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We are constantly told to stop emailing like women. Constantly told to stop using exclamation points, using “permission words” like “just” or writing in an apologetic tone with “I think/feel”. There are numerous studies that show the difference between men and women. Men use less words than women, men have have different writing style to women and behave differently in digital correspondence.
Why should we stop writing a certain way just so we can be more like men?
I personally have no problem with being identifiable as a woman from the emails I send. I don´t want to be some testosterone filled robot who can't show their personality in an email (maybe because they dont have one...). I want all my correspondence to be on brand with me. I am my brand. My brand is me. I want someone to be able to say, “Sophia definitely wrote that” or “She is the same on email as she is in real life”. I don´t want there to be a digital me and real me. I have tried so hard to accept and be myself that I never want to feel like I am changing for anyone.
Now dont get me wrong, there is definitely a difference between who I am with my friends than there is to who I am in a business setting... mostly in the number of times I use expletives… I don´t hug potential clients or ask intrusive questions (without there being a justifiable business use for the answer. I work in recruitment. Sometimes I need to know where you live...) I´m not going to ask them about how much they spent on the great pair of shoes they are wearing or equally tell them their shoes are hideous. What I am going to do is have a personality and hope it helps them to feel more relaxed and at ease when doing business with me. If they need a reminder that, yes, I am a business woman and you can´t walk all over me just because I have ovaries, send nice emails and I look like I´m the same age as your 14 year old daughter, then the tone of my emails may change until that wrinkle is ironed out.
If we want to move in the right direction, work on the gender pay gap, , perhaps its not about women becoming more manly and fitting into the patriarchal world? Perhaps, its about acceptance. Accepting that men do something one way and women to something another and there is nothing wrong with it. We are not robots, we are humans and we deserve the autonomy to be able to be who we want to be. We should be able to choose how we go about things how we represent ourselves. If you don't feel comfortable being yourself at work, then maybe it is not the right place for you. The digital age is challenging the stereotypical working environments with the number of remote workers increasing. To me, this shows an increase in trust from employers. They don't know what that person is doing 100% of working day but they trust the results and output of that person. I think as employers, we need to focus more on the results. Let the results speak for themselves. I know an employer who says to their staff, I don´t care what hours you work and where you work from, as long as you hit your targets. This of course is not going to work for every company but it really shows the importance of the “big picture”. It doesn't matter how you write an email, if you ́re 6”2, if you have a penis or a vagina, it is about the results. If someone can be accepted for who they are and trusted to meet their targets, why should it matter if they write an email like a woman or a man? The world is changing with every new iPhone, Tesla, drone, etc. We are moving into an age of accepting new technology like it is a new brand of bread but we still are not at the point where we are accepting and EMBRACING the differences between men and woman!
Being an Australia living in Norway, I probably have a very unique perspective. Scandinavian and Nordic countries are said to be the leaders in gender equality. Iceland made paying women less than men illegal. 70% of workers in the public sector in Norway are women. That all looks great until you realise that only 36% of workers in the private sector in Norway are women. I think we might be going in the right direction but focussing on making current system "equal" is not going to work. We need to change the current system to be more accepting. We need to evolve, not force one gender into working like the other. A woman can do just the same amount of work in 8 hours a man does. We are all capable of that but we might go about it a different way. Lets evolve to accept that everyone is different and start working towards focussing on the effort and the results of an individual.
What do you think? Should we as women be writing emails like men? Is equality the answer?
These are my opinions and I would love to start a discussion. Perhaps I have over looked something or there are other opinions out there? Perhaps you can change my mind? I would really love to hear your thoughts!
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