Читать книгу Silenced and Sidelined - D Lynn D Arnold - Страница 15

When a female leader feels silenced, she perceives herself as lacking in personal agency.

My sister is a successful real estate agent in Texas. She represents buyers and sellers in the transaction of property. Agency is a term suggesting that one can produce or act on behalf of self or others. As described in chapter 1, it includes an individual’s ability to make choices and then to make meaning from those available selections. One person may see few options in their circumstances, whereas another individual in that same situation may see multiple options. On a basic level, we are all our own agents. I can represent myself in any transaction I choose to be part of, or I can have someone be my agent.

Silenced female leaders often feel they are no longer entirely an agent of self when it comes to their leadership. Here are some examples of things I heard in interviews: An executive at a prestigious school district said, “I had nowhere to go. I mean nowhere.” A CEO of her own company put her silencing experience this way, “Being in situations where you can’t do anything about it; it’s such a helpless feeling.” A senior director in a nonprofit said this about her silencing, “I did not feel empowered in any way.”

This sensation is a paradox given the inherent authority in a senior leadership role. What does it really mean to be an executive yet feel like you have no options? How do women make sense of the sensation of being a leader but feel there are limited choices when it comes to decision making? From the outside, this rarely makes sense. However, for women in it—and for many of my readers—you know what this is like, and it is hard to explain, and exceptionally painful to experience.

Participants described the phenomenon of feeling silenced with various metaphors, which are figures of speech that go beyond pure intellect; they expand insight. If someone says, “I’m trying to run in quicksand,” it conjures up sensations. It suggests a new way of understanding the concept of feeling stuck. I once asked my CPA husband to respond to the running in quicksand metaphor with a quick reaction. Without overthinking it, he replied that he felt mucky and trapped. I believe that takes stuck or “I can’t seem to get anything accomplished,” to a different level. Different word choices create more profound understanding and empathy.

When I interviewed women about their experiences with silencing, I never asked them for a metaphor. I just asked them to tell me about a time they felt silenced in their leadership role. I would follow up their answers with a question to explain how it felt. The metaphors came without prompts.

The consistent theme across all metaphors was the perceived lack of agency; I am without choice!

The most used metaphors fell into three categories: (a) Fighting, War, Games, and Clubs, (b) Isolation and Death, (c) Body, Heart, and Soul. There were other metaphors used, but these three were consistent across multiple interviews. Let me share some examples.