There's no shame in shedding a tear

Pity poor Rachida Dati, given her marching orders just days after parking her Chanel heels back under the ministerial desk. But the controversy isn't over why the French Justice Minister was so brusquely shown the door. What's so intriguing is what happened moments before she succumbed to Mr Sarkozy's insistence that she resigns. Did she, or did she not, shed a tear?

One report has it that she was reduced to "floods of tears" by a screaming Sarkozy. Dati proudly claims to have remained dry-eyed. Admitting otherwise would be unthinkable to Dati, part of a generation of high-achieving women for whom crying at work remains the ultimate sign of female weakness.

Too frequently I've found myself biting a trembling lip as some purple-faced line manager lets rip across a packed room. Much of the time I've kept my composure - at least until I reached the ladies, which is where you'll find most red-eyed, snot-nosed staff when they've been on the wrong end of a rollicking. Out on the floor the key is still to keep a stiff upper lip and show you can take it like a man.

We all know it should be so much more shocking that the leader of a country bullied a senior politician - one still brimming with post-pregnancy hormones - to the point of blubbing. Yet Dati's alleged loss of composure is what makes the headlines because shouting is somehow accepted while crying is not.

It is, like so much else in the workplace, a man/woman thing. The new breed of female managers might find it easy to pick up the traditionally male trait of bawling people out but it will always be tricky for women, cruelly governed by emotions and hormones, to remain as stony-faced as male colleagues while a barrage of abuse is hurled their way. Some craven sisters use tears to strategic effect but most of us are more familiar with the horror of realising you're about to emit an involuntary sob in the boss's office.

For all the millions modern businesses spend on management training and assertiveness courses, verbal abuse and weeping are still rife at work. In the fraught times to come, tempers are bound to fray further and there will be tears aplenty. Bullying, not crying, is the true sign of weakness.