The privileges of others are all we see

I am under 5 feet tall. A few years ago I dated a man who was 6 feet 2 inches tall. I had always known that my lack of height had its disadvantages. Its a handicap when interviewing for leadership positions and when I wanted to get something from a high shelf etc. It surprised me to learn that he had his own list of things that were tough for him because he was tall such as not being able to enjoy kayaking, being uncomfortable on airplanes and feeling as if he may be intimidating someone just because of the way he looked etc.
I work in technology leadership, a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by white males. Sometimes when I talk to guys in the field they tend to point out that I have advantages because I am female. Lots of companies want to hire women Engineers they tell me. This takes me aback as I have never considered my gender to be an advantage in my field.
I get it though, I only see the advantages they have and they only see the advantages I have. It is very hard to know what life can be like for someone different than yourself. There is a growing body of research that suggests that gratitude makes a difference to our health and success. Perhaps being grateful help us see things more realistically by helping us focus on what we have instead of over focusing on what others have.
To see how privileged you really are in comparison to others look at the statistics. For example, since we have never once had a woman President here in the United States its fair to infer that the Presidential election is not a level playing field. I have been told “…but she isn’t the right woman, we would vote for the right woman!” . This does not ring true to me because several of the men who we selected to be our President in the past have been deeply flawed and yet we expect that a female candidate should be perfect to succeed.
Unfortunately when the field is not level then we often over promote people as versus picking those who would do the best job (known as the Peter Principle). We assume that if someone gets an unfair leg up then this is good for them but that’s not actually true. A guy friend of mine loves to code and he became a manager because he didn’t see another way to get paid more. He dislikes being a manager and would rather spend his time coding. This hurts him because he isn’t really happy and suffers from a great deal of anxiety on his job and its also not the best for his team or the business.
Feeling pressure to do too much can be damaging as we can see from the results of this study mentioned in the article below.
Given the hidden structural prejudice built into our society it will be awhile before we get to a place where people can be comfortable just being themselves at work. This is why my team and I are focusing on building a program that will help everyone feel like they can be themselves and still belong at work. Please connect and reach out to me if that interests you!
