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.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*makes note of this explanation* This is a beautifully clear description of something I have lived time and time again.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

I do tolerably well in meetings, perhaps because I currently work in the least sexist environment I ever have. There are still a few junior men who have issues with talking over women, but generally the men at my level or above are excellent at verbal turn taking. I am extremely lucky, and I recognize this.

What I have been curious about for a long time is how many men in business have ever been told by their bosses to watch their tone in meetings because others might be perceiving them as too aggressive. I've been thinking about asking that question in a post. I also still owe you a post with my thoughts on minority constituencies and sexism in the workplace. Someday when I have the brain!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

What karakara98 said.

I work in a fairly low-sexism environment because of my field, but I've gotten negative feedback for seeming "too aggressive."

To be fair, I do come from a family of aggressive sounding people. But even if you put 50% of my verbal aggressiveness down to family and personal style (and okay, in spring of 2008 I also had hyperthyroidism), the other half is the half where I see men getting away with shit in meetings that I know I can't get away with because I _tried_ and that's how I got the negative feedback on a performance review about it, and women getting reputations for aggression for doing nothing that the men aren't getting away with. And that's in my really fun, really cooperative team!

I facilitated team meeting yesterday. I ran a tight, polite, fun meeting, and I noticed that I was using my lightest, highest voice and lots of conciliatory vocabulary every time I had to make a facilitation statement "We probably need to move on to the next agenda item, but does anyone have any more questions for S before we do?" I noticed I was doing it, and I thought, "Hah! Little do they know the ball-busting bitch who hides under this sweet little voice."

I got compliments on my meeting facilitation. *shrug*

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

how many men in business have ever been told by their bosses to watch their tone in meetings because others might be perceiving them as too aggressive

I wonder if someone's done a study on this, but if they _have_, holy crap, I think I know what the answer is going to be!

[quietann.livejournal.com]

thanks for the pointer

(Kevin Drum is the brother of an ex-boyfriend of mine, I am still very good friends with their mom. The whole family is brilliant, and Kevin especially got the verbal skills to go along with the technical nitty-gritty stuff.)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

oh fuck yeah.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

I have found that very few women are aware of the power of consciously choosing whether they're going to pitch their voice high or low. Particularly if you're an alto where you can pitch down to a near-male range or up to a very feminine range, it can make a big difference.

[dpolicar]

(nods)

I'm on the other side of this particular divide, and a good chunk of my 20s and 30s were spent learning to shut the fuck up.

I'm still not especially good at it.

[jab2.livejournal.com]

it took me a long time to realize that i get away with speaking up a lot and sometimes even instead of the guys around me because my voice is soft and slightly low, so i come across as direct but not pushy or bitchy. (as far as i can tell). until i realized that, i was the one gal who was messing with the statistics because she didn't experience that and didn't really respect it (retrospective apologies!)

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.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I'm a mezzo, so I can do just that, and I do often notice which voice I'm using.

The voice I use in the presence of boys I'm dating sometimes disturbs me greatly. It's so... so adorable!

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!

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

i get away with speaking up a lot

You should publicize this little trick to all the women in the world.

[skreeky]

My annual reviews have noted more than once that I talk over people in meetings, and this is bad thing, and I should be aware and stop doing it.

On the one hand, yes, I *do* talk over other people, quite loudly and aggressively, especially if they are getting off topic and wasting our (my) time.

On the other hand, I tend to take that sort of criticism with a small grain of salt, on a hunch that this behavior wouldn't even be noticed if I were male.

Knowing that it is generally not helpful to be perceived as rude, I have tried to be aware of when I am doing it and consider whether I ought to be. (Often the answer is yes.)

Perhaps this is why I prefer to do most of my communication via email. Of course, I'm also told that my written communications are too aggressive.

Overall, if that's the worst thing that shows up on my reviews, I figure I'm due for a promotion.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I don't really want to be talked over in meetings by anyone-- I like efficiency in meetings quite a lot, myself, but I try not to enact it at the cost of cutting people off. There are conversational techniques that can keep people on track, or suggest that hey we should talk about Y topic more, but X is the topic on the table right now, so let's get back to that decision we need to make about X. And I don't think it's wrong for an office to aim for that sort of interaction over people talking over each other-- I sure as hell can't follow conversations when there's a lot of that, no matter of the gender of the people involved.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

This is why it's important for women to have women mentors, for the transmission of stuff like this, yeah. It's often easiest to learn it when it's modeled by someone who has had to do struggle with it already.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

And yeah, when these things are the worst things that show up on your reviews, you're probably still doing a damn good job!

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, yes, very true. And often while a lesson of personal style can be summarized in a sentence, there are important details that people aren't fully aware of, and that are much easier to transmit by example than by description.