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Ban “Bossy” needs to be in full gear

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STP Team
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Ban “Bossy” needs to be in full gear

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Sheryl Sandberg has widely condemned the use of the word “Bossy”, which she feels is offensive since it’s almost exclusively used for women. But she not the only one to have pointed out the unfortunate fact: a successful woman is subjected to more criticism as compared to a successful man.

 

Linguist and tech entrepreneur Kieran Snyder published a study recently, titled, “The abrasiveness trap: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews”. The study revealed that the workplace reviews by women comprised of 87.9% critical feedback, whereas, only 58.9% of the reviews submitted by men were of critical nature.

 

Snyder added that personality criticizing terms such as “bossy”, “abrasive”, “strident”, “emotional” and “irrational”; came up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women and only in two out of the 83 reviews received by the men. These criticisms were almost exclusively targeted at high achieving successful women, according to the study.

 

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Another incident that took place a week back, proved the worldwide sexist view of high achieving women, when Russian cosmonaut Yelena Serova was asked by reporters and journalists about her hairstyling issues. She replied: “Can I ask a question, too: aren’t you interested in the hair styles of my colleagues?”

 

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The UAE fighter pilot, Major Mariam al-Mansouri who was widely praised for her part in a mission against Islamic State targets, faced similar offensive responses from the press. Recently, Amal Alamuddin, a successful barrister from London has been reduced to actor “George Clooney’s girl”, as she married the actor recently.

 

This double standard that praises and then ridicules successful women is affirming stereotypes that insist women are supposed to live/act a certain way, and it is high time we changed our mindsets about this.

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ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/oct/03/when-will-we-stop-calling-successful-women-abrasive

 

 

Ban Bossy Major Mariam al-Mansouri Yelena Serova
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