Megan McArdle on differential gender standards in the workplace.

[randomness]

As a followup to a post by Kevin Drum on why women are reluctant to negotiate, Megan McArdle posted:

When I was in business school, I learned about a case that had been run experimentally. I may hash some of the details, but the gist is that half the classes that used it read about "John" facing a tough management problem, while the other half read about "Jane" facing the same problem. No detail other than the names had been changed.

But what a difference a name makes! "John" was a strong, thoughtful leader making tough choices about what was best for his group. "Jane" was a headstrong bitch who was wildly overstepping her authority and generally making a mess of things.

No woman is unaware of these dynamics. When I'm in group interviews or meetings, frequently I will start talking at the same time as a man starts talking. Almost always, I shut up and let the man finish talking, and hope I'll get a chance to ask a question later. Over time, two things have become clear to me:

1. The men are completely unaware that this is happening. They are not hostile or trying to shut women down; perhaps that happened in yesteryear, but I don't think it happens now. They just do not see that when the verbal space is contested, they keep talking, and the woman almost always stops first.

2. For their own personal good, women should stop first, because if they keep talking, they do not strike a telling blow for feminism; they get labeled as an unbearably pushy and difficult sort of person.

3. In the comments to this post, there will be at least some men accusing me of overreacting, not knowing what I am talking about, and/or making unfair demands*. There will also probably be at least one woman who says that this has never happened to her; her experience will be taken as representative by the men making the above complaints, while mine is dismissed as special pleading.

Someone will also probably hypothesize that I am, in fact, an unbearably pushy person. But this gets it backwards. I am indeed quite opinionated, very fond of talking, and tolerably thick-skinned, and I have already proven willing to bend gender norms at least enough to work in a field that's moderately strongly male-identified. If I am making a conscious decision to shut up every time a man and I start talking at the same time, then other women are engaging in even more extreme forms of self-censorship.

I am sure that none of the students who read that case thought to themselves "women should not take charge". They just felt that there was something wrong and inappropriate about a woman who did. Differential gender standards are rarely distilled these days, as actual abstract standards that people are willing to name--or indeed, even conscious of believing. They are merely applied consistently in every individual case.

*Note: I have not made any demands.

Both of the posts are worth reading.

Comments

[noire.livejournal.com]

I cannot begin to tell you how often I have experienced this. Including making a comment or suggestion, being talked over by the men, and then have a man *make the exact same suggestion or comment I had made ten minutes earlier and have everyone exclaim what an excellent/brilliant idea it was!* This has happened *reliably* and *regularly* in conferences, meetings, and just about every instance when I have been in meetings and on panels with men. Even when I outrank the men and have more experience and credentials.

Re: Пьяный оппозиционер поет песни про выборы!)))

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Oh, look, it's Russian election spam. I can't tell if it's pro- or anti-Putin, though. Wonder if it has anything to do with yesterday's DDoS?

I was curious, so I thought I'd look into this.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

The YouTube title is "Борис Надеждин поет матерную песню про ЕдРо", or "Boris Nadezhdin singing obscene songs about EdRo". Whether that is an accurate description of the video or not I can't say because I don't understand enough Russian.

According to Wikipedia, Boris Nadezhdin is Moscow Region leader of Правое дело, or Right Cause, a pro-free market, middle class party "widely regarded as a pro-Kremlin party [which] has already found itself in opposition to the presidential administration on several occasions". They're polling about 1%.

ЕдРо is short for Единая Россия, United Russia, Putin's party.

Elections for the Duma are tomorrow.

(Nearly everything I know about this is from the Wikipedia articles I've linked to. If someone would like to tell me more about this subject, I'll be happy to listen.)

Re: I was curious, so I thought I'd look into this.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I don't understand anywhere near enough of what they're saying in that video to be able to comment on whether the content bears out the title, but I want to point out a few things:

1. What they're doing there is SO FUCKING RUSSIAN. Empty plates of food, bits of unfinished pelmeni and slices of green tomato, vino and kognak being passed around, they've clearly been sitting there for quite a while, and they're toasting, talking, and just shooting the shit. That is how Russians have a good time. Note to self: throw parties like that.

2. That man plays a decent Russian folk guitar, yes he does.

3. That they can sit around and, apparently, talk smack about the ruling party blows my mind. Casual dissidence like this seemed pretty crazy 20 years ago, though it was quietly happening in the home. I don't think they could have imagined uploading video of their casual dissidence in the home to a video site and sharing it with the world. It could get you hauled away if you said it too much to the wrong people, 30 years ago. 40 years ago, if you had the guts to invite a rare American visitor (a student) home for dinner, and you wanted her to sing a banned song from a banned movie based on a banned book for you, you turned up the stereo in your flat and had her sing over it. And even during détente you were taking a risk by doing that. My mother sang "Somewhere, My Love" for a Soviet couple in their flat in Leningrad in this fashion.

Okay so part of my reaction has to do with my personal narrative about this stuff, but still!