"Mad Men" women: Two kinds of office power, neither respected

AMCTV.comSo much going on in that short day-is-done elevator ride with Peggy and Joan on this week's "Mad Men" episode. Weren't you as pleased as Peggy that she could share the news that she fired the sexually harassing, incredibly disrespecting Joey with Joan? With our minds and experience in the present day, we saw that Don was ahead of his time in giving Peggy the power to fire the young creative over the egregious, pornographic cartoon he drew and stuck on Joan's window. It was a fire-able offense, for sure, but Joan was not pleased.

Why? Because she had "already handled it," and she did so in a way that was right for her mid-60s time, in a way that steadied the power she held in the office, the power so blatantly challenged by the young guy in the office, and unintentionally challenged by Peggy. Joan was angry with Peggy for wielding a new kind of power for a woman manager, the kind that will surely make her own extinct soon.

One dinner with the client, she tells her, and Joey would have been off her back. The same result, Peggy says. But it's a result that elevates Peggy over Joan in the office structure. And she's right, of course, when she tells Peggy:

"You want to be a big shot. Well, no matter how powerful we get around here, they can still just draw a cartoon. So all you've done is prove to them I'm a meaningless secretary and you're another humorless b---- ."

Sadly, that still rings kind of true, doesn't it? While most of us have come of age in a workplace that promises equality and makes clear that sexual harassment will not be tolerated, it still happens. And when it does, when you're moving along through your job, working side by side with guys, not even thinking about it, one day one guy, a superior or colleague, will say something inappropriate, demeaning, and it stops you in your tracks. Bound to happen, and when it does, not every woman complains to her boss, "tattles" as Don said. She lets it ride, but something big has changed, and it stinks.

Peggy had to fire Joey. It was the right thing to do. But now those "boys" in the office won't respect her authority any more than they do Joan's. Thing is, they never did.

What were you thinking when you watched that phenomenal scene?