You’ve heard it. It’s a low hum, the buzz about women in business. Now it’s Katie Couric, the larger-than-life morning TV personality transmogrified as CBS-TV anchorwoman.
Earlier this summer it was Miranda Priestly, the fictional, loosely based-on-fact editor of Runway, the fashion industry bible, in the book and movie “The Devil Wears Prada.”
So what do the buzzmeisters allege?
That Miranda is a ruthless woman and Katie is too peppy.
But the chatterboxes miss the point. There is no veneer to Miranda. The story positions Miranda as a figurehead in the fashion industry, a business where the half-life of success is a little shorter than that of iodine-125.
Likewise Katie. Even the most hard-bitten detractors must acknowledge that Katie has outlasted all the others, male and female, who have occupied couches on morning TV broadcasts.
Have we forgotten that Katie was hired to CBS because it is believed she can revive the ratings, and yes, the fortunes, of the evening news by increasing its attraction to advertisers?
Miranda’s standards for herself positioned Runway in the forefront. One could argue that it is Miranda’s perfectionism that keeps Runway rich in pages filled with advertising, its lifeblood and source of the publication’s revenue. Not to be overlooked, those ad pages also are employment security for the dozens of employees in the various departments of the magazine.
In their roles, Miranda and Katie are no different than the leaders of the nation’s great businesses. These leaders carry responsibilities for the well-being of an enterprise, and for the employees who depend on them to make wise choices and right decisions.
There’s a reason corporations pay these people handsomely. Professionals like Katie and Miranda deliver the goods.
The message to America sits askew of the business reality. It is strongly suggested that Miranda’s high standards and expectations for performance, hers and those of her subordinates, are not to be emulated but, rather, to be condemned.
Katie is consigned to playing the conventional role: woman as nurturer–no matter that her nurturing nature is able to get the interviews her more hard-bitten male anchors only wish for.
We are led to believe there’s no room for a woman whose style focuses on results and responsibilities, regardless of her personality and the methods she chooses to achieve her goals.
Would Miranda and Katie somehow be more palatable in business if, instead of “Ms.” before the name, it were “Mr.”?
Perhaps it’s time to find gender-neutral words for women in business, and give them the latitude to define success in their own terms.
