blog entry

Hitting the Ceiling

alison

Happy Birthday, Erin, my younger sister. She was always the lanky one, whose hair was thin and who looked a little undernourished. But maybe being the youngest of 7 was a gift?

There’s a Reuters article circulating that says women don’t hit a glass ceiling in our careers – we bump up against our own insecurities and fail to thrive because we resist tooting our own horns. I’m certain this article will get vetted by all columnists with a pulse during this slowest of news weeks, so I’ll be quick to add my own 2 cents.

It’s possible that women don’t make the most of our assets, but it’s also possible that there are still plenty of institutions that prefer quiet, unassuming women and reward the compliant majority starting at birth. Catholic schools were that way – hell, the entire church remains that way. And sports coaches say they want team players, not a bench of budding superstars with competing egos. We’ve been trained to hold back the best so the rest don’t feel badly about themselves, but we may be shortchanging everyone in the bargain. 

We are all complicit in some way, whether not raising hell about those institutions that want to dumb down girls or succumbing to the culture that says teaching 10-year-olds to get facials instead of how to play football is OK.

We could all take a lesson from little sister Erin. She was knocked around a bit while trying to keep up with the older kids. Even lost part of a thumb because she wanted to go really fast on a sled (the tree was the problem, not her lack of willpower). It was scary for a while when she behaved in high school, rarely getting chastised by the nuns for not wearing her uniform or for being late (though, somehow, she made me late!).

Somewhere along the line, she learned to keep trying until she got what she wanted. She went to 3 colleges, determined, for some reason, to graduate from Penn State. Nobody could shake that dream, and she achieved it. Then she got her MBA there and started opening her own businesses. Let’s just say that a TON of the people you may see wearing PSU shirts, jackets and hats bought them from her. And she’s also indulged her desire to give back to her community, supporting a multitude of causes.

When you’re the youngest of 7, you aren’t often doted upon, or dressed in lace and frills. That was a blessing, I guess. She played the drums in middle school (my parents were too worn down to redirect her to a more feminine instrument) and got roughed up by more than one horse along the way. Those were the best things that could have happened to her, to strengthen her resolve to reach for the brass ring.

So, think about it: are you subconsciously creating a glass ceiling for your daughters or female students? To quote a popular bumper sticker, Well behaved women rarely make history.