In honor of International Women's Day, here's my first blog post on my new website.
When I first read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, I had no idea I would get a grammar lesson! In chapter 10, “Let’s Start Talking About It”, Sandberg gets candid about the adjective “female” as a label, and the fact that it implies a “bit of surprise”. Even Gloria Steinem got in on the lesson by pointing out “Whoever has power takes over the noun – and the norm – while the less powerful get an adjective.” Like female president, female news anchor, or female plumber.
Not only does tacking in the modifier “female” in front of a position or profession make it a “bit of surprise” as Sandberg says, but also a novelty; not in an innovative way, but in a circus curiosity kind of way. There was a time when I embraced being a modifier, because I thought it was a “celebration”, but looking at my experience from a fresh, “gender lens”, I’m not so sure.
A few years ago, I was in the height of my corporate career game—a product manager for an engineered wood line of a major building products manufacturer. In fact, I was one of four “female” product managers. In fact, there were no male product managers in our business groups of technical products – engineered siding, engineered OSB, engineered decking, and engineered I-Joists – at all.
In addition to the four product managers, our corporate marketing department was also made up of entirely women, with the exception of the Vice Pres of Marketing. This caught the attention of our ad agency. One afternoon as all met with the agency for our weekly roundup meeting, one of the account representatives posed a question to the room:
“I want everyone to look around the table for a minute and tell me what you see,” she requested.
We all scanned the people sitting around the table, gandered at the notebooks sitting on the table, and glanced at the sea of smart phones lying on the table. There were shrugs and a few humorous comments, but apparently we didn’t hit on what the account rep wanted us to see.
“You’re all women,” she said. “I think we could play that up with the media.”
Wow, up until that moment, I had never thought about being a “female product manager”. The title on my personnel record said product manager and that’s the job description I performed under every day. Maybe this did make us a “novelty” because none of our competitors had female product or marketing managers in their businesses. Maybe this was a good thing, I thought?
So the agency pitched that angle to several industry trade publications, shopping the story around as if it were innovative; a “bit of a surprise” in a good way.
In the meantime, it’s January and that means attending the largest trade show in the industry, The International Builder’s Show, where distributors, dealers, contractors, builders, and architects from all over the world flock to see what’s new and exciting in the world of building and home products, as well as party on the Vegas strips and collect freebies and trinkets from all the manufacturers. Where we product managers staffed the booth and peddled our wares to industry executives and custom home builders.
I was excited this year because I was unveiling our latest and greatest product – a $151 million dollar investment into ‘strand lumber’ (I know, it really sounds exciting, but to me, at the time it was). Step right up folks, our strand lumber product gives homeowners straighter, stronger walls that won’t bow, twist, shrink, or warp like traditional lumber. That was my spiel. I could tell you every ingredient in the adhesive we used, which was formaldehyde-free. I could tell you the percentage of aspen and maple mixtures. I could tell you about the state-of-the-art steam injection press used to manufacture the product. I could also tell you that it wasn’t meant for exterior applications. But a certain builder suffering from too much machismo didn’t buy my answer when he asked me that very question.
“Hey sweetie pie,” what ya got here”? he asked me. As if I was a little girl with a lollipop.
“Hello,” I reply with my teeth gritting. “This is our new strand lumber product we’re unveiling here for the first time. Are you familiar with strand lumber?”
“Nah” he says. “Can I talk to somebody about it?”
“Well, I can tell you anything you want to know about. I’m the product manager,” I say, still gritting my teeth, but offering my hand for a shake.
“Well can you use it outside?” he asks.
“No, it’s strictly an interior structural product,” I say.
“Are you sure”? he asks.
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s no different than a laminated veneer or an oriented strand board product,” I explain. “If it gets wet for a prolonged period of time it’ll will delaminate and lose its structural integrity.”
I thought that might have been enough to assure him, but no, he asks again.
“So, I couldn’t use this for an outdoor deck”?
“No,” I say. “You would most definitely not want to use it in an outdoor deck.”
“Ok, darlin, thanks for your time,” he says.
As I thank him for coming by and tell him to have a nice day, I see him stop and talk to Mike, our director of sales. Then I hear him ask Mike: “Can you tell me if that strand product can be used in outdoor applications?” As I witness this, I chuckle because I know Mike is clueless about the product and its uses. He is paid to crunch numbers, schmooze customers, and negotiate prices. I’m paid to know the ins and outs of that product. And I did! I turned away in disbelief, and as I did, I heard Mike say, “I’m really not sure, but that young lady right there can tell you anything you need to know about.” I continued walking away.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to despise him. After all, 90% of all the booths at the show employ what my coworkers and I “lovingly” called, “booth sluts” - models that walk around with cut off denims, crop tops, pink work boots, and tool belts slung around their waists with full make up and just-done hair. They aren’t there to talk to you about the product. They know nothing about the products. They’re hired to flirt, hand you some junky trinkets, a ticket for a free beer, and drag you, arm-in-arm into the booth so some greasy haired, high pressure salesman can give you his spiel.
I was still fuming mad. My boss (a man) could see the expression on my face and asked what was wrong. I gave him the synopsis, and he commanded, “Would you stop letting stuff like that bother you! Geez.”
I’m not sure which was worse – the customer treating me like a bimbo, or my boss suggesting I should get over “stuff like that”.
Like Sandberg wrote, “No one wants her achievements modified. We all just want to be the noun. Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, and girls that they are girls.”
Thankfully, none of the industry publications bit on the story of the all-female product managers, and two months after that trade show, I resigned after being with the company for fourteen years, to pursue my own noble aspirations, as a writer. Just a writer. No modifier needed.