Monday, November 5, 2007

The Feminine Critique - New York Times

The Feminine Critique - New York Times:

"Respondents in the United States and England, for instance, listed “inspiring others” as a most important leadership quality, and then rated women as less adept at this than men. In Nordic countries, women were seen as perfectly inspirational, but it was “delegating” that was of higher value there, and women were not seen as good delegators."

"But Professor Glick also concedes that much of this data — like his 2000 study showing that women were penalized more than men when not perceived as being nice or having social skills — gives women absolutely no way to “fight back.” “Most of what we learn shows that the problem is with the perception, not with the woman,” he said, “and that it is not the problem of an individual, it’s a problem of a corporation.”

I wonder if this is true in engineering as well (women are penalized more harshly than men for showing anger).

And WHY was this in the style section?

2 comments:

  1. i agree with what i'm reading here. i think i've seen cases where women just have it tougher -- are they held to some weird higher standard or is it because we want to knock them down a peg? "we" being society and people who do this.. likely men and women? it'd be interesting to read more about unpacking what's going on, if anything.

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  2. I think it's definitely both men and women. We treat women and men differently and assume different things about them all over the place -- buying clothes, dating, raising children. What makes us think that we can erase all of these subtle biases and judgments when it comes to the workplace?

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