How does a woman behave in such situations without giving the wrong impression or getting a reputation for herself?
That is, of course, if she can find the courage to do it in the first place.
It is an irony that the daughters of the middle & professional classes, those best equipped by background & education to be knocking on the doors of the male establishment, are more likely to have been to single sex schools, where the headmistress may be one who believes, along with the late High Mistress of St Paul’s, that “Boys can be threatening … they’ve got subtle ways of influencing how girls behave.”
Perhaps being armed with glittering academic certificates helps girls face down these threatening beings once they have to meet & compete in the workplace.
So they learn how to get along in the lecture hall, the exam room. How about one to one?
Surprising numbers of younger women have never been alone with a man who is not a member of their family or a boyfriend or partner; these days more girls will have grown up without seeing a brother & his friends at close quarters; even if they do have a brother the age gap, most commonly 3 years, will be critically different from the 18 months of previous generations.
How do you distinguish between an invitation to do lunch, dinner or a drink, or to share a taxi which is just business or professional from one which is harassing?
The recent David Frost Collection on Radio 4 included reminiscences about the evangelist Billy Graham. Frost said that Graham & his trustees had recognised at a very early stage that the preacher must be seen always to be absolutely above reproach in his personal behaviour. Apart from careful separation of the control of the organisations money, it was agreed that Dr Graham should never be seen dining in public alone with a woman, however innocent or important their discussion might be. I suspect that even today it is not as easy as it should be for a woman to cement relations with people in power in this kind of way.
And how does his wife react to his seeing you?
Is marriage (or long term partnership) a help or a hindrance for a woman wishing to make progress in this kind of public world of business or politics? Quite apart from the purely personal satisfactions it will make things easier in the sense that it makes your status more clear, stops speculation about you. But how does your husband react to this need to schmooze with others, especially if he works in a completely different world?
But then, when all is said & done, how easy is it to get the unwavering, committed support of other women? One reason why oft-criticised Thatcher did not have more women in her cabinet was that there were none who forced their way in, either on their own merits or to maintain a balance between different factions, of one of which the potential minister was a member
