Sarah Harte: Stand down, boys — masculine hierarchies are far from being neutered
Mark Zuckerberg believes that the corporate world has become too neutered. A reset is needed with a return to a more masculine energy. File photo: AP/David Zalubowski
We have entered an era of trash talk. In a post-truth world, winners go large with their opinions, and sexism has had a glow-up. Men are men, and women are women.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the States. A gym-pumped Mark Zuckerberg recently enlightened us on what he thought of the corporate world when Joe Rogan interviewed him. Zuckerberg believes that the corporate world has become too neutered. A reset is needed with a return to a more masculine energy.
In the context of tech, his claims are hard to take seriously because the patriarchy never went away. The latest data suggests that only approximately 27.6% of tech workers are female, and roughly 17% of tech CEOs are women, although some figures suggest it is lower. One survey revealed that over 91% of software developers were men. Meta, Zuckerberg’s company is almost two-thirds male.
At the weekend, his words popped into my mind on the Cork-Dublin train when I earwigged the conversation of three corporate types on the way to the rugby match. The discussion was heavily dominated by golf (we took a tour of the world's golf courses), tales about corporate jollies, and comparing notes on male Irish corporate scene makers who had sold and bought what.
Terms like Trump, Russian risk, war, oligarchs, and capital projects peppered their discussion. There was also a segment on gender quotas on corporate boards.
Mr A, the oldest of the trio, thought there was possibly a role for them; Mr B was lukewarm and non-committal, presumably hoping they could get back to golf, while Mr C, who looked the youngest, got quite worked up, fearing that they would result in mediocre women getting promoted.
He said there was no call for ‘box-ticking’ because meritocracy was best, and it should always be the best person for the job. Hmm. In an ideal world, yes, but if only it were that simple. The idea that corporate environments operate solely on plain meritocracy where employees advance based simply on their skills seemed called into question by their conversation.
It used to bug us as young females in a corporate environment, watching our male counterparts waltz off with senior bosses and clients to sporting events. There, they developed that all-important rapport in clubbable male environments while we remained less visible.
I was dying to contribute, but I buttoned my lip, smiled ruefully, and ate my fruitcake (who says women can’t multi-task?).
Later that evening, I grabbed dinner in Dublin with five successful women, all of whom have worked in the corporate sphere for decades. During their long careers, they evolved from being determined young women starting out to getting married and learning to juggle their families and ambitions.
I explained what I had heard on the train and asked whether there was anything in what Zuckerberg said about corporate life becoming too neutered because it’s been quite a while since I exited the corporate building.
It would be going too far to say that my question elicited hollow laughter, but there was doubt that masculinity hierarchies were ever dislodged in the first place. The most senior woman at the table said:
Another view was that while younger women do not expect to experience the same pressure points as older women, not much has substantively changed, so our younger sisters are in for a few shocks.
This opinion from the frontline dovetails with McKinsey and Company’s last report: “Women remain underrepresented at every stage of the corporate pipeline.”
When opining on corporate life, Zuckerberg also told Rogan that he favours martial arts because it taught him that he could kill somebody, and in business, “you have someone trying to choke you unconscious slowly over a multi-month multi-year period.” No golf for him in Quinta di Lago.
There is nothing wrong with a spot of wrestling, of course, or other stereotypically masculine pursuits because one man’s pig-hunting (Zuckerberg is also a fan) is another woman’s Pilates.
However, the nexus between masculinity and violent aggression struck me as unfortunate messaging, given the global violence against women. Plus, genderising the qualities that employees need to succeed seems reductive.
Overall, the feminine against the masculine binary idea reduces us all to unhelpful archetypes. Some men display what has been tagged as traditionally feminine traits, and women display so-called male characteristics.
Despite the latest cruel announcement in the States that there are only two genders supposedly to protect women in some cynical version of benevolent sexism, we are all as human beings plotted along a continuum of behaviour, a nuanced gradient on which every person functions and acts at different levels be that professionally, personally or sexually.
That’s one of the things that makes life both interesting and, at times, challenging. How do we devise a common set of rules that we can all more or less happily live by, whether societally or even within a corporate environment?
The problem, however, as my friend alluded to at dinner, is that corporate environments are deeply and rigidly patriarchal, limiting women’s growth unless they fit into those preset moulds. Even when women turn themselves inside out, progress can still be slow.
These moulds include the language used, the working hours kept, and the kind of corporate outings often around sporting events that help male employees bond, network, and forge personal connections, which can significantly impact career advancement. Sometimes, who you know is more important than what you know.
The statistics for women in corporate life remain generally stark. In January, it was announced that thanks to the appointment of two new female CEOs, the percentage of women running Fortune 500 companies finally pushed past 11% in the list’s 70-year history.
Although Ireland is slightly ahead of the global average number of women in senior management roles, at 36% versus a worldwide average of 33.5%, a Grant Thornton report revealed a drop in 2024 in the number of Irish women in senior management roles from 40% in 2023. It’s fair to say that progress in gender parity at higher levels is both slow and fragile.
Even while at lower levels, more women are entering the labour force and acquiring skills and expertise that would potentially allow them to occupy leadership roles, the claim that the impact of women’s energy has neutered positive male energy, detrimentally affecting companies' development, seems highly dubious.
Some right-leaning women seem to support Zuckerberg’s ideas, most likely in an attempt to be contrarian or because they have drunk the patriarchal Kool-Aid, perhaps unconsciously.
But sure, look, even if secretly, you get off on a Jordan Belfort in type of energy, you can rest easy because, across the world, men continue to be the top dogs occupying the highest-paying jobs and top positions in organisations, with women’s representation in the workforce remaining below men’s in almost all industries and economies.
Thus, men remain positioned to influence policies, ideologies, working culture, and practices, and they do so in a way that is far from neutered and not always in female colleagues' interests or arguably even their own — but that is a subject for another day.
