What might work to promote a woman's career?
Let's hypothesize that Michael Dickerson or someone in Aberdeen sincerely wanted me to succeed. What might have actually helped me succeed?
Context: I was a freelancer (writing, website work) trying to make money doing something related to or involved with local community development (AKA economic development and "urban planning" if you are in a big city).
1. Be informative.
Tell me something useful about what meetings I might be interested in attending, what the history of stuff is, important details about who is who and similar.
Michael Dickerson personally inviting me to meetings he was also attending so he could squee about me and squee at me and promote me likely would have been even worse than the mountain of doo doo I was already dealing with.
Michael Dickerson or someone telling me "I think X and Y meetings are important to check out if you want to know what's going on. They meet at this time and place." is potentially useful to me whether they are there or not.
2. Make introductions that low key vouch for me without being too committed.
I was new in town. I didn't know people. It was a small town where personal introductions probably mattered more than in some social contexts.
Someone saying "This is Doreen Traylor. She does freelance writing and affordable plug-and-play websites." would have promoted me without people wondering about the agenda.
Michael Dickerson trying to encourage people to fire Wil Russoul and hire me looks hinky on the face of it. He ran Our Aberdeen, not Main Street. That firing and hiring decision wasn't his decision. He wasn't on the board of Main Street and neither was Sylvia.
He could have quit giving me a hard time about wanting my check and found ways for me to do projects in town for pay and gone to bat for me with regards to getting me paid in a timely fashion. I was explicit about saying I wanted an income working part time as a freelancer doing writing and websites. I didn't really want Wil Russoul's job.
He and Sylvia were viewed as "new in town." They had only been there twelve years. I was talking to people at various meetings whose understanding of local history was from their family living there for generations.
That's not just my opinion, man. Sylvia said that to me.
3. Promote my work, not me.
I was doing little websites for not much money. There was a guy in town named Rick Moyer who was my main competitor locally.
He didn't really know what he was doing while charging big bucks for it. I've touched on that previously on this site.
Someone could have been spreading the word "There's more options than just Rick Moyer for locally done website work."
They didn't necessarily need to trash Moyer and tell people "He's not actually competent." They could have said "If budget is a concern, she's cheaper than Rick." or "Unlike Rick, who works full time at the radio station and does this as a side gig, this is how she supports herself. I hired her because she came to my house the same day and she's been more reliably available than when we were working with Rick as our guy."
Something that apparently needs to run the other way if you are a career woman is be less personal. When men glad hand, that's to overcome cold professionalism. Women tend to be too warm and personal and spend too much time on getting to know people and too little on the work we are here to discuss.
Women hear "You need to network!" and we think to ourselves "I know how to be friendly!" and we imagine that's what networking means. And then we wonder when everyone hits on us and it doesn't lead to sales.
You want to help women's careers? Promote their work, not them as individuals or her name or the idea that you should hire women etc.
"Here are links to websites she's done, this is what she charges, these are a few business reasons she might serve your needs better than Rick Moyer or going to a bigger firm in another city which basically are your other options here."
A note about appearances.
I have no idea if how I dressed and looked mattered. At the time, I thought it did. I'm no longer convinced that's true.
I was dirt poor and living in men's t-shirts and sweat pants. But not just because I was poor. Mostly because of my medical situation.
If Michael and Sylvia had genuinely wanted me to succeed and felt that taking me shopping for clothes would help, I probably would have declined.
I still wear mostly men's t-shirts and sweat pants. The manager at a local eating establishment asked me one day "You're in here everyday. Would you like to text us or something so we can start your meal before you arrive?"
Do I look fundamentally better than I did in 2018 and 2019? Yes, but it has almost nothing to do with my clothes.
I dress very slightly different than I did at that time. I wear plain, dark t-shirts instead of whatever printed holiday t-shirt from the most recent holiday is on sale for a dollar.
I'm physically healthier and as a consequence I have nicer hair etc. and I read more like someone athletically inclined walking to this eatery to get in my 10,000 steps a day or whatever.
I'm homeless and going to an eatery while out grabbing essentials because I'm holed up in a hotel with no means to cook. Hotel homeless is better than street homeless but I'm still homeless.
He thinks I must be important and monied and would appreciate him easing the time pressures in my busy schedule because I spend money daily at his establishment. And I'm still living in men's t-shirts and sweat pants or lounge pants.
If people in Aberdeen were telling themselves it's how I was dressed, that's probably them trying to whitewash classist, sexist bullshit and a fundamentally hostile agenda. They didn't want me.
They knew I was dirt poor and living in poverty housing and struggling to make ends meet. "Look how she's dressed." is them associating how I was dressed with how poor I was.
It's the classist version of the racist claim that "It's not racism to not hire Blacks who speak African American Vernacular English. I just need to have articulate employees."
To which I would reply "George W. Bush." in an exercise in how to win enemies and alienate people.
Years ago, I saw some interview with a woman millionaire or billionaire. She was old and gray haired and plump and wore any damn thing she was comfortable in.
The absolute only thing I remember about it is she inherited vast wealth when her husband died and she commented on the fact that she initially felt compelled to dress the way women were expected to dress at that time. It took her a bit to stop caring.
She got rich by dressing in a socially acceptable fashion for a woman. Because it got her a husband.
It took her a while to wrap her brain around "I'm obscenely wealthy and in charge and it absolutely doesn't matter how I dress 99 percent of the time. I don't need to try to impress anyone that way."
I've read all kinds of dress for success books and articles and I would like to start my own clothing line so I can dress like I like and help other women meet a business-casual dress code instead of looking like a street walker.
But programmers and dot com millionaires are infamous for wearing jeans or cargo shorts. They wrote code to get rich. The computer doesn't care how you are dressed.
One study found that if a woman was "dressed for success" in a lovely dress and heels and claiming to be a mechanic, people essentially blew her off. You want people to buy that? Be in coveralls with grease on your face.
For some people, it's extremely important that they dress a certain way to further their career. But sometimes people telling themselves you aren't dressed appropriately is just a polite cover story for racism, classism, sexism, whatever.
I wasn't going to succeed in Aberdeen because those people have serious issues. It was them, not me.
Pretending it had anything to do with anything I did is a case of DARVO (a set of tactics for blaming the victim).