Does Success Have a Gender?

Okay faithful readers, I have a confession to make. When I sat down today to write my blog I couldn’t think of what to write about. I had a few ideas, but none that really spoke to me. So I spoke to a friend of mine and asked her what she thought a good topic would be, and she gave me all the inspiration I needed.

“i run into that all the time, like ppl act like its not feminine to achieve, guys think you’re hot until you start sharing your ambitions, then its like they go brain dead” – Brittany Preston (Senior business major at York College in Pennsylvania).

It’s true, goal oriented women who strive for success are not the most popular, and definitely the “sexiest”, women in corporate America. I’m sure men would highly disagree with this, they would say “we don’t have a problem with successful women”. But the truth is, men, you kind of do. Let me use a hypothetical. We have woman A, a devastatingly attractive an ivy league grad who is unrelenting in her pursuit of wealth and success, and we have woman B, the company secretary, well adept at her job competent and not unintelligent but rather passive. Woman B is equally attractive to woman A. Given the choice between the two, nine men out of ten would pick woman B. Why? The simplest answer, because woman A is “masculinized” in her pursuit of success.

When I say that she is masculinzed I do not mean that she is manly. What I mean is that she is acting in a way that is not within the scope of her feminine gender role. This woman is aggressive, assertive, strong-willed, and maybe a little ruthless. Juxtaposed with the passive, unassuming, and harmless woman B, woman A seems masculine.

Business men with the same traits (aggressive, assertive, strong-willed, and even ruthless) are valued and desired in our society. They viewed as driven, the kind of man women want their daughters to marry. However, women with the same traits are “ball-busters”, “bitches”, “on a power trip”, “lesbians” (I put this in quotes because often times women will be hailed as lesbians for acting outside of their gender norm and portraying “masculine” qualities), or the dreaded “feminists” AHHHHHH! But seriously. We’ve all heard the terms above in reference to successful women. Gender is at the root of this issue. Successful women are a threat to the rigid gender norms that have been created and maintained by the patriarchal structure of society. In society success is masculine. Women who strive for success (and God forbid don’t want a nuclear family with 2.5 children) are ostracized and deemed ball-busters. Not even match.com can help these women.

A few posts ago I explained my feeling that though women have achieved mostly equal success under the law, one of the (many) reasons that feminism still has a place in present day is because of the mentality that society has towards women. Women are still expected to fit a certain mold that society has created for them, and women who do not fit are not “good” women. It is as if something is “off” or even “wrong”  with these women. This is a problem; a problem that my good friend Brittany and I (as well as all of the women writing for this blog) have first hand experience with.

The answer to the question does success have a gender is yes, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. However, I know I won’t stop trying to degender success, and I don’t think my friend Brittany will either.