Myth-Busting Women’s Careers: The Truth About Collaboration and Empathy

The “collaboration and empathy female gene” doesn’t exist

Last year, I ran the quiz “How much is patriarchy ruling your life and career?” As I mentioned in this article, 94% of respondents believed that “you should be able to achieve a life-work balance.”

What was the next top patriarchal belief among the survey respondents? 67% of respondents answered, “Women are naturally more collaborative and empathic.”

Let me demonstrate to you that this “collaboration and empathy female gene” is a myth that hurts women’s careers and what to do instead.

Women are “more” collaborative

Human beings are gregarious species. And it’s not fortuitous. We are rather weak animals and we cannot thrive on our own. We need the protection and support of a group to survive.

This interdependence is especially important for humans before reaching adulthood. Some researchers even hypothesise that the human capability to speak was first developed among our ancestor mothers prompted by the need to communicate the complexities of caring for human offspring.

But it’s not only about language. Humans and their ancestors have hunted, fished, and farmed together for two million years.

So, if as a species we don’t have any other choice than to be collaborative, how come this characteristic is perceived as a “feminine” trait? Because it serves the patriarchy to thrive and women to survive:

• The myth that “women are naturally collaborative” is an excellent cover-up to shove all the non-promotable admin work to women — office work — and feel comfortable claiming weaponized incompetence — faking incompetence at any one task (usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.
• Society teaches women that we’re “human doings” rather than “human beings “- our “worth” is perceived to be attached to what we do for others rather than inherent to being a person. Hence, women collaborate as a way to show how valuable they are.
• Women belong to a lower-power group so they don’t have the choice to be — or appear to be — collaborative with other low-power individuals to achieve their objectives, especially if those goals challenge the status quo.

The female empathy

I’ve written about empathy before prompted by of all the hype, mysticism, and abuse around this word.

Simply put, empathy is our ability to guess how other people feel, what their emotions are. They are guesses because we cannot feel others’ feelings — emotions are constructed by us. As psychologist and neuroscientist professor Lisa Feldman Barrett says “The [facial] expressions [of emotion] that we’ve been told are the correct ones are just stereotypes and people express in many different ways.”

Dr. Feldman Barret posits that we’re taught those “emotion concepts” by our parents

You don’t have to teach children to have feelings. Babies can feel distress, they can feel pleasure and they do, they can certainly be aroused or calm. But emotion concepts — like sadness when something bad happens — are taught to children, not always explicitly.

That’s for example the reason that in our culture we have the “sadness” emotion concept but Tahitian culture doesn’t. “Instead they have a word whose closest translation would be “the kind of fatigue you feel when you have the flu.” It’s not the equivalent of sadness, that’s what they feel in situations where we would feel sad.”

So, humans “learn” about emotions and the expectations from others about how to express them since we’re babies, without gender distinctions. Then, why are women the “empathic” ones?

Let’s see what are our expectations from an “empathic” person:

• Mimicking the emotional state of the other person in our face and body — if a person cries, an empathic person should “look” sad.
• Labelling and reassuring the other person’s feelings — when a person complains, an empathic person may respond “I can see why you’re so frustrated”.
• Providing support — when a person shares that they are sad, an empathic person may offer a hug or a comforting hand on their shoulder and ask what they can do to alleviate the sorrow.

It sounds like a lot of effort, doesn’t it? That’s the reason patriarchy has assigned it to women:

• If we’re genetically programmed to be empathic, it’ll be our obligation to be attuned to others’ needs and, as a consequence, fulfil their demands.
• We’ll be expected to clock countless hours towards emotional labour- checking the team’s mood and being the emotional caregivers of the workplace.
• Assigning all care work to us will be a no-brainer — we’re genetically pre-programmed to “sense” others’ needs.

Moreover, this expectation of women as “empathic beings” is so strong that many women on the autism spectrum grasp that they can “pass” as neurotypical by using rehearsed catchphrases, such as “good grief”, “interesting” or “that’s amazing”. It’s called masking. In other words, making believe they are “empathic”, and that they can mirror others’ emotions.

What about men?

Women expect other women to be collaborative and empathic by default. Otherwise, we label them “bad women” and wish them hell, as Madeleine Albright did in her keynote speech at the Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA’s All-Decade Team in 2006.

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Whilst we women are very busy throwing bricks at other women, men reap the benefits of being seen as collaborative and empathic (not too much though, otherwise, they lose “toxic masculinity” points with their colleagues). What does that look like?

• We overpraise men who show any kind of collaborative or empathic behaviour — no matter how small.
• We absolve men for not pulling their weight and for disregarding the impact of their actions on others. After all, “boys will be boys”.

The good news that collaboration and empathy are learned skills

We’ve forgotten that we teach children to share their toys, play together, and “read” other people’s emotions. Instead, we have bought into the patriarchal tropes about women’s natural talents.

But there is a remedy. If we acknowledge that collaboration and empathy are learned skills, that means that

• People can teach them.
• People can master them.
• People can be held accountable.

The bottom line

The belief that women are naturally more collaborative and empathic is a social construct reinforced by articles, books, and social media. When we stand by it, we justify the patriarchal status quo.

Conversely, we have much to gain by remembering that collaboration and caring for our communities are learned skills.

“Without community, there is no liberation.”― Audre Lorde

Work with me

I work with female tech leaders to break the glass ceiling and help them achieve their dream role.?Through feminist coaching and mentoring, I’ve helped ambitious women to get

- A promotion to people manager during maternity leave

- A 70% salary increase?

- Their first board position

Also

- Transition from academia to a corporate job

- Launch their tech startup

DM to discuss how I can help you achieve the career success you deserve on your terms.

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