Citibank's Recommendations for the Ladeez

Blogger David Xia recently posted a scan of a laminated card his friend nicked from Citibank's offices, "on a floor he suspects was the human resources department," while interviewing there:

Citi Logo / What NOT to do / What women do to sabotage their careers / TOP 10 things to remember / 1. Women tend to speak softly—you are not heard. 2. Women groom in public—emphasizes your femininity and deemphasizes your capability. 3. Women sit demurely—the power position when seated at a tables is forearms resting on a table and resting forward. 4. Speak last in meetings—early speakers are seen as more assertive and knowledgeable than late speakers. 5. Women ask permission—children are taught to ask permission. Men don't ask permission, they inform. 6. Apologize—women apologize for the smallest error which erodes your self-confidence. Men tend to move into problem-solving mode. 7. Women tend to smile inappropriately—when delivering a message, therefore you are not get taken seriously. 8. Play fair—women tend to be more naive. A woman might assume the rules have to be obeyed whereas a man will figure out a way to stretch the rules and not be punished. 9. Being invisible—women tend to operate behind the scenes and end up handing the credit over to the competitor. 10. Offer a limp handshake—one good pump and a concise greeting combined with solid eye contact will do the trick.

"That's what she said!"—Citibank.

(Emphasis, terrible punctuation, and grammatical mistakes original.)

David notes the 10-points "are taken from an actual book titled Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers by a woman who earned a Ph.D. in psychology," and apparently is making a handsome living filling the role of the Exceptional Woman Who Navigates the Patriarchy by Pretending It Doesn't Exist and Selling Out Other Women to Ingratiate Herself With Misogynist Men.

For their part, Citibank says: "The material in question is not part of Citi's formal leadership training or human resources communications. It appears to have been taken from a published book by a noted author in the field of executive coaching." Yeah, it just fell out of the book that way—laminated and bearing the company logo.

Naturally, the "not part of Citi's formal leadership training" dodge is absurd. That it exists at all, official enough that it bears the company logo, creates a hostile workplace for all the company's female employees, who, like nearly every other woman working in corporate America, is already expected to navigate the impossibly thin course of being feminine-but-not-too-feminine while acting-like-a-man-but-not-acting-too-much-like-a-man in the never-ending patriarchal game of Can't Fucking Win.

[H/T to Shakers Phyllis, Maritzia, and Lizardbreath.]