An interesting bit of psychology on male & female bosses

[Emily Lake]

But being extra aggressive IS qualification

No it isn't. Most managers ought to be assertive. Putin is too aggressive, for example.

I am not talking about how it should be, I am talking about how it is. And if we are talking about CEOs, being an asshole is pretty much a requirement.

Well, then no problem. How it IS is that mostly men have leadership roles. How it IS is that women who display behavioral characteristics associated with leadership are disliked because those traits are inconsistent with the behaviors expected of women. But you know, that's just how it IS. Guess there's no point in this whole thread, now that you've identified how it IS, and you've decided we shouldn't bother talking about how it should be.

Should we women just hush up and let it go, seeing as that's how it IS? To quote April Ludgate "You're never going to land a beau with that domineering tone... "

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it's a problem with society you fix it by social means, not by making employers pretend the difference doesn't exist.

What are you on about?

When employers see the main qualification as having a penis and testicles, then that's a problem. The solution to the problem is when the employers learn to look at actual work product and actual qualifications which are not testicles and penises.

You are taking it on faith that there can be no biological or even social differences, that all differences are due to discrimination.

You claim to do science--apply those ideas to the situation instead of faith!

 

[Emily Lake]

I am not talking about how it should be, I am talking about how it is. And if we are talking about CEOs, being an asshole is pretty much a requirement.

I am saying men advance more because on average they are more aggressive. Aggression causes undue influence, manipulation, and achievment. Assertiveness and rational discussions don't.

Yeah - there's more to it than that. Men are rewarded for showing aggression. Women are punished for showing aggression. Women who are aggressive don't advance as well as men, and are often held back because of their aggression.

The behaviors that are associated with success and leadership are behaviors that are rewarded in men and punished in women.

 

[Emily Lake]

Men advance more on average because they are men.

The good ole boy club definitely helps, but isn't part of the problem of there not being enough women yet as well. As women advance in these fields, it'll be harder for them not to be selected for these positions. Progress takes time.

You're correct - it does take time and some small part of it is lag in career progress. But I don't think it's a justifiable factor.

Let's say that it's only inertia. Let's say that it's just the natural progression of time, and women entering the field haven't yet reached their career peaks. Okay. So... women finally got the right to vote in 1919. Let's very generously say that they started to receive equal treatment in work in 1964, with the passage of the equal opportunity act. So... let's say that the average age to enter the workforce is 20, and we're looking at 45 years of employment to retirement. Women entering the workforce under EOA would be retiring in 2009 - 9 years ago. So if there were no additional bias, we would have expected some degree of equalization to be apparent over the last 9 years - we'd expect to be seeing imperfect, but marginally equivalent levels of leadership and salary in the people who have retired over the last 9 years. And clearly we haven't. Even if we assumed a decade's worth of slow-moving inertia for women entering the workplace, we'd still expect to see much closer levels of leadership and career attainment for women - certainly much higher than the roughly 20% in congress and 5% in C-Suite level jobs throughout the US.

But it's even a little more dire than that - the average age for C-Suite executives is currently around 50 - that's 15 years prior to retirement age. So clearly there's something more than just timing involved. I think the good ole boy club has a lot more impact than they are credited with... and I think that social bias regarding the expected behavior of women makes up most of the rest of it.

But perhaps I'm biased!

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm not saying it affects only males, but that it disproportionately affects them.

And I'm saying that it is disproportionately diagnosed in males.

As we've all (hopefully) learned from the "epidemic" of autism in the US... rate of diagnosis is not the same as rate of incidence.

 

[Emily Lake]

If it's a problem with society you fix it by social means, not by making employers pretend the difference doesn't exist.

What are you on about?

When employers see the main qualification as having a penis and testicles, then that's a problem. The solution to the problem is when the employers learn to look at actual work product and actual qualifications which are not testicles and penises.

You are taking it on faith that there can be no biological or even social differences, that all differences are due to discrimination.

You claim to do science--apply those ideas to the situation instead of faith!

Bullshit. You appear to be relegating nearly all of the difference to biology, and substantially discounting the impact of social bias. Casting Toni's argument as a strawman so you can conveniently call foul as you light it on fire isn't good argumentation.

 

[barbos]

I am not talking about how it should be, I am talking about how it is. And if we are talking about CEOs, being an asshole is pretty much a requirement.

Well, then no problem. How it IS is that mostly men have leadership roles. How it IS is that women who display behavioral characteristics associated with leadership are disliked because those traits are inconsistent with the behaviors expected of women. But you know, that's just how it IS. Guess there's no point in this whole thread, now that you've identified how it IS, and you've decided we shouldn't bother talking about how it should be.

Should we women just hush up and let it go, seeing as that's how it IS? To quote April Ludgate "You're never going to land a beau with that domineering tone... "

No, you should demand total equality, for example serial killers industry, you should work on equality there too.

 

[barbos]

You are taking it on faith that there can be no biological or even social differences, that all differences are due to discrimination.

You claim to do science--apply those ideas to the situation instead of faith!

Bullshit. You appear to be relegating nearly all of the difference to biology, and substantially discounting the impact of social bias. Casting Toni's argument as a strawman so you can conveniently call foul as you light it on fire isn't good argumentation.

No, nobody ignores that. It's your ignoring of impact of thousands of years of social bias on biology and vice versa.
Men don't like women behaving like men, that's unfortunate but that's how evolutionary pressure has been structured for much of the human history. And women don't like men who behave like women. I blame Darwin and his goddamn godless theories.

 

[Toni]

You are taking it on faith that there can be no biological or even social differences, that all differences are due to discrimination.

You claim to do science--apply those ideas to the situation instead of faith!

Bullshit. You appear to be relegating nearly all of the difference to biology, and substantially discounting the impact of social bias. Casting Toni's argument as a strawman so you can conveniently call foul as you light it on fire isn't good argumentation.

Loren is especially fond of doing this to female posters. He also likes to claim that we are being emotional or religious. He's just using a different term here because I've called him out on using the others. Also, he doesn't read threads or links so he has no actual idea that I've posted a pretty main stream article that is pertinent to this discussion.

- - - Updated - - -

You are taking it on faith that there can be no biological or even social differences, that all differences are due to discrimination.

You claim to do science--apply those ideas to the situation instead of faith!

Bullshit. You appear to be relegating nearly all of the difference to biology, and substantially discounting the impact of social bias. Casting Toni's argument as a strawman so you can conveniently call foul as you light it on fire isn't good argumentation.

No, nobody ignores that. It's your ignoring of impact of thousands of years of social bias on biology and vice versa.
Men don't like women behaving like men, that's unfortunate but that's how evolutionary pressure has been structured for much of the human history. And women don't like men who behave like women. I blame Darwin and his goddamn godless theories.

I'd love to see some links to studies about the impact of social bias on biology. Can you share some?

 

[barbos]

I'd love to see some links to studies about the impact of social bias on biology. Can you share some?

Oh, the classic appeal to lack of links fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection

 

[Toni]

I'd love to see some links to studies about the impact of social bias on biology. Can you share some?

Oh, the classic appeal to lack of links fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection

Wow. A Wiki link!

I am not sure this one is relevant, though.

 

[barbos]

I'd love to see some links to studies about the impact of social bias on biology. Can you share some?

Oh, the classic appeal to lack of links fallacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection

Wow. A Wiki link!

I am not sure this one is relevant, though.

Oh, it's relevant all right, but I knew you would say that.

 

[Toni]

Wow. A Wiki link!

I am not sure this one is relevant, though.

Oh, it's relevant all right, but I knew you would say that.

Can you point out where it was? Your link came just before I was heading off to sleep and maybe I missed it. I'm being quite serious.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Lol, I actually called out my colleagues for this. We've been doing a substantial amount of planning lately, as our teams are in the midst of a lot of role transition and cultural change. My director is a white male, and my managerial colleagues are: 3 white males, 1 asian male, 2 white females (including me) and 1 indian female. Our roles are diverse, covering a spectrum of DBA and infrastructure management, system and enterprise architecture, data science, analysis, and reporting. I noticed that in all of our meetings, it was always one of the three women who was asked to take notes on the white board, or send out a summary, or something similar. I (not being a wilting violet as expected of my fragile gender) quite blatantly suggested that maybe one of the males in the room could take on that secretarial role for a change. The immediate response was "well, our handwriting is worse" to which I responded "then you clearly need more practice, don't you?". The end result was marginally satisfactory, although still not a win - now our office administrator attends our planning sessions in order to take notes. Our office administrator, of course, is female

I really think this story needs more attention and thought. There are a lot of facets to it. I don't know what a facet is, but I am sure they are there.

One interesting thing is the guy who says their handwriting sucks. What kind of thing is that to say? No, I mean, literally, what kind of thing is it? It isn't sarcastic, it isn't ironic, and it's not meant to be a friendly joke. It's more like saying "Fuck you, you do it." but with a smile. So, how do you classify such a statement? I am going to go with the term "indirect aggression." It's a way to get you to be upset, stomp your feet, and then do it, or to say, "what the fuck" out loud and then get in trouble, but without all the pre-planning because he has the privilege of a structure where the default of everything supports his continued position of non-work, non-taking notes. It's a manipulation.

Now, your response to his indirect aggression was assertive, but it could easily come across as bitchy. As I wrote above, he's put you in a position where your response will be judged--people will look for an outburst or emotion and magnify it because you're a woman. A guy could get away with saying "The fuck you say" and smirk. Because you know, guys are cool. If you are a woman and you say that, you're an inappropriate person with emotional stability problems or , worse, a third-wave feminist who hates men. So, you're being assertive, but because of the structure that is in place, you may come across as the aggressive one.

Other ladies in the situation or in the room at the time may not have responded because walking that fine line is tough.

Since I have been going on about assertiveness and aggression, I thought I'd point this out.

 

[barbos]

What about studies which found out that women prefer male bosses? How do you explain that?

 

[bilby]

What about studies which found out that women prefer male bosses? How do you explain that?

How could anyone even begin to address such a poorly defined question?

Which studies? Are people supposed to read your mind, or are you going to provide a reference or link to the study or studies that you are thinking of?

Given the information provided in your question, the most parsimonious explanation for those studies is that they are a figment of your imagination.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

What about studies which found out that women prefer male bosses? How do you explain that?

Evolution. People also generally prefer taller leaders. Also, evolution. Most of our evolution was about physical protection and our leaders ought to then be physically tough, tribesmen and hunters, Great hunters. For the last few thousands years we've generated better and bigger civilizations and so now we need diplomatically skilled leaders, emotionally intelligent, socially intelligent leaders. Women. Not aggressive.

 

[thebeave]

Lol, I actually called out my colleagues for this. We've been doing a substantial amount of planning lately, as our teams are in the midst of a lot of role transition and cultural change. My director is a white male, and my managerial colleagues are: 3 white males, 1 asian male, 2 white females (including me) and 1 indian female. Our roles are diverse, covering a spectrum of DBA and infrastructure management, system and enterprise architecture, data science, analysis, and reporting. I noticed that in all of our meetings, it was always one of the three women who was asked to take notes on the white board, or send out a summary, or something similar. I (not being a wilting violet as expected of my fragile gender) quite blatantly suggested that maybe one of the males in the room could take on that secretarial role for a change. The immediate response was "well, our handwriting is worse" to which I responded "then you clearly need more practice, don't you?". The end result was marginally satisfactory, although still not a win - now our office administrator attends our planning sessions in order to take notes. Our office administrator, of course, is female


Yeah, I've run across this too. And when challenged on it, I hear "oh well, their voices aren't as shrill..." or similar such crap.

3. We have one person who is a relatively new hire in my area. One day, one of his former co-workers from his previous work unit stopped by to say hi, ask how things were going. New guy was showing him around, telling him about what we do, etc. and introducing us to his old work buddy. New guy started to opine that he didn't know why I even bothered having a job since my husband had a nice job teaching at a university. Note: the new guy is nominally my subordinate.

Egads, that's not at all appropriate!

I agree with you about that taking of notes should be shared by all genders, regardless of handwriting (and I'll go out on a limb here and say women generally do have better handwriting than men). But it kinda works both ways, doesn't it? It's mostly the men that end up changing the water cooler bottle or moving big filing cabinets around or stamping out the occassional spider or mouse or assembling a new piece of office furniture.

 

[barbos]

What about studies which found out that women prefer male bosses? How do you explain that?

How could anyone even begin to address such a poorly defined question?

Which studies? Are people supposed to read your mind, or are you going to provide a reference or link to the study or studies that you are thinking of?

Given the information provided in your question, the most parsimonious explanation for those studies is that they are a figment of your imagination.

I provided more than enough information for the question. Yes, studies, yes they were mentioned and linked here multiple time. Your fake ignorance of them is indicative.

 

[barbos]

What about studies which found out that women prefer male bosses? How do you explain that?

Evolution. People also generally prefer taller leaders. Also, evolution. Most of our evolution was about physical protection and our leaders ought to then be physically tough, tribesmen and hunters, Great hunters. For the last few thousands years we've generated better and bigger civilizations and so now we need diplomatically skilled leaders, emotionally intelligent, socially intelligent leaders. Women. Not aggressive.

It does not address the question. Women for some reason just don't like women bosses. So much so that they themselves admit that during feminist (!!!) talks. I mean a man comes to feminist gathering and says. I have been a CEO and every time when I tried to promote a woman (deservedly) it caused problems with other women. And women comment "Oh yeah..." Men seem to be fine with female bosses, it's other women who hate that.
And another related study found that in general women (compared to men) can form tight bond with other females only if it's mother-daughter type of case. And now you want feminine type personality to be a CEO? I am sorry, but OP makes sense.