I Stand Corrected (23 page)

My lesson on women’s attire in the workplace concluded with the wisdom of an old Chinese proverb: “Do not dress in clothes made of leaves when going to put out a fire.”

The managerial obstacles I confronted in business did, indeed, require me to put out fires. In those cases, I made a point of wearing fire-retardant gear.

PART TEN
The Body of the Workplace

Don’t promise something when you are full of joy; don’t answer letters when you are full of anger.
—
Chinese proverb

A
pproaching my tenth year as a corporate officer at Hearst, I received an unexpected job offer from the most unlikely place: a global think tank whose remit of conflict resolution is focused on security issues.

Had conventional thinking been allowed to interfere, I might have addressed any number of points—the most obvious being that I had no experience in world politics. But there were other, less obvious factors to consider. Gilliam was becoming a young man, and my custodial role was diminishing. Since I had put aside enough for what would be four years of his college tuition, I had less need to earn a certain level of income. To a measurable degree, I could afford to leave money on the table in order to do something I hadn’t considered, something that would force my abilities to work against habit and would take me to parts of the world to which I wouldn’t otherwise be going. Nothing in my life insisted on where I needed to be, and so I accepted an offer too improbable to refuse and became the chief of staff of a global think tank.

With its beginnings during the Cold War, the institute operated behind the scenes on matters that included cyber-security and weapons of mass destruction. Sixteen languages were spoken among its fellows and staff in offices located in New York, Brussels, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. Home for me became Brussels, as well as New York.

My friends wondered if I had taken leave of my judgment.

Annie looked conflicted during my summary of a Russia–U.S. joint threat assessment on short-range missiles. An expert on Cuba who at one time interviewed Castro, Annie knew of such matters.

“I don’t see you in this space,” was her reaction.

Jonathan acknowledged my concern about Yemen’s water crisis but told me he needed a second martini if I expected him to listen to more.

Candida was not so patient.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” were the sharp words she used to cut me off when, during a phone conversation, I launched into the topic of Afghan narco-trafficking.

“Do you want me to explain?”

“No.”

There was a moment of dead-end silence.

“Are you the only woman in this organization?” she asked.

Her question had no claim to what preceded it but called forth the initial impression I’d had of the institute’s offices. Drably painted walls and a heartless arrangement of furniture hadn’t volunteered the slightest suggestion of women on the premises.

When she realized I would not be answering the question, Candida offered sympathy.

“It must be tough for you to be surrounded with nothing but men,” she said. “Have they made you cry yet?”

In its shape and consistency, the human brain is like two handfuls of a pinkish-gray flan-like substance. Composed of a hundred billion nerve cells, the brain is the most complex of all biological expressions. To a large degree, it makes you who you are. Assuming the brain is the director of how one thinks, I cannot help believing it also rules the configuration of female and male thought—heresy coming from a woman born in the generation that was the first to insist on freedom from gender bias in the workforce. Still, I believe that the fundamental fact that I am female governs the way I think—the mechanics of how I think. I believe it for two reasons: I’ve seen it in ways that can be measured over the span of my career, and I have
read the warnings issued by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on its Weibo page about women who drive cars.

“Some women lack a sense of direction,” is how it begins.

Fair enough. For years, I was operating under the misimpression that when I was driving uphill, I was going north.

“Often women can’t decide which way to go when they drive,” the warning specifies.

On that point, I beg to differ. Women know where they’re supposed to go. Often, they cannot find the right way to get there. Unlike men, women ask for directions. Admittedly, traffic accidents can occur if directions are asked for while in motion.

“Women drivers are prone to panic after an accident,” states the bureau.

Dissecting the issue with a mock-scientific approach, the bureau uses the example of a woman who—having lost her composure after running over a pedestrian—got out of her car without locking the car door behind her. As a result, her purse was stolen.

Here, I am guilty, for I would not take the time to lock my car door before checking on someone I’d just run over. And even though I’m known for my reserve, I am certain I would fall apart were I to kill someone.

It is worth admitting that my estrogen-driven level of composure has yet to be tested in the way that would satisfy the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. But during many years of working with men in business, I’ve struggled mightily at times to maintain outward composure and inward resolve. Still, the bottom line is what usually mattered, and no one argued with my revenue-producing results. Corporations like Hearst measure and reward performance based on generated revenue and profit margin, while the think tank, a nonprofit institute, used a less accountable method of identifying progress. It also had a more liberal interpretation of professional behavior. When I arrived, I was startled by the operatic mood swings and the unchecked aggression with which some of the men bullied their way forward.

Pride prevented me from admitting it, but there were men
at the institute who did, in fact, make me cry. That display of managerial weakness was withheld until the end of the day, when I went home, drew a hot bath, and allowed myself to break down. It took several sobbing baths to identify the interlocking issues of my predicament.

After thinking it through, I decided to call out the troublemakers and make my intentions known to each of them. The bombastic man who talked over everyone in meetings was warned that if he continued, he would be excused from the room. Another who refused to operate within his department’s budget was informed that any deficit would be deducted from his salary.

The most combative of the men—a veritable signpost for post-reason anger—would become offended at the slightest provocation and disappear to sulk. At one point, he went MIA, and we finally located him on a different continent in a hospital recovering from the flare-up of his spleen, damaged years before when he was pushed out of an airplane. How or why he was pushed out of an airplane was never revealed. Truth be told, I, too, would have done the same, given the chance.

After dealing with the institute’s operational issues, I focused next on the staff’s appearance. All of the men had advanced degrees and many of them were brilliant. That did nothing to increase the extremely low standards had by some when it came to comportment. They seemed not to have had the time or energy to shave successfully. One in particular felt no need to use deodorant, and the odorous outcome resided among the rest of us.

To address these intrusively personal matters, I employed the Chinese approach to saving face by using Western tools of etiquette. Waiting until the conclusion of a staff meeting one Friday afternoon, I pointed out—in choreographed order—that the weather had become warmer, that our dated offices lacked proper ventilation, and that we all needed to pay more attention to practices of hygiene. Reminding the staff of the diplomatic remit of the institute, I suggested that poor hygiene distracts from meaningful intention.

B
y its nature patriarchal, Chinese culture has always assigned value to the serene and harmonious qualities of women—qualities in conflict with the workplace, an environment that requires directness. But it is also true that the idea of authoritative voice has proved to be a difficult concept even for Western women in business, who are capable of going to the core of an issue but seem unable to express exactly what they want when they get there.

I am not sure if it is the universal nature of women to avoid directness for fear of being perceived as unfeminine, but I am certain that the life I’ve had in business has forced me to compartmentalize my feelings in order to move forward. Whether my gender impeded my career advancement was, for me, not the point. I was determined to find interesting ways to earn a living.

Like it or not, there is a pecking order within any group, and ascending the hierarchy—any hierarchy—requires conformity. Conform I did, but without becoming too enamored of convention. It seemed to me that convention served a purpose, but it also had a tendency to ignore the more intriguing opportunities.

On my first trip to Beijing years ago, I was ushered into cavernous government rooms and sat in oversize armchairs sipping
green tea alongside ministers who were what remained of the Red Guard. They told me that “women hold up half the sky.” The only other women in the rooms were serving us tea.

This was not the case when, several years later, I visited China’s Communist cousin, Cuba. Annie—absorbed in writing a book about Fidel Castro—had told me Cuba was crumbling and I should go there before it reduced itself to rubble. After taking the precaution of removing my business cards from my wallet, I arrived in still-embargoed Havana to see it for myself.

Annie was right. Cuba was crumbling. It was also jailing its dissidents.

But one of the few encouraging signs of the country’s progress seemed to be the constitution, which prohibits gender discrimination and enforces equal pay for women. Unlike women in China, Cuban women are elected often to serve as cabinet members and mayors. Women make up 62 percent of the country’s college students and 61 percent of its attorneys. Oddly, these encouraging statistics have had a negative impact on the traditional idea of a family unit in Cuba.

Cuban women’s financial independence has resulted in their newfound self-confidence, which in turn has brought about intolerance toward routine infidelity among Latin American men, and Cuba, a predominately Catholic country, has witnessed a dramatic increase in its divorce rate.

Though women account for 74 percent of China’s workforce, young Chinese women are constrained by traditional societal views whose resounding message—spoken even on women’s leadership panels at Chinese economic forums—is that they will succeed only when men do. While the Russian blueprint for socialism provided women in Cuba professional and economic advancement, that has not necessarily been the case for women in China, whose culture is rooted in Confucian principles based on a distinct male-female hierarchy. Those principles have suppressed a routine advancement of women to high-ranking positions within government and business—and they have also failed to keep China’s divorce rate down.

Divorce in China has increased dramatically for reasons
having to do with regulations aimed at curbing property speculation. A couple selling a second home has to pay a hefty capital gains tax on the profit; there is no tax, however, for a single seller. Since Chinese officials are not required to ask the reason for a divorce, couples divorce in order to avoid the tax but still stay together.

I am not being falsely modest when I say that at no point did I think that my own experiences or their linear extrapolations were germane to women in China. Nor did I believe that the advice I gave in my book would make a profound difference in how Chinese women think of themselves, given their Confucian-based beliefs. So I deliberately stayed away from esoteric issues and provided the kind of tactical advice I would offer any woman. I emphasized that the ability to disagree constructively and negotiate effectively is imperative. I explained that men and women communicate differently.

One of the first students from mainland China to attend Columbia Journalism School and armed with China’s equivalent of a doctorate, Li Qin is a young woman who is acutely self-aware and decidedly unmarried. When we were introduced, she was in the process of launching a Beijing company that offered a full range of cross-media marketing platforms to Chinese municipal governments and businesses. Ten years on, her clients include CCTV and the Ministry of Culture, and I have joined her company’s board as a nonexecutive director.

Confucian beliefs dictate that a good leader makes for a good people, that strength of rule comes from educated leaders, that there should be a loyal acceptance of the difference between leaders and citizens, and that the highest reward of a citizen is to be asked to join the government. That Li Qin is a member of the Communist Youth League answers the question of how she made her way to Columbia University; it also explains why the party continues to support her company with the encouragement of various subsidies.