By Steve Seepersaud
Rebecca (Dalton) Cassidy ’97 initially thought she’d have little trouble fitting into an all-female workplace. To her surprise, she was talked over, ignored and gossiped about. When she thought she was making headway with colleagues, something changed in the social dynamic and she was back on the margins.
She was frustrated to find that self-help books overwhelmingly addressed how women should navigate male-dominated organizations. Unable to locate the book she wanted, she wrote Working with Women: Successful Tips for Working Together (New Degree Press, 2021).
Cassidy said women are at a disadvantage because they are often held to two different standards of behavior. Playing to one audience loses the other, which hinders women from progressing in their careers.
For example, when women are in male-dominated environments, they’re expected to act more like men. Those tones and postures aren’t well-received by women.
“It backfires because women are expected to be caring, nurturing, people-pleasers,”
Cassidy said. “So that’s when we get called unkind names and sometimes shunned from
the group. But when women act more like women, we’re passed over for promotions and
generally expected to stay where we are and be happy about it. It's damned if we do,
damned if we don't.”
Additionally, Cassidy says women become more risk averse because there is less tolerance
for their mistakes.
“Social capital is the currency of the workplace and, for women, it is harder to earn and easier to lose,” Cassidy said. “If a female leader hires someone who does not work out, she must have poor judgment and she perhaps should not be in charge of hiring people. When men make the same mistake, it’s chalked up to circumstance.”
Cassidy’s book stemmed from numerous interviews with women about their relationships with colleagues. The interviewees had plenty to dish about, giving Cassidy restatements of the problems women faced, but not much that was solution-oriented.
“I did find a few nuggets, but they didn’t help me answer how we work together successfully,” Cassidy said. “I changed my interview questions and started asking women to tell me about when they worked for a woman they respected or about a woman who made a difference in their career. From that, I got stories of leadership, support and women helping women, and those are the stories I highlight.”
The interviews helped Cassidy identify nine archetypes. She addresses each one through individual chapters, explaining how women default to these archetypes and suggesting strategies for working more effectively with colleagues.
“The only behavior you can truly control is your own," Cassidy said. “While we can't change the people around us, we can become aware of our own behavior and make the active choice to lift ourselves up and the women around us up, rather than tear each other down.”
