Business consultant Debra Benton realizes that the newest executive counseling service she is offering to her female clients is going to drive some people crazy, but she is insistent that the service is necessary.
”In the corporate world today, there are more and more high-ranking female executives,” Benton said. ”These women work with, and for, male executives-many of whom are married to women who feel very threatened by the female executives.”
Thus, Benton is counseling female executives on how to deal with corporate wives.
”In a perfect world, this would not be necessary,” said Benton, 37, president of Colorado-based Benton Management Resources. She knows this is controversial: ”In a perfect world, wives of male executives would be supportive of, and enthusiastic about, the female executives their husbands work with. But the world is not perfect, and human nature is human nature.”
The problem? ”Wives of top corporate executives can deal with the concept of a secretary,” Benton said. ”The wives see the secretaries as people who help their bosses out, much as the wives themselves do at home. But the relatively new phenomenon of top-level female executives makes the wives of some male executives very nervous.
”Most of the wives of male executives have never been executives themselves. The wives keep hearing about these wonderful female executives with their wonderful talents, and this breeds insecurity. The insecurity is fed by television entertainment programs` portrayals of female executives. On TV, the female executive is always very strong, always very attractive, always gets her man, always is a sexual conqueror-it`s just a TV stereotype, but it sets the pattern.”
None of this would matter, Benton said, if the wives of the male executives had no say over the career paths of the female executives. ”But the wives do affect their husbands` decisions,” Benton said. ”The wife sleeps in the same bed with the husband. She has his ear. She can subtly and not-so-subtly let her husband know what she thinks. And what the wife thinks can definitely impact on the career of a female executive.”
The female executives to whom she offers advice, Benton said, ”operate in a business world that follows the male tradition-hunting and killing. The wife follows another tradition-home and hearth. The challenge is for the female executive and the corporate wife to understand each other.”
Among the things she counsels her female executive clients about, Benton said, is how to behave when they encounter corporate wives at social functions with the husbands. Some excerpts:
– ”Don`t speak patronizingly to the corporate wife. Speak to her as a human being; seek topics of common interest. Don`t treat her as `wife of.` ” – ”Dress conservatively. The rule to follow is: Anything that can be misconstrued, will be misconstrued.”
– ”Don`t be seen alone at the gathering with any man-not just the husband of the corporate wife, but with any man. If the corporate wife sees you standing with a man on the balcony, or in the kitchen, she may assume that when she is not there, you will want to be alone with her husband.”
– ”Limit touching. Again: Anything that can be misconstrued, will be misconstrued.”
– ”Don`t address your perception of the corporate wife`s mistrust of you directly. If you do, she will naturally say, `Oh, of course I don`t feel that way.` It`s best not to add fuel to the fire.”
– ”Understand that none of this should be necessary-but it is. The people who believe that these kinds of jealousies and fears don`t exist are people who understand neither the business world nor marriage.”
If the encounter at the social gathering goes well, Benton said, the corporate wife will go home ”feeling that the female executive is not a threat to her. She`ll feel that all her fears about the female executive were scary things she made up in her mind. She`ll feel that the female executive is a bright, talented woman-who may be even smarter than the corporate wife`s husband is.”
If the encounter goes badly, though, the corporate wife will go home
”vowing that every time the female executive`s name comes up, she will let it be known that she does not approve. She will do this because she will continue to feel that she, as the wife, is insignificant, that she is nothing.”
And the female executive?
”If she handles this well, she will have thwarted a potentially negative situation,” Benton said. ”She will have controlled something. And who knows? Through her friendly new relationship with the wife, the female executive may learn some valuable new insights about the husband-insights she can use at work.”
