Although we as childcare providers work in a female-dominated career, I think the following article holds true and deserves consideration. When I was in my retail management (male dominated) career, I saw LOTS of women struggle to fit in and make a lot of the mistakes explained below. Maybe if they had thought ahead, they would have felt a bit more grounded. It's unfortunate that in 2009 we are still having to try to become equal with our male counterparts, but there are still some fields where we have to prove ourselves. Don't get me wrong...I'm not "male-bashing" at all, but we have to arm ourselves and examine our body language, tone of voice, and all we do. Check out the excerpt from Exchange Every Day:
Women as Communicators
January 27, 2009
The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing
Mary-Ellen Drummond, author of A Woman's Way to Incredible Success in Business (NY: Adams Media Group, 2001), describes seven communication faux pas women often commit in communications: - We don't take up enough space. We should adapt the Wonderwoman stance — with our hands in the steeple gesture.
- We nod when we listen. Men nod only when they agree, so it looks like we are agreeing all the time.
- We tilt our heads when we talk. This shows we are good listeners, but not in a power position (which is si gnaled by holding one's head straight and keeping shoulders back).
- We introduce ourselves too soon. Men don't hear anything we say for the first seven seconds because they are busy checking us out — thus our name gets lost.
- We raise our voices at the end of the sentence. Our affirmative statements end up sounding like questions.
- We fidget too much— twice as much as men upon entering a room of people.
- We let men finish our sentences. Completing our own sentences would boost our self-esteem.
