Hillary: Sexism or Self-Sabotage?

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Back in the wild west of sexism, simply going to work could be pretty crazy. On my first day as a consultant to the head of a large corporate division in 1976, I had to defend myself from graphic, completely unambiguous sexual advances, using the new briefcase my parents had given me to celebrate my first professional job. My idealism took a hit, but so did the client's nose. There was no one to tell without risking my project, so I just showed up for work the next day. My client, his face black and blue, never said a word, and neither did I. We treated one another with professional courtesy, though I secretly regarded him with the disgust accorded an unusually large and nasty-looking bug. My work with employees in his division continued successfully for more than a year, when the project was completed.

Later, with my Harvard PhD in hand, I was hired to join the faculty of the Harvard Business School, where I was one of the first women to come up the ranks and be awarded tenure and an endowed chair. None of that protected me from sexist foolishness. On my first day of class, feeling anxiety so acute that my teeth hurt, a nearly naked woman burst through the door—a belly dancer ordered in like pizza by a group of male students to protest their first female professor. I hustled her out of the room shouting "This is a university!" But I was later chastised by my department chair, an expert in leadership. He looked at me with pity and said: "You should have let her finish the routine. Now the students will give you a poor evaluation at the end of the course." They did.

A Flasher in the Front Seat

There was much more than I could tell you here, both funny and sad. Should I mention the famous elected official whom I was asked to drive to an awards ceremony? He unceremoniously exposed himself to me from the passenger seat. I forced him out of my car in the middle of a Boston bridge on that cold January night. Or the times my legs were mentioned in the student newspaper? A dean said: "We can't do anything about it. You should have a sense of humor." Or showing up somewhere to give a lecture only to find the crowd visibly disquieted because they were expecting a man? "We thought you were an Indian software engineer." Or the senior professor who implied he would support my tenure if I slept with him? I told him he could do whatever he wanted, that I didn't care to have his support. Then I quietly began to dial his wife. He grabbed the phone from me and stammered an apology.

Once I had my kids, the sexism took on a different hue, but was no less offensive. Like the colleague who admonished me, "If you want to raise your own children, you should teach at Simmons, not HBS." Or the dean determined to intimidate me with the proclamation "Harvard Business School professors do not work part time."

Early on I tried to fit in. Like a lot of other women, I tried to be more masculine. I reengineered my appearance—cutting short my unruly hair and wearing suits—then my behavior, and ultimately my very self. Slowly I noticed that I dreaded going to work. It had turned into something that had to be endured. In time it dawned on me: I hadn't come all this way just to turn into a man. I had to find a way to be in their world but make it my own. That meant a leap of faith into the unknown, compelled by a sense that forfeiting my self was too high a price. So I grew my hair longer and dressed like a woman again.

Avoiding the Male Stereotype

Instead of adopting the HBS macho teaching style, I cultivated my own approach. I explored how to move beyond the stereotype of a woman, without turning into the stereotype of a man. To me this meant not being submissive just to be liked, but not forcing myself to be aggressive just to fit in. I tried to respond by following my own moral compass. I tried to be an individual who happened to be a woman. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. But my leap of faith brought a steady flow of joyful energy that drove my intellectual work and anchored me when I faced the inevitable hard choices in work and love.