I’ve recently started watching AMC’s series Mad Men, just three years after everyone else.  I’m nothing if not cutting edge.  (Also, I’m only halfway through season 3, so don’t spoil anything for me!)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the TV show, it’s about the people who work at a Manhattan ad agency in the early 1960’s.  It’s an interesting look at values, relationships and society as a whole during that time, and it makes me awfully glad I was born in 1980.

There are two women who work at the ad agency that are standout characters, and they represent, to me, the two different approaches that women take to working in a “man’s world”.  While we could debate all day about how many offices are run by men today, there is no doubt that corporate America was still very much a man’s world in 1960, and watching how these two women navigate that landscape is fascinating.

First is Joan.  Joan is a beautiful redhead and at the top of the typing pool food chain.  Technically, she says, she’s the office manager.  Joan embraces her sexuality and femininity and makes herself invaluable as the office caretaker.  She knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak, and understands the importance of discretion.

On the other end of the spectrum is Peggy.  Peggy starts out as a secretary and works her way up to an office with her name on the door.  She climbs up through the ranks by trying to make men forget that she’s a woman in order to prove that she’s just as talented as her male counterparts.

I’ve been thinking of the dichotomy of these two women for weeks and how much of the dances they do continues today.  Especially for women, like me, who work in male dominated industries.

As I thought about these two women, I considered the Peggys and Joans I’d worked with over the last several years.

When I worked at a radio station, our business manager was very much a Joan.  She was the mother of the office and kept everything running, but she had a way of always making the men in our office feel like they were in charge, even as she handed them their paychecks.

And then there was me.  I was the only female account executive.  I took clients to bars and listened to my sales managers tell horribly sexist jokes.  Once in a while I would remind them that I was, in fact, a girl, and they would laugh and punch me in the arm and assure me that I was one of the boys.  I rarely brought up my children and I never discussed personal relationships in a way that would make me seem weak or overly feminine, two things that were synonymous to most of the men I worked with.

I was, and have been at many times in my career, a Peggy.

As I looked back on those days at the station and the men and women I worked with then, I realized that over the years I have morphed into someone who resembles a little of Peggy and a little of Joan - but mostly, a lot of Britt.

I’m a woman.  I have children.  I have great ideas and the skills to execute them.  I can run a meeting and plan a holiday party.  I work with a lot of men and have learned to be taken seriously without relying on any gender roles or stereotypes.

If you’ve always worked primarily with women, this idea may seem a little silly to you.  But I assure you, the Peggy vs. Joan phenomenon is still very much alive in fields that are predominantly male.

There is a great scene in Season 2 of Mad Men between Peggy and a woman named Bobby Barret.  Bobby tells Peggy, “You’ll never be a man, no matter how hard you try.  But there’s great power in being a woman… when it’s done right.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Are you a Peggy or a Joan?