quarta-feira, 28 de outubro de 2015

 2 months in one post



If there is a good thing in not having a famous blog is that you don´t feel guilty if your time is consumed by other activities and you neglect to post. "No readers, no responsability" is my motto.

The couple of months have been though. I have been reading a lot about the women wage gap and the the glass cliff effect, mostly in relation to two women that anybody should admire: Jennifer Lawrence and Ellen Pao.

And it made me angry. I explain:

Jennifer Lawrence wrote a very revered essay for a newsletter called " Lenny", by Lena Dunham. J-Law is what, 25 years old, that already won Oscar ( not for the movie she deserved to have won, but that is another issue) and is steadily building a career as a female action movie star and serious actress, all in one. A very acomplished woman. And yet she wrote that after the emails between the production team at Sony Pictures were made public , she realised that she had failed as a negotiator. She listed, among other reasons, two that tell a very sad story:

1) She felt she did not want alienate the producers by being too though, she did not want them to see her as " difficult". She wanted to be liked by them;
2) She understands that she is basically being paid for something she loves doing, which is a luxury most of mankind , and women in particular, don´t have. She felt that she better not ask to be paid the price she was worth it as she wanted to be part of a team and not be too " greedy".

Ellen Pao is a lawyer and former (key word) CEO of Reddit. She became known after she filled a gender discrimination suit against her former employer in 2012, sparking a debate on how women were being treated in Silicon Valley. During her tenure as CEO, she implemented a new hiring policy at Reddit; basically elöimating the salary negotiations form the table, as she felt this was detrimental to women, who often have very poor negotiation skills. Reasons? Mostly the ones Jennifer Lawrence gives us. She also made sure Reddit would apply more rigorous measures against bigotry and online harassment. Sounds good, right? Well, she faced such a violent blacklash and the board of directors, for reasons we can only imagine, reacted demanding results in user growth in the next 6 momths, higher than what she thought she could deliver. 

And how exactly reading about the very elitistic problems of two high profile women in 2015 made me angry? Because looking back at 1915 there was a female powerhouse called Mary Pickford who did not give a shit about not being "likeable" when sitting with producers to discuss her salaries aspirations and never doubted herself in terms of Box Office, knowing pretty well she was worth what she was being paid because she did deliver the goods. 

She was both actress and the CEO of her production company and the most powerfull woman in the movie business by age 25. Of course, she cultivated a sweet image, but the sweet part was never lacking of the sheer force of her personality. Adolph Zucker was delighted to have met such a though young woman, who would fight him with arguments and earn not only his respect, but also affection. Charlie Chaplin hated her and complained bitterly that although she was well versed in all corporate talk and could speak face to face to bankers and producers, she was not so smart: she just knew her price and made sure she got it. When her Box Office results started to show that audiences had moved on, she closed her shop so to speak, and just handled her corporate interests. She died very, very rich, but a bit bitter. But there is a lesson she taught us, modern women of 21st century and it is:

Know your price and make sure you get it, no apologies and no excuses. 


Nenhum comentário:

Postar um comentário