Can An Angry Woman Get Ahead?

Getting Pissed Has Promise

I worked in a large, well-heeled law office in the 1980s and once, when I walked into a beautiful conference room lined with oak shelves and a million law books, a newly minted boy-lawyer stood up from the conference room table and threw a heavy desk telephone across the room. The crash startled me and I dropped a very hot mug of coffee down my front. The phone shattered in a million pieces and a woman across the table let go a small gasp.

The men in the room did not bat an eye. I watched admiration spring from their collective glance.

In that moment, I gained a visceral understanding: If I throw anything across any room and it shatters and startles my co-workers, not to mention the spilled scalding coffee, I will be put on the street.

The boy-lawyer, on the other hand, made partner.

The lesson sticks in my craw today: Men win when they’re pissed and show it. Women get canned.

A study by Victoria Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann asked the question: Can an angry woman get ahead? The results will surprise few women. The core findings include (but are not limited to):

• Men who expressed anger are conferred higher status.
• Both male and female evaluators conferred lower status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals.
• Women who express anger are accorded lower status, lower wages, and less competence, while the opposite is true for men.

The imbalance on how each gender is treated and/or rewarded for demonstrating anger is hardly contained to the workplace.

Satirist and writer Fran Lebowitz said in an interview this past week (paraphrased), I wonder about the women who are not angry. Until a man faces alone an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy, then women will never be equal in the world. That alone should make every woman angry.

I love men. This is not about bashing a particular gender.

It is, however, a look at the discrepancies in a society that affords one person latitude to completely unleash their anger, while penalizing another. And the generally acceptable methods men often have for venting – landing at a bar at 5 p.m. to unwind, taking a swing at someone, throwing telephones, etc., don’t fit for many women. There’s the kids, their own jobs, the house, the dog and likely the grandparents who need her.

Women get prescribed Valium and are told to “retail therapy” or some such nonsense.

Therein lies the double-whammy for women: Not only can you not show your anger, women need to keep quiet about their reasons for being fed up in the first place.

If rage-filled women is an uncomfortable concept, buckle-up. Women are mad at a level I’ve never seen. Last week, my female doc rolled her eyes when I explained what her male counterpart missed when he incorrectly diagnosed my ailment. He’d also written three odd paragraphs in his notes about my obesity.

I am 5’1” tall and 130 pounds.

“He’s a dolt and that’s AI garbage,” she said. She could not help but add, “I’m waiting for women to rule the world. I’m sick of it.”

Getting angry can be a healthy and powerful step toward real and lasting change and there’s nothing like the daily headlines full of the actions of white male senior citizens to bring on the high blood pressure. Misogyny, corruption, routine grift and war (all largely male-made) are being sold to us all as normal.

Yet none of it is.

This is all a long way of saying that anger is a normal and healthy reaction to much of what women endure on the daily. And the rage is great. It is fuel that can ultimately feed real change, lasting change, legal precedents that protect rather than feed long-standing inequities in just about every meaningful area of life: sexual health, autonomy, wealth and power, like electing a woman as president of the United States of America.

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