Unintentional gender discrimination by good people

Gender discrimination still exists. Most people would not disagree with that (Rush Limbaugh excepted.) But every once in a while I am surprised at where and how it turns up. I'm the CTO for a company, and last week I held a people review meeting with my managers.

As we were discussing various people, I noticed that a couple of female chemists were described, in their "things that need to be coached," as "bossy." As in "Janet is really good and gets her projects done on time, creative, but she can really come across as bossy in the lab."

I noticed that a guy in the same lab was described as "a real driver." But this was a good thing.

Everyone in the room nodded their heads in agreement on these (this was a discussion of about 120 people, FWIW, so a long couple of days.) So I asked them - why is Kelly "a driver" and Janet "bossy?" If Jane was a man, would we be describing her as a driver rather than bossy? And let's look at how we've described other women in the labs and whether we are doing the same thing.

All the managers looked kinda sheepish, and we realized we'd done this in a couple of ways to several of our female chemists and engineers. These are good people, good managers, normally very sensitive to such things. And, oh, one of them is a woman. And she did the same thing.

Yeah, gender discrimination exists, even among people who don't want to discriminate.

Cool story, bro.

Well, to be completely transparent, I initially found myself agreeing with the descriptors. It was only when we were talking about a guy who worked side by side in a lab with one of the women who had been described as "bossy" and realized we were using different descriptors for the exact same behavior that the bell went off. And I should know better, having been a manager for almost three decades.

I find the timing of this post highly suspect.

Yeah. Women are as bad as men at keeping women down.

Which chemists have the best nipples?

To be fair, Danielle (the female manager on my staff) is usually pretty good at helping us keep our balance. The fact that she went along with the characterization even made us ask ourselves if, after we questioned our "label," the one one chemist was in fact "bossy" rather than just assertive in a way in which we counted it as a good thing in a male chemist. But when we talked about it, using actual examples of behavior, we realized we had an unconscious bias going on.

But to your point, Ryan, it may well be true that it isn't just a male thing, but rather something we've developed overall in how we all - men and women - see certain behaviors and label them. For example, if several guys talk to each other in the lab during the day, do we label them as "chatty" the way we might if a group of women in the lab do a lot of talking to each other during the day? I don't know.

I do know, however, that in my decades of managing, in a number of companies both small and large, that aggressive behavior in men is generally viewed as a good thing - "a driver, doesn't let anything get in the way of accomplishing his goals, drives others around him to step up their game," etc. And the exact same behavior is, more often than not, labeled either as a blatant negative or a subtle negative - "bossy, pushy, overly aggressive" etc. One example that easily comes to mind: when I worked for a global Fortune 50 company, the Group Presidents - about 10 very top level execs that essentially ran the company - consisted of 9 men, 1 woman. You don't get to that level in a company that size without being a big shark that has eaten many smaller sharks. But the aggressive, driving behavior of the one woman was always pointed out by everyone, with the labels you might imagine, none of them flattering.

The ones on the CSI shows on TV.

Is there anyone else here who lives in the business world who sees this on a first hand basis? And I guess the extrapolation of this is, if we do this within companies, what are the manifestations of it outside of the workplace?

It's very much present in the academic world, for what that's worth.

For some reason I would have expected it to be better in that world. Are there differences in different fields, e.g. liberal arts vs. sciences?

It's strongly present in professorial politics in both the sciences and arts at JHU, and weakly present (only weakly, due to there being almost no women whatsoever) in the IT department of the university.

That surprises me. I've worked in and with universities for many years, and for some reason I just assumed academics was more progressive than business (although I have been aware of the potential viciousness of university politics!)

The actuarial/investing department I worked in this summer had 1 male SVP in charge of everyone, 1 female VP and 1 male VP in second in command, and about 3 female managers with 0 male managers. That company is a bit of an exception to the rule though as I believe the majority of their workforce is women (though I believe the financial analysis side of the company still tilted male with the vast majority of women in the customer service and low level claim analysis tipping the overall ratio over to women).

In my previous position, I took advantage of HK's sexism by ending up with a management team that was mostly (c.80%) female, even in IT. They had to be better/ smarter at their jobs than men to have got where they were, so I was able to assemble a team from internal and external sources that was much better value for money than if it had been male dominated. That team has now largely broken up once the project ended, with many of them being poached by other firms with 40% plus pay rises, so it worked out for most involved

Now I have moved across to engineering, looks to be the same. Just by offering female engineers the same opportunities as the male ones (i.e., yes we will send her on client site visits and give her expensive training on how to draft contracts, and no it isn't a waste "because she might get pregnant") makes them (sadly) grateful. Sad, because it should be a given.

So, shit yeah I discriminate on gender, but while I have this opportunity to "arbitrage" (i.e. have women employees who are better value for money than most of their male counterparts) I will do so.

Just remember that to keep it fair, when you get to the part where you discuss bra sizes, considering discussing cup size for the male employees as well. I find it helps if they're in the room when you do this, as that way they can confirm or deny your guess.

To add another 'hell yes' - I am working in academia, basic life science research to be a bit more precise. And this absolutely exists here as well, no way to deny it. What bugs me a lot about it is that at the same time, the PIs here mostly pat their backs for being so egalitarian. However, judging by the way they evaluate the personnel this is just a convenient lie they tell to themselves. Ah, the stories I'd rather not tell because otherwise I'll start ranting. Funny enough, below a certain pay grade you will (as far as I can ascertain) find a lot more women than men. But weirdly enough the attrition rate is a lot higher, so they rarely end up in the top positions. But the existence of '>60% women among grad students' is an oftentimes used factoid to argue that we are absolutely egalitarian. Sure, sure...

Maybe it was just my department, but the concept that someone might not be good at biology research because of their gender never occurred to me in seven years. One graduate student mentioned getting drama from an old-fart at one point, but it seemed like an opinion on its way out, like someone's racist grandad's thoughts on politics.

I agree with Philip Greenspun, that they accurately weighed the sacrifices required for those top positions against their benefits, and decided that anything else would be a better use of their time. I performed a similar analysis and determined that I needed to be teaching community college. I remember being in fuck-this-shit mode towards the end of graduate school, and one of the professors tried to convince me that it wasn't a totally shitty job. Halfway through the conversation it became immediately apparent that she wasn't trying to convince me, she was trying to convince herself.

So basically what you are saying is that more men grossly overestimate their ability to win "tournaments."

That's a mostly accurate assessment of my position.

Well, you can have your cake and eat it too if you:

1. Meet a woman in your smartypants mathematically-oriented discipline in college.
2. Marry her and take advantage of her more realistic assessment of her chances in an insane tournament while you...
3. Continue to tilt at windmills.

I'm honestly not sure where that came from, but I'm equally surprised and entertained. Would you be willing to break down the thought process that led to this post for me?

My father was a college professor (he did get tenure, though) and my mother was an accountant.

And I am a dismayed, single grad student. I actually see this happen quite often, where I am... though just as frequently, grad students marry other grad students, which only makes things harder as then you have to try to look for jobs near to each other.

Oh. Honestly, don't worry about it. I mean graduate school was a bad decision in retrospect, but compared to other bad decisions like teenage pregnancy, or heroin addiction, or law school, it's actually pretty awesome. Regardless of how things end up, you'll have spent those years trying to do something important, which most people never even attempt.

And when you finish, teaching community college is actually a pretty sweet job.

Also, if I ever married someone I'd want us to spend as much time or more on her crazy windmills as we spent on mine.

Well, I'd like to think that if I were as dismayed as I make myself out to be, I'd probably have bailed by now.

Sorry, but I disagree. Pretty much based on personal experience, so the usual applies. From where I stand, women have to perform at an very noticeably higher level to get the same recognition. This affects grants, open positions and reputation. It is still pretty common to here a female scientist described as 'bossy' or similar, male scientists are called 'assertive'. Sure, the same people will wax on later about how we need more women in science. But it is a bit hard to swallow when you know the guy talking has an extremely well performing PostDoc in his lab that regularly gets shoved aside to present lesser work by her male colleagues. I've seen fantastic work by female students attributed to the also-ran male student who was somewhere on the paper. And so on, and so forth. Or course, all this differs on a per person basis. But here is the thing - even if let's say 70 % of PIs have no gender bias, the remaining 30% who do still make it a lot harder for women. Oh, and of course there are female PIs who will nearly exclusively hire woman. Generally to quite a few condescending comments from male colleagues. Quite frankly, I find this 'they just evaluate the sacrifices they need to make differently' as a bit nasty. I know you didn't mean it that way. But I have seen too many woman sacrificing a lot more then the men to reach the same position to be comfortable with that. Maybe consider the alternate explanation that they evaluate this differently because the struggle is harder and the sacrifices greater for them ?

There's a lot of variability in how "macho" fields are (and make no mistake, the nerds are just as macho as the bros). And the most successful women in macho fields almost invariably have to out-macho the men to get there. I don't intend to deny that discrimination occurs, but most egregious examples of abuse are on the decline, and I think that one of the main things that prevents the decline from being faster is the general cruelty of the system (I don't mean that in as melodramatic a way as it sounds).

I recall one example given from back when overt sexism was "socially acceptable" where the advisor asked the woman to be second in the author list because the man would "have to make tenure" (implying that the woman wouldn't continue in the field). The very existence of this sort of justification hinges on the fact that there is somehow not enough credit on good work to go around, like having your name arbitrarily appear second in a list of the authors means your contribution was less relevant. The sexist part is that the advisor wants the female grad student to agree to get screwed on the credit; the cruel part is that somebody has to get screwed on the credit.

That's cool, I never noticed any gender discrimination in my department, aside from the creepy postdoc who would stare at breasts. You've noticed it in yours, and if you're broken enough to be a postdoc you probably have more experience to draw on than I do.

I have a hard time seeing my position as nasty or sexist given that my position is that no one in their right mind would choose academic biological research as a career, and that women are more likely to realize this than men. I mean I can sort of see getting a Ph.D. in that nonsense, but after five or more years of watching your genius adviser get fucked by NIH grant committees, you'd have to be a madman to think, "Yeah, I'm going to be the dude who finally makes this shit work."

Congratulations on recognising the bias. That's the biggest problem with something like gender bias - people don't even recognise that they are doing it.

Well, let me apologize for the 'nasty'. However, while I do believe that you in this case are writing with the best intention, I do think it is generally used as an apology. Sorry, saying (in essence) 'woman are just too smart for this' sounds very nice. But ultimately it is a very thin veneer to hide the truth that academia is still very much sexist. It becomes a nice excuse to prevent certain changes in the system. Again, I do absolutely believe that this is not your reason for saying it.
And Viz - you are right, it seems on the decline. But the problem is still very much existent.
For several reasons this is a topic I feel very strongly about. Both because I have students I have to fight for very hard so that they are not screwed over just because they are female, as well as friends I have to watch being screwed over for the same reason. I am also very tired of hearing colleagues described as 'hot' or 'bossy' instead of 'brilliant' or 'capable'. Perhaps I should abstain from posting any more in this thread - I'd rather avoid offending anyone more than I already have.

So you're saying that there are structural factors that are not really intended but which keep a certain group out of the profession, rather than there being unintentional gender discrimination going on?

This reminds me of a riddle I heard many years ago about a doctor and a car crash. I don't recall the specifics, but it plays on our biases by having you assume the doctor is a man. The answer to the riddle is that that doctor is a woman. This actually, briefly, stumped me, and other people I told it to. Our expectations short-circuit our brain and bias is hard to sweep away.

Dad dies with son, surgeon refuses to operate because it's their son and you can't operate on family.

That's too easy. Two gay dads.

Oh yeah?! Well YOUR MOM is a gay dad!!!!

No, Farnsworth says he's seen a lot of it, and I'm inclined to trust him. His experience is different from mine, but that's not unexpected because individual departments have vastly different cultures. And now that I think about it, I did once hear from a professor that a woman who joined our faculty did so in part because her previous workplace was, "an old boys club".

But if we're talking about the reason why 50% or more of graduate students are women, and only 10% of the faculty are, I think the realization that academic science was a shitty career accounts for the majority of cases. It's too bad the mandatory Ph.D. exit survey doesn't have a section on why people are leaving academia. It would be nice to have some actual data on the topic.

A father and son have a car accident and are both badly hurt. They are both taken to separate hospitals. When the boy is taken in for an operation, the surgeon (doctor) says 'I can not do the surgery because this is my son'. How is this possible?

The son is Jesus, which would make the surgeon God. If you've read the Old Testament, you'll know that God is kind of a jerk.

I love this! (Emphasis added).

That riddle sounds laughably easy, but when I heard it some 20 years ago (Jesus Christ!) it seemed tricky. Especially when not introduced as part of a discussion about gender.