The only way I could think of to even measure bitchiness vs. wimpitude in the workplace would be by the effects on the business and employees, so talking about an “equivalent level” of the two and preferring one seems odd to me. If they’re equivalent, it’s a 50/50 pick, or nigh on. Having a preference only makes sense if one has a greater positive impact or a lesser negative impact than the other - in which case they aren’t equivalent.
Nerve.
Huevos
From my experience, women have an almost intractable problem in this regard. I don’t know if there’s a way out.
The problem is that women’s natural tendency - whether inherent, or sociological - is to be less forceful. The result of this is that people tend to impute less forcefulness to a woman saying something as to a man saying that exact same thing. This means that women need to overcompensate in order to achieve the same level of forcefulness, and this is what comes off as “bitchy”.
Meaning, it’s not that people interpret the same level of forcefulness as strong leadership in a man and as bitchiness in a woman. It’s just that if a man says he expects something to get done, using some amount of polite language and euphemisms and the like, people are more likely to correctly interpret that as meaning “I’m being nice about it, but this has to get done”. A woman using that exact same polite language and euphemisms is more likely to be interpreted as “I’m a nice person but I would rather if this got done”. So in order to get the same level of “this has to get done” into the message, women find themselves needing to be more forceful and aggressive than men do. And this is where the “bitchy” label applies.
That’s my theory anyway. Because I can think back to specific things I’ve heard women say over the years, and I’ve never heard men say things that direct and forceful. (It should be noted that the women I’m thinking of have had pretty successful careers, although I don’t think they were too well liked by their peers.) So I think men don’t tend to do it because they don’t have to, while women have a harder time of it, as above.
I’ve never thought of “manning-up” as “acting like a man, and not a woman”. I usually take it to mean “Act like an adult HUman”
I had to do this a few weeks ago with a team that included several superiors, actually, and it was a little scary. Basically, I had a grant land on my desk at the last minute. My job is to write grants, and in this case, the volunteer coordinator needed to connect with the program directors, make a decision about what to write the grant for, and inform me, with concrete budget information.
I work from home a lot because I can’t currently drive due to a medical condition. Somehow this turned into a giant clusterfuck e-mail chain of people, including my CEO and Senior Director of Programs, who couldn’t make up their mind what to write the grant for. A lot of it was due to things being crazy and hectic and the volunteer coordinator was new to the process and a lot of reasons nobody was pulling the trigger. But just days of going back and forth, and I was running out of time to write the grant.
Finally, I just sent them all an email that said,
''This grant is due tomorrow. I need:
- An exact description of what we’re writing the grant for.
- A budget
If I don’t have these things by COB today, I’m going to assume we’re not submitting.’’
I am not a very assertive person by nature so this took a lot of courage from me.
Senior Director of Programs replied: ‘‘Okay, let’s just pass for now.’’
I felt like a badass and also less work for me. 
This may also apply to the, ''Why does Mom have to yell in order for anyone to listen?" phenomenon of child-rearing.
Just ran across this on Facebook:
9 Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women
Gold.
Yeah, well…if the Queen had balls she’d be the King.
Look, “being a bitch” isn’t really an effective management strategy for women any more than “being an asshole” is for men. Sure, you might get people to do stuff in the short term. But no one is going to go out of your way to help you in the future. In fact, they might go out of their way to avoid having to deal with you.
Plus what is “acting like a bitch” really going to accomplish? If you had the power to affect their raises, promotions and bonuses, you probably wouldn’t have to scream at them. So are they supposed to be intimidated because they think you might fly off the handle and hit them? Then you would lose your job. Are they supposed to feel bad about themselves because someone who they probably don’t respect enough to do a good job for tells them she doesn’t like the job they are doing?
I mean what are you going to do if you tell them “THIS HAS TO BE DONE NOW” and they say “no”? Or even worse, they say “ok” to get you off their back and then get it done whenever then can (or feel like it)?
One of my favorite sayings from the Army when someone was too sheepish in shouting an order or something: “Sound off like you got a pair”.
You just stop training girls from infancy to act meek, mild, and submissive. They tried to do this to me, but it never “took.”
I much prefer a boss who is direct and straight rather than the passive-aggressive apologetic way some women approach leadership. But direct and straight doesn’t mean the bullying and yelling some men engage in as a substitute for leadership.
What most women call ‘‘being a bitch’’ is what most men call ‘‘getting shit done.’’ Nobody is advocating acting like an asshole. Sometimes, bluntness is necessary. Women are just so afraid of stepping on people’s toes (generally) that we’re conditioned to think any kind of forcefulness is ‘‘being a bitch.’’
In the OP’s case I would not say ‘‘I’m going to be a bitch and say…’’ Because saying something needs to be done NOW is not being a bitch. It’s making expectations clear. When you frame it as ‘‘I’m being a bitch’’ you open the door for people to interpret your behavior that way regardless of whether it was warranted.
I work at an organization that is mostly women. All of my superiors are women. We’ve got work to do, we communicate clearly and specifically about what is needed, we don’t waste our time on bullshit drama, and when the process breaks down, someone steps in to take control, and nobody gets butthurt about it, and that is why we make a great team.
You have that backwards- men are the ones who call forceful women “bitches.” Women don’t. A woman can act exactly like a man in “getting shit done” and men (some) will accuse her of being a bitch.
Both are true. I worry that being forceful makes me come off as a bitch. A lot of women internalize that.
I think this is a lot of it, but it’s often more about word choice than anything else. Male supervisors tend toward using more direct language, even when they’re being polite as pie- there’s a clearly understood difference between a male supervisor saying that he wants something done, or to do something, vs. saying that they’d like something done, or suggesting that you do something. The first is unambiguous, while the second leaves it up to your own discretion.
Female supervisors tend to be less direct- I’ve had problems in the past with female supervisors suggesting things, or saying how great it would be if something was done, and me interpreting that as more of a wish-list kind of request, instead of a direct order. I was expecting “Do this by June 3rd.” instead of “When you have time, it would be really nice to have this before June 3rd.” I interpreted the second as something I needed to do, but with a *suggested *date of June 3rd, when in fact it was essentially “Do this by June 3rd.”
I think a lot of women don’t have much experience with direct language like that, so they tend to overdo it in ways that male supervisors don’t, and that’s what comes off as bitchy or domineering. It’s not the fact that they’re being direct, it’s that they’re overdoing the direct and business-like stuff well beyond what’s necessary. For example, where I work there’s a woman who has something of a reputation- not because she’s a woman who’s direct, but because she’s downright abrasive in ways that few male supervisors are, and the ones who actually are , are widely considered to be rampant assholes. But I’ve been to happy hours with this woman, and she’s actually quite delightful outside of work- it’s very much a work persona that I think she puts on because she thinks she has to in order to be a successful woman. But it’s all business, all the time, without any humor or humanity to it.
For example, few male supervisors where I work would summarilly cut off the chit-chat among the meeting attendees right at the top of the hour when the meeting’s going to start- they’ll just stand up or turn on the presentation and let the chit-chat kind of peter out as someone realizes the meeting’s about to begin. But she’s the kind that will stand up and cut everyone off directly with an admonition to quiet down. *THAT *is the kind of behavior that looks bitchy- it’s a bit over the top, regardless of gender.
Unfortunately this hasn’t been at all true in my experience. Both men**and **women are very quick to label an assertive woman a bitch. It’s not like women all magically have an ability to slough off all their societal expectations about how other women should act, and men don’t. Some of us people can and some of us can’t, and those people think assertive women are bitchy.
What is definitely true is that nobody, men or women, have the same high standards for other men.
Another aspect to this, and the one I’m actually experiencing in my situation is the cultural differences that I’m not exactly sure how to deal with. Most of the developers are east Indian, and in fact all of the ones who have been causing the issue are. They’re polite as sugar cookies (and quite nice people personally) but they have their gentle ways of causing conflict. We’re in the middle of month Three where we discuss some requirements, review them with the entire team, everyone in the meeting agrees/approves them, and then the “troublemakers” contact us privately later to disagree with what we’ve done.
Up to now we’ve been very polite and nice about discussing their concerns and making changes accordingly. But it’s causing too much rework for the entire larger team, from BA’s rewriting the docs to the QA team having to recode test cases. And they’ve been changing from A to B and back to A again, so it needs to stop. Being polite and nice about saying “okay, we’re changing this today as you asked, but we need to make sure everyone is in agreement so we can move forward, right?”. They nod and smile and… after a few weeks they’re questioning the same thing again and starting the mess over again. Being nice about it hasn’t stopped the behavior, so it’s time to be firm. STOP it, no more.
TL;DR I’m not quite sure how to handle the passive-aggressive conflicts caused by overly polite cultures.
I’ve had a similar experience with people from a certain culture, who apparently cannot say “I don’t understand this”. So I’m speaking to some junior person and explaining what needs to be done and I say “you need to do X, Y, and Z” and so on, and I ask “do you understand what needs to be done?” And they say yes, and nod and smile, and they deliver the work it’s apparent that they had no clue. Other people have told me they had the same experience.
So I suspect there’s some cultural thing in which you don’t say “no” to that type of question (possibly it would be perceived as insulting the person’s explanation? or be perceived as unwilling to give it a shot?) but in any event it’s a pain in the neck to deal with.