breed of women leaders is upending the old rules, embracing traits like empathy and collaboration to get things done, and refusing to suppress the qualities that make them who they are. (Shonagh Rae/The New York Times)
You might believe that women shouldn’t have to do that. (Is anyone else exhausted just thinking about it?) But it’s what Williams has described as “gender judo” — or combining stereotypically “feminine” behaviors, like friendliness, humor and empathy, with those behaviors still associated with men, like aggression or ambition.©2019 New York Times News Service