Why Are Women Still Left Out on the Handshake?

Source: 123RF purchase

It has been a good 40 years that women have secured some leadership in the workplace. However, we know equality, especially when it comes to equal pay, is a way off. Current research suggests across industries and professions, women make 80 cents to the dollar men make.

Maybe we could regard the ritual of the handshake as a nonverbal cue of inequality. Women are often omitted from the professionally sanctioned business touch—the handshake. And sometimes when they do score that handshake it is the limp fish. Not a firm, full palm grip.

Joe Biden could have chosen a handshake rather than a paternalistic style of touch with excuses of meaning well. Men today have not fully grasped what it means to be fully equal. Biden apparently was not aware of the new sociopolitical order and got caught with old school habits of treating women. Certainly, we do not put Biden in the same category as recent offenders like Charlie Rose or Harvey Weinstein. Although his massaging, kisses on the head and running hands down women’s backs still fall on the continuum of sleazy and paternalistic.

Maybe some guidelines and background on the sanctioned handshake are in order. A student invited a colleague of mine, Sonja Foss, to her wedding. As Sonja made her way down the reception line, she introduced herself to the father of the bride. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Dr. Sonja Foss, your daughter’s professor.” She extended her hand with a smile and continued, “It’s nice to meet you.”

At that point, the father of the bride drew back and said, “Sorry, I don’t shake hands with ladies.” Although for some people, religious faith dictates male-female tactile contact (for instance, Orthodox Jewish men are forbidden from touching women to whom they are not married) I don’t believe this father refused to shake Sonja’s hand because of his beliefs.

Although disconcerting, it’s not surprising that this man refused to shake a “lady’s” hand. The use of the handshake among women coincides with their influx into the workplace in the 1970s. Our mothers didn’t shake hands with other women or with men, for that matter.

Still today, some etiquette books warn women not to initiate a handshake. Only recently have women been permitted this ritual. Yet it’s critical. If a woman walks into a roomful of men and fails to shake hands at first, she can’t go back and salvage the gaffe later. The handshake is a bonding behavior that must be executed in the first seconds of contact. It is as important as eye contact.

The handshake is the only formalized, ritualistic touch that is sanctioned in the United States. Men have been trained in proper handshake technique since they were boys of four or five. In fact, the first message most received about appropriate physical contact was how to shake hands (“Son, when you meet somebody, you take their hand like this…”) A homophobic meaning may underlie this training: If you have a wimpy handshake it means you’re a wimpy guy.

For people in the United States, the handshake must be executed in the proper manner: full palm, firm grasp. Yet both men and women will shake a woman’s hand with the “limp fish,” differential and preferential treatment that conveys one believes she is frail. Indeed, male workshop participants have even voiced the concern, “Won’t I crush her hand if I shake it like a man’s?” Of course, this is untrue. A man should shake a woman’s hand firmly—he should extend the same etiquette to her as he does to another man. She will not break.

And by the same token, a woman must sometimes initiate a handshake with a man. It is important that she not be excluded from this business bonding ritual. If a man leaves her out, she can smile, take a step forward and say, “Hi, I’m Nancy.” By this non-threatening act, she can teach him how to treat her—as an equal.

Men will also execute a power handshake. It is quite firm, and rather than being parallel, one of the hand shakers turns his hand horizontally so it’s on top. This dominance display occurs strictly among men. You won’t see it among women, and will never see a man do it to a woman.