【英语生活】女高管薪酬这么少？

I have a female acquaintance who is something senior in a big media company. She's pushy and brash and I don't like her much. I bumped into her the other night and she told me how she had just been taken to one side by her boss and told that she was pushy and brash and that some people didn't like her much.It's outrageous, she said. No one would ever treat a man like that.

I replied: “Oh dear, how awful. Poor you.”

But what I was thinking went like this: it's not outrageous. You are unpleasant and abrasive and your sex has nothing to do with it. Your outrage is ludicrous and unattractive.

Even more unattractive is the outrage of a still more successful media woman: Tina Brown. In a recent interview in The Sunday Times she complained about the roasting she had been given when her magazine Talk failed. “It became a blood sport,” she whined. “I became target practice. There's no doubt it's more fun to bring a woman down – and a blonde – than a man.” Not only was she claiming it's rough to be a woman, but that it's rougher to be a pretty one. Which is such nonsense one hardly knows where to begin.

It isn't tough being a professional woman. This group has had a better time of it than any other group in society over the past two decades, and it's time to stop complaining.

Or is it? Over the past three days I've seen three pieces of research that have made me wonder if I should stop being quite such a hard ass to my sisters.

First was a study in San Francisco suggesting that 2m workers in the US quit their jobs last year because of perceived unfairness on grounds of race or sex. Nothing illegal, just covert beastliness that eventually sent them to the door.

Last week in the UK figures from the Chartered Management Institute showed that female managers quit jobs more readily than males, and that their pay is still considerably lower.

Finally and most depressingly, is the cover story of this month's Harvard Business Review, which is a 10-page rant about how senior women have never had it so bad.

It is exactly 20 years since the phrase “glass ceiling” was coined, and the authors argue that we have been pursuing the wrong metaphor all these years. Women don't just face a ceiling that we must break through to get to the very top. Right from the start we are in a labyrinth, in which there are large numbers of complicated things that prevent us from reaching the centre. We face prejudice from men. Our views are not taken seriously. Our management styles do not fit, and if we try to be tough like men we are damned (like my acquaintance). Our pay is worse. We have problems at home. We have few networks.

Some of this may be true. But by looking at only the negative a ridiculously distorted picture emerges. In the past 20 years companies have fallen over themselves to help women. There is legal protection. There is huge social pressure to promote women. There are women's networks galore. Most companies offer flexible working. Most places women can swan off home for sports day with no questions asked. Yes, pay may lag, but that is often because women aren't good at asking for more money. I'm hopeless at this myself, but I expect we'll all get better at this in the future. I'm certainly planning to.

In this storm of doom positive things get ignored. In last week's UK report there was evidence that women are being promoted faster than men, which was surely the true story. Yet that got swamped in all the gloom on pay and the presumed unhappiness of women.

Such gloom doesn't help us at all. It makes us look for unfairness and almost to expect it. And if we expect it we will find it – as did my friend and Tina Brown and 2m others. I'm not saying that all 2m of the US workers were deluding themselves. I'm sure lots were treated unfairly. But I'm also sure lots weren't – they simply found it easier to claim subtle prejudice than to blame themselves for any lack of progress.

And on the subject of unfair treatment, I would like to announce right now that I have been treated unfairly consistently throughout my career. I have been singled out and given chances denied to white men of similar ability. I was given my own column, promoted, and more recently made a non-executive director of a public company. I might or might not have had similar advantages to a white male but I would have had to push harder. And from my one-woman focus group: do I find my fellow board members don't listen? When I say something bone-headed they may do some polite paper shuffling. But if I have something halfway sensible to say, they seem willing to hear it.

On one matter I am in agreement with the HBR. The very small number of women in the “C-suite” does take some explaining, and the glass ceiling doesn't do it. But then neither does the glass cliff. Or the labyrinth.

My chosen metaphor is the glass stool (and I don't mean the type you fall between, though there may be some of that, too). I think most women who have got close to the C-suite are repelled. They find they don't like the smell. If this is the truth of the matter, there may be rather less to worry about.

我认识一个女的，她是一家大型传媒公司的高管。这个人既争强好胜，又傲慢无礼，我不太喜欢她。一天晚上，我偶然碰到她。她告诉我，老板把她叫到一旁，说她既争强好胜，又傲慢无礼，有些人不太喜欢她。她说，这太过分了。没人会这样对待男人。

我回答道：“天哪，太可怕了。你真可怜。”

但我实际上是这么想的：这一点儿也不过分。你既讨厌又烦人，这和你的性别毫无关系。你的愤怒滑稽可笑，而且很讨厌。

更令人讨厌的，是一位更为成功的传媒女性发的脾气：蒂娜•布朗(Tina Brown)。在前一阵子接受《星期日泰晤士报》(The Sunday Times)采访时，她对自己在创办的《闲谈》杂志(Talk)失败后遭到了责骂表示了不满。“这变成了一场血腥运动，”她抱怨道，“而我成了靶子。毫无疑问，与击败一个男人相比，打垮一个女人——而且是金发美女——要有趣得多。”她不仅声称做女人不容易，而且还说做漂亮女人就更不容易了。这种胡话让人们不知道该怎么开口。

做一名职业女性并不难。过去20年，这个群体的日子比社会上的任何其它群体都过得好，现在是停止抱怨的时候了。

是这样吗？前一阵子，我看到了3份研究报告，它们让我不禁怀疑，自己是否不应该再对姐妹们这么苛刻。

首先是旧金山的一份研究报告。这份报告称，去年美国有200万人因受到种族或性别歧视而辞职。没有发生违法的事，最终让他们离职的只是些阴晦的龌龊行为。

英国特许管理学会(Chartered Management Institute)研究显示，女性经理比男性更容易辞职，而且她们的薪金仍要低很多。

最后，也是最令人沮丧的是《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)9月的封面故事，用10页纸的篇幅慷慨激昂地讲述女性高管的境况从未如此糟糕。

“玻璃天花板”(glass ceiling)这个短语的出现已经有整整20年了。作者们认为，这些年来，我们一直在追随着一个错误的比喻。女性不仅面临着“天花板”——我们必须冲破才能达到最高层，而且从一开始，我们就处在一个迷宫之中，这里有大量复杂事物，阻碍我们达到中心。我们面临来自男性的偏见。我们的观点不受重视。我们的管理风格不合适，而如果我们试图像男性一样严厉，就会遭到谴责（就像我认识的那个人一样）。我们的薪水比较低。我们要解决家里的问题。我们的社交网络不广。

其中一些可能是事实。但如果只看消极方面，那么一幅扭曲可笑的图画就会呈现在眼前。在过去20年中，企业一直在热心帮助女性。女性受到法律的保护。有巨大的社会压力要求提拔女性。女性有丰富的社交网络。多数公司提供灵活的工作方式。在很多地方，女性可以回家做运动，而不会有人提出任何问题。是的，薪金水平可能比较低，但这往往是因为女性不擅于争取更高的薪水。我自己在这方面是不可救药了，但我希望未来我们都能在这方面做得更好。我当然也在计划这么做。

在这场命运抗争中，积极的方面被忽略了。在英国9月份发布的报告中，有证据显示，女性的晋升速度比男性更快。这确实是事实，然而，它却淹没在薪金和女性可能的不幸带来的阴霾之中。

这种阴霾对我们毫无益处。它让我们自找不公平，而且几乎是期望不公平出现。而如果我们期望，我们就会找到——就像我的朋友、蒂娜•布朗和其他200万人那样。我并不是说这200万美国员工都在唬弄自己。我相信很多人受到了不公平对待。但是我同样确信，很多人没有受到这种对待——他们只是发现，宣称遇到了微妙的偏见，要比因为没有进步而自责容易得多。

在不公平待遇问题上，我愿意现在就宣布，我在整个职业生涯中，始终受到了不公平对待。我被挑选出来，得到了那些具备同等能力的白人男性没有得到的机会。我有自己的专栏，得到提升，最近还成了一家上市公司的非执行董事。我可能比一个白人男性更有优势，也可能没有，但是，我不得不更加努力。就我所在的只有一位女性的小组而言：我是否发现我的董事会伙伴不听我说话？当我说一些蠢话时，他们也许会礼貌地翻翻文件。但是，如果我有什么有点道理的观点要说的话，他们似乎还是愿意倾听的。

在一个问题上，我同意《哈佛商业评论》的说法。处于“最高级别高管位置(C-suite)”的极少数女性确实会做一些解释，而玻璃天花板不会。不过，玻璃悬崖(glass cliff)同样不会。迷宫也不会。

我倒是愿意用“玻璃宝座”(glass stool)来做比喻（我说的不是那种你用来排泄的“宝座”，不过确实也有一些玻璃马桶）。我认为，大多数接近最高级别高管位置的女性都被击退了。她们发现自己不喜欢那种气息。如果这是问题的实质，要担心的事情也许就少得多了。

译者/何黎

《FT商学院》