My wife just prevented a negligent homicide today. Ah, the wonderful German medical system!

[DFW]

40. The refusal to be intimidated is strong with these two.

Our friend was a tough CEO in a country where diminutive women aren't expected to be that (i.e. Germany). My wife, after years of being a social worker, fighting both FOR those on whom the system would crap on, as well against those who merely wanted to use the system to their selfish advantage, has a very solid "Gerechtigkeitssinn." That is one of those put-together German words that foreigners stumble over. It means "sense of justice." She hates it when the good guys lose, or when the bad guys win.

She also developed a very good sense of when someone was trying to put one over on her. One of her charges was a youngish Russian immigrant who was by nature lazy, although he didn't seem to be very lacking in intelligence. Just conditioned by the Soviet (and post-Soviet) system to think that work is optional and the best way to get something you want is to take it. He used to duck interviews and appointments by claiming his German wasn't good enough yet to understand what what asked of him. My wife, fed up with this, told him one Friday afternoon to be in her office at 8:00 AM the next Monday morning to try to straighten him out. He said, uh, "DA," sure, Monday, acting as if he hadn't quite understood what she had told him. When she got home that evening, she called him in his apartment, and put me on the phone. I said, in Russian, "listen up, my wife wants you in her office at 8:00 in the morning on Monday. Have you understood what I just told you?" Since he was Russian, he couldn't wiggle out of it this time. He WAS in her office at 8:00 the next Monday morning, his German having vastly improved over the weekend (what a coincidence). The guy DID straighten out, and she finally placed him in a decent-paying job, where he could actually afford more by working than he could by taking state handouts. He never really thanked her, but his success was thanks enough.

Our friend, the former executive, is similar in nature, and HATES being taken for a timid little old lady just because she might look like one. She has no problem with correcting people who underestimate her. You'd think that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, Germany would get the hint, but this remains a very macho society, and the attitude still prevails even after Merkel showed them how wrong that attitude is.

I contrast this with my office just over the border in Holland, where women have some of the higher positions, and none of the men seem to have any problem with it. It's definitely a cultural thing. I have to wonder, in retrospect, if this wasn't my lucky charm in winning my wife all those years ago. With her looks and personality, she could have had any man she wanted, and there were plenty of them interested in the position. But I had a totally different attitude toward women from what she was used to in the rural Catholic northwestern German farm country where she grew up, and apparently that was the big factor in my favor. Americans who spoke German were considered rather exotic in those days, too, so that helped.