Dear Lucy,
I am a male manager in a Fortune 500 company whose local senior management positions have recently been filled almost exclusively by women. Since a woman became head of my division a year ago, she has appointed women to six out of eight roles. Internal politics have exploded and nearly all the talk among the management seems to be about empowering women in business (the code word is “diversity”). The industry is historically seen as male and morale has plummeted. How can the mere males survive? Manager, male, 36 Lucy's answer Being in the minority can be rather nice. Or it can be awful. Which one depends partly on how you play it, and so far I fear you are playing it all wrong. The clue to your mismanagement lies in the phrase “mere males”. These two words reveal an aggrieved sarcasm, which is not the sort of thing women find either attractive or funny. For a start, you should drop the self-pity. You now have an advantage that the new army of women does not have: you stand out. If your company really is interested in diversity, you now qualify as a token man, and being a token is (in my experience) quite enjoyable. The second ominous note in your message concerns your observation that internal politics have “exploded”. There is a law of office life that says people only complain of internal politics when they are not doing as well as they think they ought to be. Your problem has nothing to do with politics per se (which are in every office). It is that you are not at the winning end any more and, worse, you suspect – rightly – that the rules have changed and you don’t know how to play. The political rules of an all-female environment are different to the rules of a male one. They are going to take some adapting to – it is a mistake to think you can just go on as before. Take your lead from how the first professional women succeeded in a male environment – they became as aggressive as the competition. Likewise, you need to learn to behave a bit more like a woman. For a start, you must tone down the testosterone and try to unravel the new, complex, rules of engagement. I doubt if you will manage it alone: pick the friendliest colleague and enlist her as office spouse, friend or sponsor. Let her translate for you. Finally, you complain that morale has plummeted. I take it that you are referring to your own; the morale of the new female top dogs must be rather high. Talk to them reasonably and you may find that, in spite of being a “mere male”, you survive quite nicely.
Your advice