Recently, a friend shared with me the following wisdom (said tongue in cheek, its anti-PC-ness readily evident and acknowledged):

“So just remember, here is the hierarchy of preference when it comes to having a boss: #1 (best case): straight man with kids, #2 married woman with kids, #3 gay man and #4 (last): single, driven woman without kids.”

I admit it, I laughed in the moment (even as I felt guilty that by doing so I was offering some amount of implicit agreement). In fact, as someone who believes in debunking the more divisive stereotypes about and between women, I feel funny even offering this little account here. Yet I’m sharing it—along with my immediate reaction to it— for a reason.

Here are the results of THREE recent large-scale surveys about gender preferences in the workplace:

• While over half said gender makes no difference, three out of four women who expressed a preference said they would rather work for a man than a woman.
  – Work and Power Survey, 2007, Elle Magazine and MSNBC

• When asked if they would prefer a male or female boss, among those with a preference, both men and women picked a male boss roughly three times more often than a female boss.
  – Gender Issues in the Workplace Survey by Vault Inc.

• Of the women polled who had a preference, most said they would rather work for a man.
  – Lifetime Women’s Pulse, July 2007

Three different surveys, together representing tens of thousands of opinions, coming together to form the same conclusion: all of our positive advances in the workplace not withstanding, there is still something really wrong with the way women are perceived as executives. And what’s worse, many of us seem to be supporting those perceptions ourselves. As a result, we can’t just slap this with a sticker of “Sexism” and walk away; too many of us apparently feel this way too. In the Work and Power Survey, there was an optional comments section in which hundreds of people (women as well as men), volunteered such descriptives of women as “moody,” “bitchy,” “gossipy” and “emotional.” The most popular term for woman, used 347 times, was “catty.”

I cringe simply typing these words, each one feeling like a giant outstretched hand, pushing us all back down a rung.

However, truth be told, the reason that little tongue-in-cheek bit of ‘advice’ elicited a laugh was… I’ve thought these things too at times. There is an inescapable irony to having spent the majority of a career in Beauty—an industry heavily populated by successful women—and having been the witness to a great deal of Ugliness. Insecurity, pettiness… those adjectives above… general bad behavior. Was such behavior absent in the menfolk? Of course not (plenty of stories there). Yet somehow, in my women bosses and colleagues, those cases of bad behavior singed me with different emotional heat, as they felt like more of a betrayal. Where was their spirit of sisterhood? In deference to our inherent nature as the mothering gender, shouldn’t they have shown a genuine desire to care? To mentor?

It has made me realize that perhaps the bad behavior I’ve seen at work— that many of us have seen— is less gender-specific than the way we’ve filtered it– through decidedly pink or blue lenses. As Kim Elsesser, PhD, a psychologist and research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women has been quoted as saying, “if females don’t match the stereotype of being nice, nurturing, and democratic in their leadership style, they tend to be disliked more and seen as less competent because they’ve fallen short of what people expect of them.”

This, perhaps, is the real underlying sexism… the question is, is it wrong? Is it wrong to expect (or at least hope for) more from each other? I suppose what has made my own moments of disappointment more pronounced, and more confused is that through Executive Moms, I have had the opportunity to meet (in person or in email) so many strong, smart, sensible, warm, caring and funny women; women who are executives, women who get my vote for being the paragons of professionalism to which both women and men should aspire. Women that could and should sway those stats above.

At least we can take heart in the fact that the public tide is changing for the better. As Generation Y (the under 30 set) penetrates the workforce, this group is proving more likely than their older colleagues to prefer a female boss.

In the meantime, we all need to stake our claim in those perceptions: the way we perceive our own bosses and colleagues… and the perceptions we create ourselves. If we have been filtering what we see through ‘pink’ lenses, shouldn’t that afford us all a rosy view?

Have a thought of your own on this?