Still in the Boys’ Club
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Still in the Boys’ Club
Women have been in the life insurance business for more than a century. So why are they still on uneven footing with their male colleagues?
“In this work it is not only necessary to have a knowledge of human nature and tact but the power of imparting information. One of the first things to realize when taking up the business is that no womanly qualities are to be eliminated, we want the very truest kind of womanliness in the work.”
A reporter working for the New York Times enjoyed afternoon tea in an uptown Manhattan office building where the above nugget of insurance acumen was bestowed upon him. He sat pensively taking in every detail of the office, from the Roycroft furniture to the Mahogany wood and the rag carpet. He was being exposed to an incipient avenue for selling insurance and the tone of the article conveys that the author was unsure about its validity.
A guest of the head of the Woman’s Insurance department of a “big insurance company” that is not named in the article, the reporter was bombarded by the department head about the value that insurance has to its customers both male and female. However, rather than going on at length about the laudable attributes that insurance provides to society, the reporter was being told of the innate virtues in women that make them a natural fit for selling insurance.
Women, with their compassion, empathy and ability to cultivate nurturing relationships, make them inherently good insurance professionals. Every woman in the industry that was interviewed for this article emphatically stated that the qualities that women posses are they exact qualities that are needed to be successful in the life insurance field. The selling of an insurance policy in the eyes of the department head was a type of “missionary work” where she reaped both financial and non-tactile rewards. She believed with every shred of her being in the work that she was doing. And she was adamant that insurance is the most suitable field for a woman professional (even more so than teaching) she professed.
“Frequently men come in seeing the sign on the doors but we always send them to the regular office. We could never go around into the offices and talk to business men and keep the same prestige. Women work best with women; they are in closer sympathy with them. I can go into a woman’s boudoir and talk to them at any hour,” the department head went on to say.
The article was titled “Women Insurance Agents” and the fact that that qualified as a headline meant to intrigue and provoke readers into the depths of the article says something about where women were in the industry at the time. The article was published on May 19, 1901. Where are women in the industry 111 years on? What hurdles have been cleared and what have been stumbled over? And where do they have to go?
THIS IS A RE-POST OF A BLOG I FOUND from lifehealthpro.com
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