Female city council members asking too many questions, as females do.
Residents of Austin, Texas recently elected several women to the city council. For the first time in the history of Austin, the city council now has a female majority–seven women and four men. Huzzah! Progress! But, not so fast. The change was apparently so overwhelming, the city manager decided to bring in a trainer to teach city employees how to deal with
emotionally-driven women in the workplace. A sampling of the topics:
Women ask lots of questions. He learned a valuable lesson on communicating with women from his 11-year-old daughter, who peppered him with questions while they were on the way to volleyball. “In a matter of 15 seconds, I got 10 questions that I had to patiently respond to,” Allen said. Allen says female City Council members are less likely to read agenda information and instead ask questions. He says it’s tempting to just tell them to read the packet, but “my daughter taught me the importance of being patient” even when they may already know the answer to the question.
Women don’t want to deal with numbers. Allen said in his city they used to have background information and financial analysis on the front pages of agenda forms. Allen says he normally would have presented the financial argument, but that his female commissioners would balk and say “Mr. Manager, I don’t want to hear about the financial argument, I want to hear about how this impacts the whole community.” He said that it may make good financial sense, but if he wants to get the votes, he has to present his arguments “in a totally different way.”
Women are taking over, Hillary Clinton will only encourage this. Allen talked about the general trend of more women getting involved in government, citing stats of more female mayors, for instance. “You see women in leadership positions…you will have to interact with them in a different way,” Allen said. “I submit to you if Hillary Clinton just runs, just runs for the office, you are going to see even greater numbers in leadership position, if she wins, you will see even greater numbers starting at the bottom on top.” He warns the staff to play nice with people on advisory boards or commissions because you never know when they become the elected official.
Needless to say, the women on the city council were not amused. Watch their reaction:
The video of the training session has been removed from the website for the city of Austin, replaced with a letter of
apology and clarification from City Manager Marc Ott.
Read more about the training session at the Austin Statesman.