Gender equality

[Rapscallion]

Trying to marshal my thoughts on this one, so give me a little leeway?

I work for one of the most determinedly progressive companies in the UK. We don't just claim gender equality, but we practice it. We have female wagon drivers (eighteen ton vehicles), everyone starts in the warehouse picking orders, everyone has the same chance of jobs based on aptitude.

We also have an elected management committee. Part of the rules are such that we have to guarantee gender representation on the group - no fewer than two members of said committee can be male or female. What always happens is a race around the membership to encourage women to stand.

I've got no problems with equality of opportunity, but with that does there come a duty to take that opportunity? Use it or lose it? I don't want to feel like we're being tokenistic for the sake of keeping people happy, yet I don't want to exclude anyone.

Thoughts?

Rapscallion

[Evandril]

Personally, I feel if there is any sort of 'rule' in place about how much diversity is mandated...It's defeating the purpose. Remove the information from the applications, and let the people be chosen on merit...In a perfect world In actuality, having someone monitor the 'climate' of the office/job/ect, and having them investigate any complaints of discrimination fairly tends to put enough of a 'check' on the system that you can pick people by merit alone, and end up with a more 'fair' system than any one that uses non-relevant information to determine who does what. (age/sex/skin color/religion/ect)

[Boozy]

Frankly, that's not a very good rule if you're finding it difficult to get women to take those positions.

I would never support a kind of feminism that told women they had to take jobs they don't want. Feminism to me is about giving women choices.

More women than men currently choose to take time off of their careers to stay home and raise kids. Or they may continue to work while their kids are young, and avoid high-demand jobs that will cause them to spend more time away from home. That seems like a very rational choice; what parent wouldn't want to spend more time with their children if financially feasible? It's also a responsible choice; one shouldn't accept a position knowing they may be unable to fulfill the duties. My only concern is that men don't feel free to make the same choice. But that's an issue for another thread...

[Pedersen]

Actually, Boozy, I'm not so sure it is a different thread. Raps isn't just asking about how to make women take a job. He's asking about duty to take opportunity once it's presented.

So, if men were to be presented the opportunity to spend more time with their own kids, should they take it? And if they don't, are they simply forfeiting opportunity, or are they making choices that you might not agree with for whatever reason?

I'm still formulating my own thoughts on this, so don't have much else to contribute. I think, though, that the question is broader than you think.

[Rapscallion]

Frankly, that's not a very good rule if you're finding it difficult to get women to take those positions.

There's a body of thought (mine) that women are more sensible than men since they don't put themselves into that firing line so readily.

One guy did try to bring a proposal to a general meeting to remove that requirement, and was 'villified' (his own words) for daring to suggest this, and the villification was by the people who didn't bother to stand for the role.

What interests me as a concept now is whether or not there is a duty to stand up the same as another group when restrictions are lifted. The suffrage movement resulted in the deaths of a number of women. I'll admit that there are still 'boys clubs' around, but society is getting rid of this slowly. However, it risks making a mockery of sacrifice when a large swathe of women shrug and ignore the opportunity.

Am I seeing this wrong?

Rapscallion

[MannersMakethMan]

Seems to me like this is just as bad as years ago when women were told that they had to be nurses, teachers, or housewives. They were told then that they had a duty to do, and it looks to me like they're being told now that they have a duty to stand for committee on the grounds of equality.

All that can be done for true equality is for everyone to know that they musn't feel they can't stand just because of their gender etc. They may choose not to stand because they don't feel they know the role well enough, or because they don't have enough time, but as long as they all have an equal opportunity to do so, then it must surely be up to them whether they take up the chance.

Forcing them to take the job is to me just as bad as forcing them out of the job. Positive discrimination is still discrimination, and there's no hope of equality whilst it happens - it just builds up more resentment and opposition to what is otherwise a very reasonable viewpoint.

[DesignFox]

One guy did try to bring a proposal to a general meeting to remove that requirement, and was 'villified' (his own words) for daring to suggest this, and the villification was by the people who didn't bother to stand for the role.

Rapscallion

That kind of shit pisses me off. If you don't want the job in the first place, why villify someone for trying to remove a rule that doesn't apply to you, anyway?

If the women there don't want the job, then the restriction should be lifted, and those extra positions offered to the men who DO want the job.

I hate things like affirmative action. A rule like that smacks of the same kind of bias, and in my opinion seems to only add to the dissension rather than resolve it.

People should be judged on their merit. Not their gender. Not their race. Not their religion. There should be no quotas. It should simply be about who WANTS to do the job, and who CAN do the job BEST. Period.

There is nothing wrong with those women not wanting to do the job, but then they should shut the hell up about "not being represented" on the board.

/rant

[AFPheonix]

It's an interesting dilemma, in that it's nice to have a mix of characteristics on board for management to ensure different outlooks.
But it is also sexist in a way to save 2 spots for women just because they're women.
Could there be a different way to elect management that would make it easier to get good people into the committee?

[Pedersen]

But it is also sexist in a way to save 2 spots for women just because they're women.

Actually, something that most everybody seems to have missed so far is that the spots are not reserved for women. Rather, the makeup of the committee is such that either gender must have a minimum of two spots. To wit:

Part of the rules are such that we have to guarantee gender representation on the group - no fewer than two members of said committee can be male or female.

I asked Raps, and he told me that there are six members of the committee. The rules here ensure that, at worst, no more than four of the same gender can be on the committee.

The problem they have, though, is with getting sufficient women in their workplace to step up and fill those two slots. They don't have problems getting men to fill the remaining four.

It's not that anybody is forcing women to take these jobs. It's that, as a company, they've made a decision to ensure that viewpoints from both genders receive adequate representation on the committee. Fulfilling that decision is proving harder in practice because it seems that women do not want the management job.

It's an interesting conundrum. How would people feel if the situation were turned around, and his company were having issues getting two men to take those two slots, even though there are four women in the remaining slots?

On a much larger scale, the question becomes more relevant. Rights come with responsibilities and duties. Are the genders demanding equal rights, and then shirking the responsibilities that come with those rights? And I said "genders" there deliberately: Equal rights also means that men have equal rights to be homemakers, and I very much doubt that men are taking the responsibilities along with that particular right. I know I don't do enough of that myself.

[Flyndaran]

... Equal rights also means that men have equal rights to be homemakers, and I very much doubt that men are taking the responsibilities along with that particular right. I know I don't do enough of that myself.

The problem with that being one of employers not accepting males' right to care for children. Those men wanting such are seen as lazy and will catch even more nonsense than women wanting to spend actual time with their own children. Just try saying to someone that you're a house husband and watch the smiles and eyerolls. My lifemate would rather that I be a housebitch since we don't have kids, but whatever, eh?

I think that topic seques also into the one about giving parents more benefits than the childless.

[Gerrinson]

Personally, I find rules like that to be sexist, you can't enforce diversity, you can only encourage it. I've been in situations where someone took a role or position because it had to be a woman, even though the men who wanted it were far more competent and qualified. I don't complain that a woman got the job, I complain that an incompetent retard got the job. Woman =/= incompetent, same as Man =/= competent. But, you know, can't have women underrepresented.

This reminds me of a little post I was going to enter over on CS in Cursing Out Coworkers, where one of the women here in admin tried to create and enforce a 'No male employees can use the 3rd floor unisex bathroom' rule. Guess which floor the admin offices are on?

Well, I'll post that over there later if I think of it. Thanks for the entertaining read on my PM break. Nothing like a Fratching thread to get the mental juices flowing.

[lordlundar]

You know it's funny. People these days are not being hired for the reasons they should be. It used to be that they got hired because they knew the job, had the skills to do the job, and wanted the job. Now, none of these apply. One company in the states was found guilty of violation of discrimination and was forced to pay out to any black person that demanded reparations, whether they had any intent to work for the company or not.

Apparently, the whole concept is forget skill and enthusiasm, hire based on color, gender, and disability where the more off the perceived norm, the better. Should be amusing when a female Hispanic mute cries discrimination for not being grabbed off the street to work as a radio talk show host on her way to her job as a nurse. Maybe then people will realize just how far Political Correctness has gone and will start to change things. But then I doubt it.

[Seshat]

I have been in the IT field, and know many women in IT. All of these women have had to think about what position they want to take, regarding the 'woman in IT' thing.

(I don't know any man who's had to think about the male equivalent, though I know men who, having had it described to them, have chosen to think about the male equivalent.)

We had to think about:
* Do we want to make ourselves visible as role models for other women who might be interested in IT.
* Do we want to make ourselves available for interviews/university gender equality studies/'hey look it's a woman who knows computing'/high school 'opportunity' lectures? (We get plenty of invitations, especially if we've chosen to be visible.)
* Do we want to make a fuss when a client treats us as a secretary/receptionist?
* Do we want to make a fuss when a co-worker treats us as incapable of doing our jobs?
* How about if they harass us?
* How about if it's the boss?
* If we choose to make a fuss, how far do we want to take it? And do we want to let it get treated as a 'for all women' thing, or a 'just for me' thing?
* Do we want to make a fuss when (not if) we're deemed to have gotten our job because of our looks? How about 'because you're a woman'?
* How do we want to react when people make one of the horrible-and-false assumptions about feminism? (Such as the assumption that women actually WANT tokenism.)


It's a HELL of a lot easier to go ahead and be a nurse or a teacher, than to face all of those decisions. And that's just the decisions, not the actual discrimination - which we DO still get!


Some of us have decided to go ahead and face it all, and be a visible female-in-IT, and handle all the feminist stereotyping and 'you must be a man-hater' assumptions that tend to go with it. By being visible, the theory is that it will gradually change social attitudes/encourage girls who like programming or sysadmin work to go into it/generally be a good thing. Most of them aren't feminist-activist, they just go ahead and speak at conferences about such 'feminist' topics as the latest developments in TCP/IP*.
Others have decided it's enough to just quietly do their work and happen to be female.
Some have found the whole issue too damned hard, and left the field - not because of the programming/sysadmin side, but because they met one too many people who assumed they got the job because of their tits, one way or another.


* TCP/IP is the internet protocol, and not feminist at all. Which, as it happens, is precisely the point. They're being actively feminist by NOT being feminist/activist, but instead being highly visible & highly competent at their jobs, in exactly the same way as their male peers.


We've discussed the 'what is our duty' issue, and ended up deciding that our duty was to be ourselves. And for those of us for whom that included going out there and loudly proclaiming 'I'm bloody good at my job' and ignoring those who said otherwise - great. And for those who just wanted to quietly do the work - that's great too. And those who gave it a go and found it too hard - hey, no problems, you tried. That's great.

It isn't supposed to be hard to go into a field society deems you're the wrong gender for. But it is. And that applies to men as well as women. Some people can do it, some people thrive on it! And some people can't. You do what is truest to who you are, and that's all anyone has a right to expect of you.

IMO. YMMV.

[Gerrinson]

It's a HELL of a lot easier to go ahead and be a nurse or a teacher, than to face all of those decisions. And that's just the decisions, not the actual discrimination - which we DO still get!

I'd like to think that sort of discrimination issue is falling by the wayside in IT. It certainly has in everyplace I've worked (which is an admittedly small polling group.)

Most people I know will give anyone a chance to prove themselves competent. But, should you prove incompetent, we will then discriminate against getting any sort of help from you. But that is totally not gender based.

And, while I know it is in fact a form of discriminating, when I meet a competent woman in IT, my next thought is: Is she single?

Ditto for gamer chicks.

And double ditto for gamer IT chicks.

[Seshat]

And, while I know it is in fact a form of discriminating, when I meet a competent woman in IT, my next thought is: Is she single?

Ditto for gamer chicks.

And double ditto for gamer IT chicks.

And almost every gamer IT chick I know has been hit on so many times they've developed some sort of defence mechanism. It's not fair, and we know it's not fair.

It's also not fair to be unable to have a simple friendly conversation with a peer without having to watch your every move and comment and try not to 'lead them on' by (gasp) laughing at their jokes, or smiling because you're (ohmigod) having a good time.

*sigh*

No, I don't have a solution. Wish I did.