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I don’t want to hire any more women.
Yes, I said it. You cringed when you read it and I cringed when I wrote it, and even more so when the thought first occurred to me. I am a woman, a feminist, a mother, and a passionate entrepreneur. I don’t just stand for equality – I have crashed the glass ceiling in every aspect of my life. I get extremely angry when I come across articles that insist there are gender differences that extend beyond physiology. I am fortunate to have had female role models who taught me through their own examples that I can accomplish absolutely anything I desire.
Over the years, I have hired outstanding women – educated, intelligent and highly articulate. Yet, I am exhausted. I have become profoundly tired of being a therapist and a babysitter, of being drawn into passive-aggressive mental games and into constantly questioning my own worth as a manager. I have had several women who quit to stay home to “figure out what to do next”. No, not to stay home and care for children, but to mooch of a husband or a boyfriend while soul searching (aka: taking a language class or learning a new inapplicable skill that could be acquired after work). Incidentally, I have not had a single male employee quit with no plan in mind.
I have had women cry in team meetings, come to my office to ask me if I still like them and create melodrama over the side of the office their desk was being placed. I am simply incapable of verbalizing enough appreciation to female employees to satiate their need for it for at least a week’s worth of work. Here is one example to explain. My receptionist was resigning and, while in tears, she told me that although she was passionate about our brand and loved the job, she could not overcome the fact that I did not thank her for her work. It really made me stop in my tracks and so I asked for an example. “Remember when I bought the pictures with butterflies to hang in the front? And you just came and said ‘thank you’? That is a perfect example!” – “Wait”, I said, “So, I did thank you then?” – “Yes! But you did not elaborate on what exactly you liked about them! Why didn’t you?” She had bought them with the company credit card and I actually did not like them at all, but I digress.
I have developed a different approach for offering constructive criticism to male and female employees. When I have something to say to one of the men, I just say it! I don’t think it through – I simply spit it out, we have a brief discussion and we move on. They even frequently thank me for the feedback! Not so fast with my female staff. I plan, I prepare, I think, I run it through my business partner and then I think again. I start with a lot of positive feedback before I feel that I have cushioned my one small negative comment sufficiently, yet it is rarely enough. We talk forever, dissect every little piece of it, and then come back to the topic time and time again in the future. And I also have to confirm that I still like them – again and again, and again.
I am also yet to have a single male employee come to my office to give me dirt on a co-worker or share an awkward gossip-like story. My female employees though? Every. single. one.
When I opened my company, I was excited for many reasons. One of them was wanting to make it an amazing place for women to build their careers. After all, we were two women, both mothers with very small children, opening a company in a very competitive industry. I was going to celebrate the achievements of my female hires, encourage them to find their voices, celebrate their pregnancies and year-long maternity leaves, be understanding and accommodating when they would have to juggle work/daycare/school schedules. Yet, I had no idea that the problems women faced in their workplace were often far removed from the typical inequalities feminism continues to address. It is not men who sabotage women and stump their career growth – it is women themselves!
What is at the root of the problem? Lack of confidence? Wrong upbringing? What am I not seeing? Is there something else I should be doing as a manager? I welcome your comments, as I secretly continue placing the resumes of female applicants into the “call later” folder.
The post was written by a guest blogger but the veracity of every aspect of the story has been verified by Blogger Clarissa.
WARNING: People in the past 2 hours I have had to Spam 63 comments from losers who tried to inform me that “men and women are psychologically / emotionally, etc. different.” Once again, anybody who embarrasses him or herself by chirping idiotically “yes, men and women are different” will be banned outright. This will be my small investment into sparing these losers further public embarrassment. Stop wasting your time, such comments are not going through on my blog.
Clarissa's Blog 
Clarissa,
All hell is about to descend upon you, and your blog, even thought you didn’t write this article. You have my sympathy. If our world has become a reflection of Facebook then there is no room on the wall for truth, but only generic, positive affirmations, and selfies.
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Ok, let’s not get too dramatic here. 🙂
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I do not work in a leadership position but I do find your post intriguing. Thank you for sharing.
Would you happen to have a rough estimate of the number women that you have hired in the past? Also, do you have similar estimates on the number of people you have that share your view and those who do not? (Not counting the people in the comments). There is a possibility that it could be a small sample bias.
It could be an interesting exercise to have someone black out the names of all applicants on their resumes and simply number them. Then review them yourself and see how many of the applicants you liked were male versus female. It would help in identifying if you have personal feelings that are coming in to professional hiring.
Your position is indeed difficult. It seems to me that there are three factors at play here. First is the dissatisfaction (or energy drain?) of having to deal with emotional management. Second is your belief in equality for women. Third is the success of your company. There are probably other factors but – correct me if I am wrong – these seem to be the major ones. In particular, the first is conflicting with the second and third.
If you indeed feel that the desire of not wanting to hire women is in conflict with your stance on equality, you might need a different perspective. You have already made it clear that if you could have a better solution you would gladly take it. In my mind, not wanting to hire women is not the same as never going to hire women. Let us take gender out of the problem. If we say you do not want to hire employees that require heavy emotional management then its not controversial.
You are in a small company, you do not have the resources to heavily invest in experienced human resource personnel. If, for now, you are being harsher to women applicants reduces stress and leaves time to focus company growth, then it is a correct choice (even if it is not the best one). You will eventually come across a resume from a female candidate who fits your needs. You are doing your male staff a favor by exposing them to women who have reached a certain level of maturity. Atleast, for myself, emotionally mature female role models and female peers have been an important influence.
If a shift in perspective is not satisfactory then perhaps you should think about offloading the problem. A buffer between you and your less mature hires. It might be worth the investment on training trusted and mature staff in emotional management and putting them in team lead roles. This will give you some space. The problem might not be as bad when it is distributed a bit. You might even want to see if you can afford a dedicated HR person to deal with some issues. If they still come to you, just defer it to their team leads or hr. If they say they are not comfortable, investigate that reason first, if its not good enough just tell them they need to learn to trust their supervisor.
You might also consider reading deeper into behavioural interviews. Some one might have designed questions to identify the emotional regulation caliber of an applicant. You could reduce risk from those. You could also simply put your experiences into behavioural questions. Ask them “How often do you require feedback?”, “Say if you feel insecure about your fellow employees judging you, how do you deal with it?”. If you do it to both male and female applicants then it is fair.
You could also hire people on temporary contracts and if they are keepers then keep them. This has the cost of constantly having to retrain people though.
You should still be wary of the fact that you are cutting off a great deal of capable job seekers. You said you hired “outstanding women”. So it seems that their ability to produce is not lacking. Its fine to have a stronger filter if you may have enough capable male applicants. Once the company starts growing faster you will not be able to afford that filter. Most likely you will have dedicated staff for it and a buffer of junior managers that have more time to deal with emotional management.
Frankly, your choice (feeling? belief?) is unappetizing. I personally think it is a problem that should be given some attention. Spending some time periodically (perhaps weekly or bi-monthly?) to resolve the problem is important. In my mind, you are already doing this now by engaging in active discussion. What you are doing is enough for now. You have a solution and you are spending some time on it but you are saving a time for your company, family and success. As long as you are actively seeking the solution, you will find it eventually.
In summary, if your feminism is in conflict with personal happiness and company growth, then you should think deeply if you are even being anti-feminist as opposed to being more strict. If you can not find a resolution or if it is not the cause then you might want to buffer it out to someone else. You could try to improve hiring practices, but you can only know soo much about a person. Specifically, the skill of self-regulating emotions may be even more difficult to identify. Your current choice of being harsh but it is not wrong and you doing good for your company, your life and your beliefs by actively looking for a better solution. Your problem is that you do not want to hire emotionally unstable people. Perhaps you should take gender out of the equation and simply look for identifiers of emotional stability.
There are two books I would recommend. They are not related to feminism but I feel they would be very useful to your position and predicament. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking fast and slow is the first. It speaks of our biases, heuristics and weaknesses in thinking rationally. Charles Duhigg’s “Power of Habit” is the second. It speaks of habbits and willpower. The first might help you develop techniques to identify if your feminism is creating bias in your decisions. The second might help you identify the good habits in candidates that yield emotional stability.
I hope you will write a follow-up to this experience of exposing your thoughts. Even more so if you find a better solution. Thank you once again for sharing.
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A very interesting comment. Thank you!!
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What is it that your company does because I feel that has a lot to do with the people you attract to work there.
What are your feelings about the woman you formed the company with?
As for what you are experiencing, the men may not gossip to you at work but I would wager a large sum of money that they are saying something. Today alone I’ve seen 3 men angrily talking in our private irc channel about how inept the manager of the team is.
Just because it’s not seen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
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I’m not entrepreneur, but what people do privately is a lot less disruptive than what they bring to the workplace. I mean, everybody watches porn in private. But it’s a whole different thing if people start doing it at work, right?
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Good to know you are mature enough to understand you are a boss, therefore people will hate you and talk behind your back because of it.
But then, why care? Are they being disruptive? Punish them and go on.
If you are good with your weights and measures while punishing your employees, you won’t have a lot of hassle from it. (though you will have some.)
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You know what your problem is?
You are exactly like them!
Not because you are also a woman, but because you are, just like them.
For once, you think women need safe spaces and help to grow, but when it’s up to you and the thing you aspired too do wasn’t like in your dreams, you backed off!
You also decided to be more gentle to your female workers and then complained when they behaved in a spoiled manner, expecting more and more from you, leaving you stepping on eggs.
Don’t stop hiring women, just stop treating them like the spoiled brat you believe yourself to be, and treating them with the care your believe you deserve.
Treat women just like men and you will have women who are as reliable as men.
Some women won’t be able to get through it, but you are not their parents and are not responsible for how they were raised.
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There are some valid suggestions in your comment but they drown in assumptions.
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I think one of the main reasons is the hormones levels, not the gender per se. Please give me links to the science articles prooving the opposite if I’m wrong.
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But more important is upbringing and self-development. Angry men and huffish women are those who follow their worst nature instincts.
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So you are from Russia, eh? Are you ashamed of your country?
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The links are in the post.
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“No, not to stay home and care for children, but to mooch of a husband or a boyfriend while soul searching … . Incidentally, I have not had a single male employee quit with no plan in mind.”
Given that men and women are not essentially different, this might seem to be the issue. Women have options that men don’t. In our society it is still the case that a man *must* work, *must* bring home the bacon. If I *could* simply make a life mooching of another, I probably would. Especially if that other were convinced I was doing them a favour by doing so.
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I have quit a job with no plan in mind, but I’m a rather high earner, so I tend to have quite a bit of coasting room in my bank account when I’ve done that.
-jcr
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Out of curiosity, what did you do when you quit (and why did you)?
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Oh BTW, a tip for people doing hiring: shuffle all the resumes, and toss half of them in the bin. That gets rid of the unlucky people.
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Brilliant! 🙂 🙂
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I can’t take credit – this was a “Top Tip!” in Viz magazine.
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Hahaha! How about a follow up post: My firm is flourishing due to our unique approach of hiring traders. We weed out the unlucky ones from the onset. 😉
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I’d advise you to look into MBTI. It’s a psychology test for determining different personalities. From what you say, you’ve had problems with women because of certain things that people with their personalities do. And women in general tend towards those personalities (ESFJ, ISFJ). On the other hand, men tend towards other more pragmatic personalities. That is not to say there aren’t pragmatic women, but you have to know how to recognize them. Seriously research a bit of that and you’ll be surprised how much can you know from a person with just a few questions. It’ll help you choose better employees.
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I am not familiar with MBTI but I have done DISC and was profoundly disappointed with the result. Perhaps the one you recommend is different – I am skeptical but will look into it.
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MBTI is fun but it’s quite superficial. I wouldn’t expect any profound insights based on it.
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Actually, any “S” type would be pragmatic and any “N” type has their head in the clouds.
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MBTI is based on Jungian pschology, whose investigative techniques were from the fine old 19th century school of “make up something that sounds good”. The Judging/Perceiving and Intuitive/Sensate axes are about the flow of “libido” in a person’s psyche. Myers-Briggs added Thinking/Felling and Introvert/Extrovert onto that and there you go.
It’s probably the second most widely used personality typology. The most widely used, of course, is astrological sign.
PS – whatever happened to the “Enneagram”?
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I think that you need to establish better boundaries with your employees. They are not your friend, and they need to know that.
It sounds like your interactions with employees are what is bad. You do need to praise employees, and if you have a yearly performance review, for a new employee, yes they are going to ask questions because they don’t REMEMBER WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Monthly/bi monthly, quarterly, even twice a year would be better.
You also seem to have several employees who are insecure about their performance. This is a type of hostile work environment. You need to ask the question “why do my female employees feel like their work is unappreciated?” Why do they feel like they have no direction and therefore do not know how they are doing?
If they are asking for more feedback, then they don’t understand your feedback. If you create an environment where women don’t feel comfortable, and you have more than 15 employees, I’m afraid of an EEO case!
If i were you, I’d do something very simple. A comment box. Leave it outside your office, have employees anonymously drop comments into it. Then you can address them at a staff meeting.
Also, have some sort of rating scale to bring in. With numbers. Don’t just have a spoken review, because first of all this takes FOREVER. Second of all, when people see (Visually) a bunch of positives mixed in with one negative, they feel better! It’s more efficient, less time consuming, and avoids those multiple questions things. After they read over their review (like “efficiency”, ect) then you can add comments on how they can improve their ratings in those categories. This focuses on their future, rather than on past negatives, which makes people re-focus.
Personally, it sounds to me like you have hired a bunch of women who can’t behave professionally.
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I’ve worked with a lot of women in many different companies, and I have seen very little of the behavior you describe. I wonder if it tends to happen more when women are supervised by women, or if it may be related to the proportion of women in a given organization?
Among other employers, I’ve been an engineer at Apple, and worked with female colleagues who were both engineers and managers. It may just be that Apple is a place where you really have to produce good work all the time, and that leaves little time for drama.
As a manager, I can’t imagine what I would do if a subordinate came to me with gossip about another subordinate of mine. I’ve handled my share of complaints and personality conflicts, but this kind of high school nonsense would have me looking for a replacement.
-jcr
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You are right – we need to enforce the culture of excellence where the focus is on producing quality work
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“It is not men who sabotage women and stump their career growth – it is women themselves!”
Heresy!
-jcr
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We’ll see you treat the women differently from men … You say so your self … With the men you are a strict manager … They do something wrong you tell them and that’s the end of it… You should treat females the same … Your spending to much time trying to be thier friend and the more you give the more they want… If you took the time to boost males ego like you do the women am sure they would hit on you or act in ways that wouldn’t be opproprite to you… You see the sad truth is women are treated different in the work place because they expected it… If you want equal rights you must carry equal responsibility including the lack of aid and understanding that men’s gets
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The part about boosting egos rings true to me – I wonder if my male employees would indeed exhibit different behaviors if I consistently tried to sugarcoat my feedback and ‘boost their egos’ as you say.
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I highly doubt that every man is a productive, amazing worker and all of the female workers do is gossip or cry. First, I think you first of all need to realize that men and women are socialized differently so that men hide emotion and women are taught to show emotion constantly. Second, people react to a situation based on how it’s presented. If you make a big deal out of giving criticism to a woman, she’s going to be more likely to react like it’s a big deal. And third, maybe you just need a better hiring process. There are plenty of women just as productive and professional as the productive/professional men you already know about. You should probably change your hiring to weed out the women who aren’t professional instead of just barring a gender.
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“First, I think you first of all need to realize that men and women are socialized differently so that men hide emotion and women are taught to show emotion constantly.”
– Truer words were never spoken.
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I didn’t say that all men were productive and that all women did was cry. I referred to specific behaviors that were challenging to manage.
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I’m sure one of my biggest difficulties in life has been even theoretically understanding contemporary Western gender roles. I do not understand them experientially, but the whole theory is hard, too.
Crying, for instance, is something new to me. I think I could enjoy crying if it is over something important. Maybe it’s a great thing to do.
But social crying, to manipulate an issue in one’s favour, would be deeply shameful.
So then, where are the ethics relating to others crying in some difficult or tense situation? Where does one draw the line between normal and understandable and manipulative and distortive behavior?
Ah. Why can’t we see what is in front of our noses?
Men and women (of an Americans sort) and I are very different!
CHIRP!
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Weird. I’m a female manager of a creative team in digital publishing and over the years I’ve consistently found my female employees were more assertive, more focused on solving problems, worked longer hours and put up with lower salaries than men. At times when I’ve been a manager in businesses with big overall revenue/culture problems, I noticed the men were faster to refuse to put up with poor treatment or shitty projects, and more frequently quit (or were fired — not by me).
I have always refused to engage in workplace gossip from my team. I prefer to work with people who will be honest and speak openly. If someone has an issue we have it out in front of everyone. A couple of my female employees have hated this approach, and felt it was embarrassing or shaming (not that I use insulting language but they didn’t like having a disagreement in front of everyone else). Generally I think my team knows I think office gossip is beyond boring. I’ve missed out on some juicy stories and a few times not listening to gossip means I’ve been taken advantage of my a shady employee, but I refuse to act on hearsay or tolerate back-seat drivers so I have to rely on my own observations.
I don’t think I treat men and women differently in any way, but I do have different ways of relating and communicating with each team member based on their personalities. I’ve worked on teams were the majority were women and also as the only woman on the team.
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I supervised a team within a company in the past and did not have any of the problems I am experiencing now. Interestingly the only two female entrepreneurs who commented on this post have echoed my experience. I am wondering if I should explore the issue further with other female business owners.
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Greetings, Clarissa.
The root of the problem is psychological.
It is not women that you are after, rather personality types.
It is simply that the proliferation of certain types are higher.
The kind that requires constant emotional positive feedback (ESFJ, id est sales/PR people), snitch, stockpile dirt, elbows and tramples anyone standing in their way (ENTJ, id est politicians) et cetera are the ones you encountered and wish to avoid as a manager.
I am uncertain of the legality of it (this is discrimination, afterall), but you could draft a small personal questionnaire to attempt and ascertain the MBTI of your potential candidates to filter out the undesirable types.
(http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp has a basic one, although rough it is adequately decent as far as these online tests go.)
Best of luck.
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1. How to deal with the problem.
2. How to make the problem not occur in the first place.
Or, as a famous psychiatrist once wrote:
1. Most of my patients only want to learn how to be a better patient.
2. Very few actually want to get well.
I think Clarissa wants to focus on Point 2. Most of the comments in this thread seem to be directed to Point 1. I think Clarissa wants to discuss “what is causing the situation”, rather than “here is how to best handle the situation”.
I’m a first-time reader, just passing through. I have never before read any of the posters here, including the hostess. I do think this would make for a fascinating academic research study, if it was constructed properly. Design a questionaire built around the questions Entrepreneur has and give it to a sufficient sample size of women managers in 30 different countries. But obviously they must be countries that employ women. Without specifying what the researcher is studying, ask the managers: 1) “Which of these behaviours do you have to manage in your workspace?” 2) “For a specific behavior they have to manage in their workspace, which sex seems to engage in that behavior the most?”. 3) “How much time must you spend to deal with a behavior when a female engages in it? When a male engages in it?” And: 4) “In what industry is your company located?” We could then sort by behavior, industry, and sex.
If the research is properly designed and administered, I think the results would be fascinating.
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@Entrepreneur” “I agree that a more formal environment is going to curb the unwanted behaviours.”
But that is “how to deal with the behaviors”. The question Clarissa has asked is “what is causing the behaviors to exist in the first place”. Simply dealing with the behaviors will not give us any insight into why the behaviors exist in the first place. So, much less interesting intellectually and academically.
Bottom line – you have said that you must manage the behaviors of men and women at your company differently. Regardless of whether you “solve” the women problem at your company, the question still remains “why must you ‘solve’ something with women that you don’t have to ‘solve’ with men?”. What is the cause of that, and can that cause be eliminated?
Surely someone somewhere is already working on finding an answer.
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This is exactly the discussion I was hoping to have – why do adults require someone else to be responsible for managing their behaviours? When I was an employee, all I wanted was a friendly approachable boss who would let me focus on my work. I did not expect her to set up boundaries to ensure that I did not waste her time. I simply focused on my work. However, from reading hundreds of comments suggesting that setting of the boundaries is my direct responsibility, I am realizing that people crave being managed (both genders, according to the comments. Letting people be and creating a relaxing friendly company culture is actually a disfavor. A very interesting revelation!
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Bosses shape the atmosphere they. If you allow people to gossip with you and don’t just flat out tell them to stop they’ll continue to do it.
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What made you think I partook in these discussions and did not cut them short immediately? I was looking to analyze ‘why’ my female employees felt the need to try to initiate that type of bonding with me, but I never said I participated in it.
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Here’s my take on this. I didn’t read all the comments, not even a large share of them. So if this has been written before and you’re still around reading this, take it as a sign that different people have come to the same conclusion.
1) Your problems with women quitting seemingly on a whim while the men are sticking around are most likely due to different expectations, both coming from them and directed at them. Coming from them because plenty of women (at least surveys support that assumption) expect a greater sense of fulfillment from their job, which trumps getting a high salary. Furthermore, expectations directed against them don’t help either, since they aren’t expected to work as a rule – all in all, being willing to retire from the labor force altogether in order to raise a family is a very valid choice for a woman which doesn’t affect her value in a negative way, neither socially nor romantically (well… I’ve heard that life choice sarcastically being dubbed “heroine emergency exit”, but this was by no means a majority position).
Men, however, are (and probably always will be) still supposed to earn enough money to support a family – whether they already have one or if they intend to do so at some point. It not only affects their living standard, but also anything else – not being able to get a date, for example, works wonders as incentive in finding and equally important not quitting a job. For the same reasons men also can’t simply “opt out” of the workforce without more severe repercussions as easily – the kind of career woman that theoretically *could* support a family with a stay-at-home dad still tends to look out for someone her equal, with exceptions being few and far between. If you live in a world where your value as a human being in general and your persectives concerning life, love and the pursuit of happiness are very, very closely tied to having a monthly paycheck (preferably a large one), you stop having too much second thoughts about a job being fun, fulfilling or allowing for an awesome work-life-balance.
2) The workplace attitude of your female employees is also most likely due to different expectations, in this case directed at you as a person. My guess is that you, in your desire to establish an atmosphere of trust and a positive work environment where women can thrive, probably created a misleading image of yourself which made them perceive you as a friend/big sister/maternal figure/whatever, in other words: Someone they can open up to, someone they have a connection on a personal level with, someone they’re somehow in cahoots with. So when they had personal issues, felt unappreciated, or wanted to bring a colleague’s perceived faults to your attention, they thought that talking to you was the right way to go – perhaps they trusted you, but more importantly they most likely thought that *you* trusted *them*. Or perhaps you were a role model for them of how to successfully lead a company as a woman and they thought that they, in your place, would of course feel totally obliged to treat their absolutely reasonable requests with the uttermost respect and after giving them some thought, would come around to their conclusion, so they expected you to relate to them but at the same time blinded out that you have x other employees with a similar mindset (unfortunately, that’s how people are…). Had there been more professional distance instead, they probably would have swallowed it up.
To be truthful, I am not in the “men and women are psychologically totally and absolutely alike” camp, yet I had and still have female colleagues and can’t say that women tend to make ineffectual employees and yet have to see one display that kind of behavior at work you described here. But that you didn’t have the same problems with men may because they weren’t as prone to perceive you as a cool big sis and therefore didn’t have any special expectations (and tend to have less of them in general, see (1) ). If you are competent and your business is going well, they probably respect you as a professional, if you manage to make people get things done without breathing down their necks, they probably respect you as a boss; and in that case odds are that in some other forum or commentary about female superiors, they would be (or actually are) in the “I don’t know what you have against working for a woman, I’m doing great”-camp.
3) Leaves the last point. You’re probably not as good as hiring as you should be. Which isn’t a shame (heck, I would totally suck at it), that’s what HR departments are for. You, however, seemed to attract persons who apparently took your leadership style as an invitation to get touchy-feely, and this is something you might want to avoid.
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I’m floored. I’m a woman and a relatively new manager. I could have written this post verbatim (save for the butterflies – WTF!)
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Thank you for your courage to speak up after having read the comments. 🙂 What do you think is at the root of the problem?
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Reminds me of a story I read about a woman who was describing the same behavior after hiring women only. I don’t think that might happen everywhere and I still don’t have an opinion on the matter but this is the second paper of that kind that I read about women at work.
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I think it’s the type of women you hire. Sometimes certain questions need to be ask during the interview process. The way people speak, answer questions and even body language says a lot to what may be in store ifyou choose a certain person. I don’t think it’s a matter of hiring women is a problem for you, it’s a matter of what kind of people you are letting in. While business is still male dominated, many times when women are in a position of power where they can effect change and enforce policy we look to mold and shape other women in our likeness I guess to “even out the playing field”. But there is so much more that “meets the eye” aside from experience when considering a candidate for a position–male or female. While reading this blog article, I still felt that the voice of this story was still putting women at a disadvantage compared to men, although you claim to be a feminist. You praise your male employees for their “maturity” and ability to act professionally at work, while setting the clock back to the 1960s and feeling like you need to treat women like the men did during that era, because “she might be menstruating”. You need to treat them as you would treat them as you would any other employee. Everyone needs to be disciplined equally without fear of backlash. I treat everyone equally and as adults; if you can not handle “constructive criticism”, then this is not the career for you. The behaviors you have outlined in this blog aren’t characteristics I would necessarily deem qualities only women possess. These behaviors I feel are that of someone who may not have been developed fully emotionally and professionally. You have to take into consideration that this current generation is the most sensitive and attention deprived generation to date; and that could be an affect of many reasons. So before considering women as the problem to your imbalanced work environment, you should consider what kind of people you’re taking in and if your treating your employees with equality; because what I have gathered from this article, is that you don’t.
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Through my 30 years of consulting services on 4 continents, I’ve had the chance to work with very different people. I’ve worked with engineers, fashion designers, doctors, administrators, bankers, even ballet dancers.
Yes, there are difficult men and women. I’ve worked with great, highly productive, very smart women. One of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met was a woman who was mathematician.
But there’s one major difference I’ve noticed, systematically: even women in technical fields were almost never willing to do overtime, work late evenings, nights or weekends, no matter how urgent a project was, whereas men never hesitated to do so.
I do see major differences in the constraints on men and women: as the author noticed, women can and do quit work without a plan, as they can just “leech” off a man – husband or boyfriend – whereas the reverse is hardly ever possible.
Women know this – they experience from early childhood on that they will get help with everything, if they just ask for it. They also will be taken care of and protected.
Boys on the other hand learn quickly that they are on their own: they have to learn to fight to defend themselves, to earn money to buy what they want, to earn money to invite girls out, to buy them stuff etc.
Men just know that they will be expected to buy stuff for their girlfriend or wife, whether she has her own income or not. A very large part of a man’s income will go towards the women in his life. Couldn’t a man just say “No, we are equals, you pay for your own stuff”? Sure. If he never wants another date… or get a divorce.
Now all of the above issues at work is what men have to put up with at home: the melodrama, the demands to be thanked for everything, the inability to handle criticism, the tears and mood swings… as boyfriend and husband, you go through that all the time!
And having had girl friends from different cultures, I can confirm that it is really universal. There’s no substantial difference between European, American, Latin American or Russian women – certain attitudes remain absolutely the same.
So thank you for finally admitting that even women see it and have a hard time dealing with certain forms of behavior from other women. It is a validation. It’s not us men doing something wrong…. 😉
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I’ll say this– being a business owner is very hard and stressful. As a consequence, most business owners I know deal with this stress by creating scapegoats within their company– somebody they always blame for their stresses and problems. They will complain about their lazy employees and annoying customers. Doctors complain about their nurses. Lawyers complain about their clients and paralegals. “Entrepreneur” has her own scapegoats, in this case her female employees. I don’t think this says anything about women employees in general, just about how “Entrepreneur” deals with the stresses of having a business and the need to place the blame on someone.
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I happen to love my work, which has thankfully translated into my business prospering at a consistent growth rate. I am fortunate to not lead a very stressful life and thus have no need to create scapegoats. I wrote this tongue-in-cheek post to open up a discussion on a sensitive topic – as simple as that.
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Instead of saying that men and women are different — which I feel is on a par with the myth about racial differences in intelligence — how about saying simply that people are different? The best subordinate I’ve ever had was female; the worst was also female. The best (and she won a company award for her management skills as a rookie) was a native German who wrote the best, clearest emails I’ve ever seen. She kept her feelings in check, left her home life at home, and epitomized precision in her work.
My daugher is a restaurant general manager (the youngest to achieve that rank in the major chain in which she started). Her specialty became turning around underperforming stores. From talking with her, its clear that she ran into some of the same problem children that the blogger met. One “poor dear” only showed up for work 3 times in a 30-day period and had her mother calling in for her the rest of the time. The solution is to fire them, and replace them with people with the right work ethic. Interestingly, the people she hired came from very different social backgrounds than the people she fired. She hired athletes, minorities and others with the right attitude. The terminations tended to be spoiled brats from moderately affluent to affluent families.
A person I used to know at a major consulting firm had the same comment about recent grads from Ivy League and similar schools. While some are brilliant, there are a lot more who are simply obnoxious. To paraphrase what this person said, these recent college grads want to tell our clients how to run their companies before they can even find the bathroom in this place.
What we have may not be a gender issue. It might be a social class issue.
My question to the blogger is: What is it about your company or your recruiting process that collects job applications who are emotionally needy?
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“Instead of saying that men and women are different — which I feel is on a par with the myth about racial differences in intelligence — how about saying simply that people are different?”
– Intelligent commenters exist! yay! 🙂
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Just curious what actions you have taken to set higher standards and expectations (and hold everyone accountable to same).
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“When I opened my company, I was excited for many reasons. One of them was wanting to make it an amazing place for women to build their careers. After all, we were two women, both mothers with very small children, opening a company in a very competitive industry. I was going to celebrate the achievements of my female hires, encourage them to find their voices, celebrate their pregnancies and year-long maternity leaves, be understanding and accommodating when they would have to juggle work/daycare/school schedules.”
^ Here’s the problem. The business “model” of the company includes(ed) deference to the needs of women. I’m sure that if such was not overtly stated in the workplace, it was apparent in the climate. The women employees expect(ed) that their (perceived) needes will be met. The men are happy to have a job. Solution: Get down to BUSINESS and leave women’s rights/needs to the feminests.
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Are you illiterate? The post’s author said she is a feminist from the start.
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Exactly – to my point. Agendas of deference will have no positive affect in managing employees.
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The price you pay is getting rid of people who are dragging everybody down. Seems well worth it. You need to coach people on appropriate business behavior. If they refuse to change, they are let go.
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How do you own and manage a company without knowing how you must lead and coach your employees??
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You silly, silly thing. if you knew how much money Entrepreneur makes in a year, you’d keel over. I’m sure you don’t make even 10% of what she does.
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Is that an answer? I don’t see how this money thing and questioning my income is relevant to the question of leading and coaching one’s employees (instead of bitching that one has to play therapist and babysitter).
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“I don’t see how this money thing and questioning my income is relevant to the question of leading and coaching one’s employees”
– Well, if you don’t understand what people are saying, maybe you should stay out of a discussion that is so superior to what your intellect allows you to follow. It is beyond offensive that you would dare to address somebody so far ahead of you in this rude and pissy voice. On my blog, you speak quietly, politely, and ask for permission to address me. If behaving like a normal human being is too hard for you, consider yourself dismissed.
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I lead, I coach and I let people go when necessary. What made you assume otherwise? My business grows at an annual rate close to 40%, so I am not questioning my abilities as a business owner. I was looking for a deeper analysis of certain workplace behaviours and patterns. It has been a worthwhile discussion indeed.
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You wrote that you play therapist and babysitter.
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Yes – and in order to explore it, one must begin by critically examining oneself because that is the only thing you can actually control. Seems to me like everyone who is suggesting that step (in so many words) is being attacked by the blog owner and sometimes, you.
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One more thing – It sounds like you are full of assumptions and prejudices about women who do not want to tolerate (or can no longer tolerate) the culture. You assume they’re leaching off someone else. You assume the worst intentions. You need to raise your expectations and coach to those. Your company – YOUR problem.
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I didn’t assume – it was a factual statement. All of them are still not working and are living of their husbands / boyfriends. Why do you assume so much?
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Apologies. Wrong phrase. Judgmental is probably more on point here. (See your word “leeching”.) This so reminds me of the business owners who get offensively defensive when Tabatha or Gordon Ramsey or that guy who does bar rescue come to their businesses to help them. The buck stops with you. Contemplating discrimination as a solution to this issue is a passive-aggressive bandaid to the deeper issue (you having the cojones to draw a line in the sand and set standards). This includes things like refusing to entertain gossip, crying jags, abuse, etc.
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You criticize me for making an assumption by actually making one yourself and then you change it to accusing me of being judgmental by being judgmental yourself. There is a lot of projection going on and I hope this post has caused people to look inward as much as they hope I do.
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Putting any gender differences aside for a second, I think there’s a larger issue at play which is, in business we tend to adopt a masculine-centric value system, and we expect everyone to operate in that system. Business and society value masculine traits far more than feminine. If we see people in general as possessing a spectrum of masculine/feminine qualities, those people taking on the more feminine roles in society (nurturer, caretaker, peacemaker, teacher) don’t get compensated as much.as their masculine counterparts. To this day we judge those people expressing their feminine side as more weak. The averages tend to follow the gender lines because this is what society teaches us at an early age. Men should be masculine and woman should be feminine.
So, back to your business. Someone cried in a meeting? Why is that bad? The question that I think should be asked is how can I utilize all the qualities of my employees to build a more balanced culture and healthy workplace.
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“Business and society value masculine traits far more than feminine. If we see people in general as possessing a spectrum of masculine/feminine qualities, those people taking on the more feminine roles in society (nurturer, caretaker, peacemaker, teacher) ”
– There are no masculine or feminine traits or roles. You should be ashamed of yourself for posting such silly ideas with such a pompous air.
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Entrepreneur,
I’ve read most of the comments (and replies) so I’ve decided not to reply to any particular comment in order to focus on the big picture. There’s been heated discussion of biological, gender, “hard-wiring”, or whatever you want to call it. In any case, the cultural programming and legal biases are by far the more dominant factors in the behavioral differences you have observed between your male and female employees (in general).
Just to give you an idea of my background, I’ve been in supervisory and managerial positions for the past 25 years. Of course, I’ve observed many behaviors and learned from many mistakes over the years. Further, I’ve developed a reputation for getting the most productivity out of the most difficult employees. In fact, these difficult employees often get assigned to me after many exasperated supervisors given up on these particular employees.
I believe your biggest problems are CLEARLY setting expectations and letting your employees know how their particular jobs contribute to your company’s bottom line. I have always made it clear that drama just for the sake of drama will NOT be tolerated. In other words, I’m not going to let an employee who throws a temper-tantrum get their way in order to keep the peace. Once people realize throwing fits and hysterical crying won’t advance their cause, the bad behavior will eventually stop.
Unfortunately with women in particular, cultural programming and HR biases have taught them that this type of bad behavior will enable them to get their way. Therefore, you must be more meticulous in screening process for new hires and be sure to clearly articulate your expectations on day one, especially with women. The biggest expectation that needs to be set is the fact that hurt feelings don’t automatically correlate with workplace harassment or a hostile work environment.
Given what I’ve said up to this point, I’m sure there will be those accusing me of misogyny in droves. Go ahead and blast away! But, let me say that my track record with women employees performing well and advancing to positions of greater responsibility is impeccable. Additionally, I’ve never gotten in trouble with HR in 25 years. I believe it’s due to the women who succeeded under my tutelage being my biggest allies when other women have tried to get me in trouble just because they didn’t get their way.
It’s imperative every one of your employees understands how their particular job contributes to your company’s bottom line. This allows your employees to understand exactly how their contributions are meaningful. Additionally, you need to be very specific when thanking an employee (or group of employees) for a job well done. For example, if one of your employees does an outstanding job of hosting a meeting for potential clients, you can talk about their performance leading to a new 10 million dollar revenue source.
I could write tons more about this and would be glad to discuss if you’d like to know more. I hope you find this helpful.
Jimbeaux
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I employ over a hundred of women. And a lot of men. This tear-soaked post reminded me an anti-feminist cliche rather than a real-life account, yet I don’t doubt its truthfulness.
It is not the problem of hiring women. It is the problem of who hires them. I am afraid I am getting a slightly higher share of men walking out without a plan, than women. Because I am lax with men: me and my partners don’t grill men when we hire then as much as we grill women. That’s something we have to work on, but men can me also much better at hiding their true intentions during an interview. The net effect is that weI choose women who are motivated, strong, clever, and are interested in the growth prospects that we can promise them.
A part of the problem is in you, in how you select people who work for and with you. You want to empower them?! No, you need to hire people who can empower your business first. All the feminist sentiments should not even figure in your motivation, because if they do you admit that women are different, weaker, and in need of empowering that supercedes the needs of your own company. They are not.
THe other part of the problem is also you. The way you lead your people. I am sorry to say it, but you don’t seem to be a leader. A leader would tell her employees the moment she realises they’re gossiping that this is unacceptable behaviour that will not be tolerated. I am doing it, and I don’t have the gossip problem. It is impossible to stop people gossiping, of course, but it is possible to make them ashamed of this to become known. It is a big part of my corporate culture that all things are said right there, right there, right in the face, and regardless of the rank. A leader is not spending hours cushioning an employee to deliver a negative comment. A leader knows that negative comments are not offensive if presented in a way that the employee will realise a growth/change opportunity. I can give hundreds of examples, but I am sure you can sign up for a leadership course and it would be much better, as it would be rooted in your culture.
I am proud of all the women who work for me. And because I am truly proud I don’t treat them or view them differently to men. They don’t deserve to be treated like weaker beings in need of empoweing. And no, I am not sympathetic to modern feminism.
I hope you’d change your attitude to yourself, and then to women.
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You read far too literally and made a slew of assumptions projecting more than responding to the text.
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Is this the way you yourself take criticism? )
Regardless of how literally I read, or how far I project, I am one of the few commenters who actually own a profitable business employing a statistically valid sample of women.
So, there is value in my projections. If you don’t want to utilise it, it’s your EBITDA, not mine ))
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No, this is how I give honest feedback. Should I have cushioned it?
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I’ve missed almost all of this and my internet access is very spotty (understatement) but I’ll throw this out there.
I think it might be a question of socialization (but not in the way that is usually meant).
Roughly, quickly and simplistically:
Males have traditionally (in the US) been socialized to regard work as…. work. Something you do to make the rest of your life possible. A means to an end as it were.
From what I can tell in my mighty European Fortress of Indifference females (in the US) have for some time been socialized to regard work as some kind of emotional fulfillment.
An adult who expects self-realization and emotional fulfillment from a job might well react the way the author here describes.
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I’m noticing that people do turn work into a place where they search for emotional fulfillment. In academia, nobody remembers about the gender roles, so everybody does this equally. And, boy, is it annoying or what! I don’t understand this emotional attachment to work because all of my emotional life happens at home.
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There’s a point to add to my earlier comment questioning hiring processes. Managers are presumably good at organization and supervision; they are not psychologists. (That may explain why everytime an unhappy employee shows up at work with a gun, it’s always such a surprise.) Should a company have someone inhouse or on retainer who has these skills? Given the incidence of emotional issues that affect work, that might be an interesting idea.
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“That may explain why everytime an unhappy employee shows up at work with a gun, it’s always such a surprise.”
– Good point. 🙂 Thank you, you made me laugh, which I thought was impossible in this thread.
“Should a company have someone inhouse or on retainer who has these skills? Given the incidence of emotional issues that affect work, that might be an interesting idea.”
– You are right, this is a very interesting idea. Thank you for these great contributions to the discussion!
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I’ll add the article doesn’t match my experience but I mostly worked with American women who didn’t regard work as some kind of magic fairy prince. Either they needed to work to put food on the table or they worked because they loathed the alternative (stay at homeness).
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Bingo! Work is indeed regarded as a magic fairy prince & it seems to be the manager’s responsibility to educate on what work actually means and what it stands for.
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I am a man nearing 40 and have worked in many environments. I can say that this all sounds familiar. I will say that if someone tries to cushion a tiny negative comment with lots of positive comments in the workplace, it can seem rather irritating, very insincere, even insulting, and can give the sense that they don’t trust me. However, then I would usually just tell the person, “it’s okay, you can cut to the chase with me.” My, what a relief when they stop that non-sense!
Do most women find that irritating too? That may explain why they keep coming back to the negative points. However, I don’t know if that would mean that they prefer cutting to the chase either. Thoughts, people???
If I get good answers to this, it may help in future relationships, lol!
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My mother and I ran two franchises together for three years.
We stopped hiring female employees, (with exceptions to mothers,) After a year and a half.
Why? Because unless their responsible for something, we concluded they have no sense of accountability. We’d watch our female, (even the good ones,) completely disrupt productivity and unit cohesion for essentially Reality-TV styled drama.
They’d miss shifts, deliberately sabotage operations and provide piss poor customer service while consistently using their dislike of another female co-worker for their justification.
We thought it was their age. We raised wages to hire older more-experienced employees. Same Behavior. We just got fed up and developed a bias for women.
To be fair, there were plenty of male employees who sucked and also got fired.
I’ll also admit we had organizational short-comings that certainly didn’t prevent that
behavior.
Now as a college graduate working for a large firm, I see the same behavior between female employees in the corporate office. Very unproductive.
Millennial Entitlement Issues? Socialization? Gender differences? Chicks be Cray-Cray?
Society gives women a free pass for their behavior, that’s why.
So now I’m sexist pig commenting on a fem-bot’s blog.
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i am a female and i enjoyed reading your article ;))) interestingly agrees, who care.
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A brave and honest post, Clarissa. However it is not clear to me whether you want a debate or a resolution about it. The common denominator is you, Clarissa. There are ways to let others in safely whilst creating and maintaining healthy boundaries All the best 🙂
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“outstanding women – educated, intelligent and highly articulate. Yet, I am exhausted. I have become profoundly tired of being a therapist and a babysitter, of being drawn into passive-aggressive mental games”
How are they outstanding or intelligent if they lack maturity or intelligence or responsibility or honesty or honor?
“anybody who embarrasses him or herself by chirping idiotically “yes, men and women are different” will be banned outright.”
Now I really need to ask you, why don’t you even want to consider that men and women have, on average, physical differences?
Sure, you can do whatever you want, just as can I or any man or woman, but are there really no differences be it individually or on average?
I would really like to hear your thoughts on that.
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“Sure, you can do whatever you want, just as can I or any man or woman, but are there really no differences be it individually or on average?”
– It was said from the start that men and women have physiological differences. What I banned from the blog is the uneducated and stupid opinion that the differences in the way men and women behave are due to anything but the differences in socialization. I have blond hair and blue eyes. You might have dark eyes and no hair. But if you and I behave, think, emote, relate to others differently that is not due to the physiological differences in our hair and eye color. Right?
I see value in your comment but I want to reiterate that anybody who doesn’t manage to process the scholarly data I provided in the links and realize that the media have fed them a load of baloney about “hard-wired gender differences” is and will be banned outright.
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Ok, hair and eye color maybe not, but don’t hormones affect our behavior?
And don’t our genetic differences also affect brain development one way or another, even if slightly? (our brains vary slightly from individual to individual, so why not from group to group?)
Again, I’d like to know your thoughts.
Also, the links you provided link to your own blog posts where you criticize the language used in one abstract of one study or give your own opinions on the matter without backing them up with actual studies supporting your points. You don’t scientifically peer-review or debunk any of those studies.
Do you have links to studies that either confirm behavioral similarities across gender divides (in a statistically significant way) or that debunk studies that suggest behavioral differences?
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“Ok, hair and eye color maybe not, but don’t hormones affect our behavior?”
– Only if we choose to allow them to. And that choice comes from socialization.
“Also, the links you provided link to your own blog posts where you criticize the language used in one abstract of one study or give your own opinions on the matter without backing them up with actual studies supporting your points. You don’t scientifically peer-review or debunk any of those studies.”
– I have linked to a book where a scientist reviewed thousands of scholarly studies all of which have arrived at the same conclusion: no hard-wired gender differences exist.
“Do you have links to studies that either confirm behavioral similarities across gender divides”
– Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender. There is a mountain of scholarship in that book, thousands of studies.
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How do you choose not to be affected by a chemical?
And can you cite a few papers used as reference in those books?
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“And can you cite a few papers used as reference in those books?”
– You want me to rewrite a bestseller? For what purpose?
“How do you choose not to be affected by a chemical?”
– Let me quote a post by our resident philosopher / martial artist: “As to the question of how one can ever possibly resist being affected by a chemical — I put this very question itself down to an extreme deficiency in life experience.
For instance, if one wants to stay awake later than usual, one has a cup of coffee, containing caffeine, which counteracts any chemicals telling your mind to drop off.
And there are other ways to avoid being affected by chemicals, in terms of the openings one gives them in one’s mind. For instance if one has a high intake of pornography, one will probably be more susceptible to the influx of certain hormonal compounds.
But it is generally other people, one’s authorities, rather than oneself that make sure one is not always and constantly susceptible to the away of random bodily chemical. For instance a corporal shouting in your face will make you much more alert in future.
One can also, for instance, switch off certain reflexive tendencies. If I drop a cup of hot coffee on my foot, I need not storm in and abuse the boss. Most people who keep their jobs have learned to curtail their natural tendensies somewhat.”
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just give the reference/citation to the papers that debunk behavioral dimorphism.
And see my response to him/her.
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For the fifth time: http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326583318&sr=8-1
Your “response” is of zero interest. You are here to learn, nothing else.
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You link to an entire book, which I can’t afford btw. I’m asking you to reference one of the citations that book provides (i.e. does the book cite any scientific papers or research?)
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Yes, there are dozens of pages of bibliography. I will not be retyping them here because that’s insane. Use a library!
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not even one citation?
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Aboud, F. E., & Doyle, A.-B. (1996). Parental and peer influences on children’s racial attitudes. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 20(3/4), 371–383. Adams, G., Garcia, D. M., Purdie-Vaughns, V., & Steele, C. M. (2006). The detrimental effects of a suggestion of sexism in an instruction situation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(5), 602–615. Adams, S., Kuebli, J., Boyle, P. A., & Fivush, R. (1995). Gender differences in parent-child conversations about past emotions: A longitudinal investigation. Sex Roles, 33(5/6), 309–323. Alexander, G. M. (2003). An evolutionary perspective of sex-typed toy preferences: Pink, blue, and the brain. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32(1), 7–14. Alexander, G. M., & Hines, M. (2002). Sex differences in response to children’s toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23(6), 467–479. Alexander, G. M., Wilcox, T., & Woods, R. (2009). Sex differences in infants’ visual interest in toys. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(3), 427–433. Allen, K. (2009, July 26). Could crash spell doom for City’s boys’ club? The Observer, 3. Ambady, N., Shih, M., Kim, A., & Pittinsky, T. L. (2001). Stereotype susceptibility in children: Effects of identity activation on quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 12(5), 385–390. Ames, D. R., & Kammrath, L. K. (2004). Mind-reading and metacognition: Narcissism, not actual competence, predicts self-estimated ability. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 28(3), 187–209. Anderson, D., & Hamilton, M. (2005). Gender role stereotyping of parents in children’s picture books: The invisible father. Sex Roles, 52(3/4), 145–151. Andreescu, T., Gallian, J. A., Kane, J. M., & Mertz, J. E. (2008). Cross-cultural analysis of students with exceptional talent in mathematical problem solving. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 55(10), 1248–1260. Archer, J., & Coyne, S. M. (2005). An integrated review of indirect, relational, and social aggression. Personality & Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 212–230. Aronson, J., Lustina, M. J., Good, C., Keough, K., Steele, C. M., & Brown, J. (1999). When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in stereotype threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35(1), 29–46. Arthur, A. E., Bigler, R. S., Liben, L. S., Gelman, S. A., & Ruble, D. N. (2008). Gender stereotyping and prejudice in young children: A developmental intergroup perspective. In S. R. Levy & M. Killen (eds.), Intergroup attitudes and relations in childhood through adulthood (pp. 66–86). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ashby, J. S., Ryan, M. K., & Haslam, S. A. (2007, March). Legal work and the glass cliff: Evidence that women are preferentially selected to lead problematic cases. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 775–793. Aubrey, J. S., & Harrison, K. (2004). The gender-role content of children’s favorite television programs and its links to their gender-related perceptions. Media Psychology, 6(2), 111–146. Auyeung, B., Baron-Cohen, S., Ashwin, E., Knickmeyer, R., Taylor, K., & Hackett, G. (2009). Fetal testosterone and autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology, 100, 1–22.
This is just one page of the bibliography.
Will you now stop spamming?
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Here is a good quote from the book:
“It’s not hard to see just how useful and adaptable a dynamic sense of self can be.29 As the pivot through which the social context—which includes the minds of others—alters self-perception, a changing social self can help to ensure that we are wearing the right psychological hat for every situation. As we’ve begun to see, this change in the self-concept can then have effects for behavior, a phenomenon we’ll look at more closely in the chapters that follow. With the right social identity for the occasion or the companion, this malleability and sensitivity to the social world helps us to fit ourselves into, as well as better perform, our current social role. No doubt the female self and the male self can be as useful as any other social identity in the right circumstances. But flexible, context-sensitive, and useful is not the same as “hardwired.” And, when we take a closer look at the gender gap in empathizing, we find that what is being chalked up to hardwiring on closer inspection starts to look more like the sensitive tuning of the self to the expectations lurking in the social context.”
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (pp. 12-13). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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Some more: “As it turns out, doubt is well-justified, for both affective and cognitive empathy. In an important review of gender differences in affective empathy, psychologists Nancy Eisenberg and Randy Lennon found that the female empathic advantage becomes vanishingly smaller as it becomes less and less obvious that it is something to do with empathy that is being assessed.7 (So, gender differences were greatest on tests in which it was very clear what was being measured, that is, on self-report scales. Smaller differences were seen when the purpose of the testing was less obvious. And no gender difference was found for studies using unobtrusive physiological or facial/gestural measures as an index of empathy.) In other words, women and men may differ not so much in actual empathy but in “how empathetic they would like to appear to others (and, perhaps, to themselves),” as Eisenberg put it to Schaffer.8”
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 16). Norton. Kindle Edition.
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 16). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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Ickes suggested that this small change reminds women that they should be empathic, and therefore increases their motivation on the task. He concludes from his lab’s research that “[a]lthough women, on average, do not appear to have more empathic ability than men, there is compelling evidence that women will display greater accuracy than men when their empathic motivation is engaged by situational cues that remind them that they, as women, are expected to excel at empathy-related tasks.”22 If so, then if the experimental situation can instead be designed to motivate men, then their empathic performance should also improve. This is exactly what researchers are beginning to find. Kristi Klein and Sara Hodges used an empathic accuracy test in which participants watched a video of a woman talking about her failure to get a high enough score on an exam to get into the graduate school she wanted to attend.23 When the feminine nature of the empathic accuracy test was highlighted by asking participants for sympathy ratings before the empathic accuracy test, women scored significantly better than men. But a second group of women and men went through exactly the same procedure but with one vital difference: they were offered money for doing well. Specifically, they earned $2 for every correct answer. This financial incentive leveled the performance of women and men, showing that when it literally “pays to understand” male insensitivity is curiously easily overcome. You can also improve men’s performance by inviting them to see a greater social value in empathizing ability.
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (pp. 20-21). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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Just these tiny quotes alone explain how these non-existent “gender differences” are manufactured and how the gullible, the stupid and the vapid buy into them.
Will I be spared the illiterate recounting of ignorant “men and women are different” fairy-tales now?
People, start reading books. I’ve seen so much stupidity and ignorance in this thread that I now am not surprised why all of you have pathetic, boring marriages and gulp down anti-depressives like candy. It’s because you are stupid!
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More quotes: “Clearly, one’s performance on cognitive empathy tasks involves a combination of motivation and ability. If social expectations can create a motivation gap, could they also be responsible for an ability gap? Women on average score better than men on another social sensitivity test called the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT). Here, participants watch and hear people acting out unscripted interactions. From the actors’ verbal and nonverbal behavior, the viewers have to try to work out the nuances of their relationships. For example, from watching a scene between two men and a child, the participant has to work out which man is the child’s father. Recently, psychologists Anne Koenig and Alice Eagly used the IPT to explore the idea that the gender stereotype of women’s superior social skills might furnish women with an unfair advantage.25 To one group, the test was accurately described as a measure of social sensitivity, or “how well people accurately understand the communication of others and the ability to use subtle nonverbal cues in everyday conversations.” Before the participant took the test, the experimenter casually mentioned that “We’ve been using this test for a couple of quarters now. It’s 15 questions long and, not surprisingly, men do worse than women.” In this group, the men did indeed do slightly worse than the women. But to a second group of participants, the test was described in a more gender-neutral way. It was presented as a measure of complex information processing, or “how well people process different kinds of information accurately.” In this group, the men performed just as well as the women. The take-home message of these studies is that we can’t separate people’s empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation. The salience of cultural expectations about gender and empathizing interacts with a mind that knows to which gender it belongs.”
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 22). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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And more. Read, don’t chirp!
“Research into group-based emotions investigates the idea that when “people are thinking of themselves in terms of a particular group membership—whenever a social rather than personal identity is salient—people’s emotional experiences and reports will be shaped and determined by that group membership.”27 In a recent study, researchers found that subtly priming a social identity led people to experience group-based emotions that were different from those they experienced when thinking of themselves as an individual. Is it possible that women become more tenderhearted when thinking of themselves as women or mothers rather than as individuals or, say, saleswomen?”
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (pp. 23-24). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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“In other words, when we are not thinking of ourselves as “male” or “female,” our judgments are the same, and women and men alike are sensitive to the influence of social distance that, rightly or wrongly, pushes moral judgments in one direction or another along the care-justice continuum. But moral reasoning is also sensitive to another social factor—the salience of gender. Thus, the authors argue that “it is the salience of gender and gender-related norms, rather than gender per se, that lead to differences between women and men.”
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 25). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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What spamming? We’re having a discussion.
“Alexander, G. M. (2003). An evolutionary perspective of sex-typed toy preferences: Pink, blue, and the brain.”
This paper you cited actually suggests there are innate biological/genetic differences between boys and girls that affect their behavior and choices differently.
“Large sex differences in children’s toy preferences are attributed to gender group identification and social learning. The proposal outlined in this paper is that contemporary conceptual categories of “masculine” or “feminine” toys are also influenced by evolved perceptual categories of male-preferred and female-preferred objects. Research on children exposed prenatally to atypical levels of androgens and research on typically developing infants suggest sex-dimorphic preferences exist for object features, such as movement or color/form. The evolution and neurobiology of mammalian visual processing–and recent findings on sex-dimorphic toy preferences in nonhuman primates–suggest further that an innate bias for processing object movement or color/form may contribute to behaviors with differential adaptive significance for males and females. In this way, preferences for objects such as toys may indicate a biological preparedness for a “masculine” or “feminine” gender role-one that develops more fully as early perceptual preferences are coupled with object experiences imposed by contemporary gender socialization.”
How does this support your position? The paper you cited seems to blatantly contradict you.
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OK, you’ve spammed long enough. Are you even reading the quotes I so kindly provide? Cordelia Fine’s book deconstructs and disproves this particular study.
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just one, the one you find most relevant.
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“How do you choose not to be affected by a chemical?”
Maybe it would help people to realize that there are lots of different chemicals running through their bodies, not just one or two.
As to the question of how one can ever possibly resist being affected by a chemical — I put this very question itself down to an extreme deficiency in life experience.
For instance, if one wants to stay awake later than usual, one has a cup of coffee, containing caffeine, which counteracts any chemicals telling your mind to drop off.
And there are other ways to avoid being affected by chemicals, in terms of the openings one gives them in one’s mind. For instance if one has a high intake of pornography, one will probably be more susceptible to the influx of certain hormonal compounds.
But it is generally other people, one’s authorities, rather than oneself that make sure one is not always and constantly susceptible to the away of random bodily chemical. For instance a corporal shouting in your face will make you much more alert in future.
One can also, for instance, switch off certain reflexive tendencies. If I drop a cup of hot coffee on my foot, I need not storm in and abuse the boss. Most people who keep their jobs have learned to curtail their natural tendendies somewhat.
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Sorry a couple of typos in the second last paragraph. It should have read:
But it is generally other people, one’s authorities, rather than oneself that make sure one is not always and constantly susceptible to the sway of random bodily chemicals. For instance a corporal shouting in your face will make you much more alert in future.
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Who in their right mind abuses someone else for an accident they caused to themselves?
And caffeine will keep you awake and your heart beating faster whether you want it to or not, which is my point.
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“And caffeine will keep you awake and your heart beating faster whether you want it to or not, which is my point.”
– Only if you are an extremely primitive person. Don’t tell me you can’t even control how caffeine acts upon you. It takes all of 3 minutes to learn.
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I guess I must be rather primitive then. Please tell me how to choose how caffeine acts upon me.
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I have a feeling you are now spamming the thread just for the fun of it. If you are such a slave to caffeine, then don’t ingest it. There have been 513 comments in this thread. Do you really believe educating you on the basics of managing your own body is the goal of this thread?
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So you can’t and now just try to deflect. I am disappointed in you.
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“So you can’t and now just try to deflect. I am disappointed in you.”
– What are you, 3? Grow up. Nobody cares about your emotions here.
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I’m just trying to have a conversation. Why must you be so hostile?
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“I’m just trying to have a conversation. Why must you be so hostile?”
– Because you are a very bad conversationalist. Boring, repetitive, rigid, unintelligent.
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“Thus, the differences between the sexes stem from the mind and not the brain. It is a person’s perception of their own gender and their conformity to societal gender roles that distinguishes men from women. In other words, ‘it is the salience of gender and gender-related norms, rather than gender per se, that lead to differences between women and men’. This is particularly proven to be the case when analysing studies used to prove the so-called superiority of men when it comes to visuo-spatial ability. In a study carried out by Sharps, Price and Williams (1994), involving the objective assessment of male and female performance in mental rotation tasks, just by presenting the task as either masculine or feminine had a significant effect on the results. Associating the ability to mentally rotate objects with typically creative, feminine activities decreased the men’s performance. In contrast, associating the task with typically mechanical, masculine activities had the reverse effect. As such, the findings of this study represent the multiple external variables that need to be taken into account when studying gender differences. Most importantly, when the social context of the experiment was manipulated so too was the seemingly innate visuo-spatial gender determined ability gap. This suggests that what is deemed as ‘one of the largest and most consistent sex differences’ is not down to a person’s ‘sex’ but rather their awareness of these gender roles and their desire to fulfil them. ”
http://www.tutorhunt.com/resource/9489/
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WHO CARES? THE EFFECT OF GENDER AND CONTEXT ON THE SELF AND MORAL REASONING
Michelle K. Ryan, Barbara David, Katherine J. Reynolds
Psychology of Women Quarterly (Impact Factor: 2.12). 08/2004; 28(3):246 – 255. DOI:10.1111/j.1471-6402.2004.00142.x
ABSTRACT Theorists suggest that gender differences in moral reasoning are due to differences in the self-concept, with women feeling connected to others and using a care approach, whereas men feel separate from others and adopt a justice approach. Using a self-categorization analysis, the current research suggests that the nature of the self–other relationship, rather than gender, predicts moral reasoning. Study 1 found moral reasoning to be dependent upon the social distance between the self and others, with a care-based approach more likely when interacting with a friend than a stranger. Study 2 suggests that when individuals see others as ingroup members they are more likely to utilize care-based moral reasoning than when others are seen as outgroup members. Further, traditional gender differences in moral reasoning were found only when gender was made salient. These studies suggest that both the self and moral reasoning are better conceptualized as fluid and context dependent.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/227758856_WHO_CARES_THE_EFFECT_OF_GENDER_AND_CONTEXT_ON_THE_SELF_AND_MORAL_REASONING
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A lot of people buy into an ideology that puts them into anything but their right minds. Like men beating up women and saying, “But my hormones did that.” Or Women conniving anb backstabbing. “Ah, it’s not my fault I got your heart beating faster and now you hate me. I’m just a normal, hormonal, out-of-my-mind thing.”
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I got bored with the “hormonal fellow” and banned him, by the way.
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EXcellent., He needed someone to pummel some sense into him. Parents should have done it a long time ago.
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So, is the problem women, or is the problem a society/culture (/species?) that has built it’s business model and professional practices on a archetypal male M.O.?
If the opposite had happened, i.e., human–or at least western–society had developed around a matriarchal zeitgeist, would men be struggling to find their way in a world that doesn’t appreciate the attributes evolution has wired into the male “operating system”?
Personally, I suspect the “problem” is less about the author’s female employees and more about her having “bought into” the male way of doing things and experiencing a sense of cognitive dissonance because of it.
That said, I’m just a high school dropout making minimum wage, plus tips, I’m the service industry so, I very likely could be wrong…
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In my experience the gossip and the emotionalism, and the self-centeredness, are male and not female traits.
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There are no male or female traits. There are roles people take on depending on the situation. When it’s done consciously and for a purpose, it’s all good but when a role begins to play a person, that’s sad..
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http://www.boredpanda.com/tally-husky-dog-raised-by-cats/
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In a society this sexist, there tend to be, though — albeit matizados by other factors. I still say men on the whole are the more irrational decision makers, the most emotion-ruled, the ones who get away the most easily with immaturity – incompetence.
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I would like to thank everyone who participated in this discussion. New comments are now echoing what has been said already so it is time to wrap it up.
This post was meant to be uncomfortable to provoke an honest discussion. So, whether you agreed, disagreed, gave insightful suggestions or projected your own issues onto it, you shed immense light onto the current state of feminism, as well as the expectations both men and women have of their workplace. This was profound from the standpoint of a social experiment and I agree with the commenter who said there could be a fascinating study done to explore the issues on a global level.
Thank you again and stay tuned for the blog owner’s summary and conclusions.
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Ah! I found that link I was looking for. Someone named “Samantha Brick” had a similar experience:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1168182/Catfights-handbags-tears-toilets-When-producer-launched-women-TV-company-thought-shed-kissed-goodbye-conflict-.html
She even comes to the same conclusion:
“And while I stand by my initial reason for excluding male employees – because they have an easy ride in TV – if I were to do it again, I’d definitely employ men. In fact, I’d probably employ only men.”
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The writer does not say that all women have problems, just that some women have problems that men never have, and she is sick and tired of those problems. I agree with her on that. I have worked in such an environment, and it’s very difficult, because you (me) are the one who gets blamed for being “insensitive” because you do not take their “feelings” into account sufficiently, when dealing with such women. Like, in the post, for not raving how beautiful the butterflies were.
However I know from personal experience that not all work environments are like this. I conjecture that something about the writer’s company’s hiring practices and management style encourages those problematic women to work there, and allows their problems to get out of hand. I suspect that the management style which abets this is one which confuses professional and personal environments. Enterpreneur confirms this was the case for her company: <> This was also the case for the company where I had these issues, also founded by a woman.
To conclude: Enterpreneur needs to rethink her hiring practices and management style rather than stop hiring women altogether. For example, I agree with the earlier comment that “it is critical to effectively address problematic workers at an early stage.” And celebrate employees’ personal achievements during off-work time, not on the job!
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“Recently, Christine Logel and her colleagues found evidence that the mind struggles to suppress the negative stereotype-based thoughts activated by the situation.21 She found that women interrupted just as they began a challenging math test were actually slower than men to respond to words like illogical, intuitive, and irrational. This was a sign that worried thoughts about being femininely illogical, intuitive, and irrational were being suppressed. A quirk of suppressed thoughts is that, afterward, they become hyperaccessible. Sure enough, women tested immediately after the test was over were especially fast at responding to the stereotypical words. (By contrast, no such turmoil appeared to be taking place in the minds of the men.) Although you might think that suppressing negative stereotypical thoughts would help women, it doesn’t. Logel found that the more women suppressed irrational-woman concepts, the worse they performed. The reason for this seems to be because suppressing unwanted thoughts and anxieties uses up mental resources that could be put to better use elsewhere. To perform well in a demanding mental task you have to remain focused. This involves keeping accessible the information you need for your computations, as well as keeping out of consciousness anything that is irrelevant or distracting. This mental housekeeping is the duty of what is known as working memory or executive control. Most people facing a difficult and important intellectual challenge are likely to have a few intrusive self-doubts and anxieties. But as we’ve seen, people performing under stereotype threat have more. This places an extra load on working memory—to the detriment of the cognitive feat you are trying to achieve.22
Fine, Cordelia (2011-08-08). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 33). Norton. Kindle Edition.
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Entrepreneur, is there a particular age cohort that you’re hiring from? Because it sounds like you’re describing stereotypical Millennial behavior.
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Excellent point. If you are being bombarded by sexist assumptions all the time, you will likely underperform.
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The following is written in 3rd person because it was my original response to my brother sending me this blog:
It seems to me that the author’s real issues are the way she perceives herself as a manager and her inability to set strong boundaries. She says that (because of her female employees) she is constantly questioning her worth as a manager. If she’s questioning her worth then that means on some (probably subconscious) level she doesn’t believe herself to be a worthy manager. If she already feels that way abt herself she will inevitably attract circumstances to her that reflect that back to her. Remember, she is the one doing the hiring, so she is picking the very same women she ends up having these issues with.
As for her boundaries, if she doesn’t want to hear about gossip, she needs to make that clear to her employees. She’s the boss! She either suffers from “too nice” syndrome or on some level she LIKES hearing the latest gossip. Maybe since she is insecure in her managing ability, getting the latest gossip makes her feel like she has a power card to play over her employees…
I have to say, it bothers me when people make their personal problems the result of other people’s actions. I guarantee that even if this woman got rid of all the women in her workplace she would STILL find herself complaining about these same things. The problem is not women, it’s her perception of herself. For some reason or another, she feels like she is not valuable enough to be a strong leader and set clear boundaries. And so she constantly chooses people, to employ, that reinforce her beliefs about herself.
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Thank you, but the issue has been resolved. See here: https://clarissasblog.com/2014/05/18/i-dont-want-to-hire-women-conclusions-i/
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I am sorry for you, you are hiring wrong women. It seems you understand men more.
Im working mainly with men, and all of them are ghossiping, playing games behind your back, and they get offended. On a contrary, I am a woman, and I do work hard and I dont ask if manager likes me ( really this can happen???), I dont need constant confirmation that im noticed. I do cry at work for different reasons, but my manager never knows it, it doesnt affect my work – its natural release of negative energy.
Hearing all this from a woman is surprising. Do you want to say you never cried?? I will not believe it. Or you want to say that you were never offended by someone. or that you never had period of uncertainty and doubts. Sure you also had it. And yes, some people are weaker, some are stronger, but this does not depend on gender.
I wish you luck in hiring your next women. If you dont want to turn your company into men’s monastery.
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Thank you, but THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN RESOLVED.
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