I’ve taught classes of 4 year olds, and it often takes work to avoid letting the boys dominate even at that age. There are more energetic girls who do fine and quieter boys who don’t, but it’s interesting to see how you can aim your class at specific people or groups and see them thrive, or neglect them and watch them fade into the background. I found I had to minimise the amount of occasions when kids had to compete to be the one to speak, and make sure that certain students were explicitly invited to join in (and given the space to do that). I used methods that everyone knew were random quite often so that there would be no complaints, or put people in smaller groups so more people could speak. Certain classroom dynamics select for certain types of personality, and changing the dynamic can be the best way to minimise the influence of more dominant types.
When it comes to adults and particularly bosses, it’s going to be more difficult. There’s a strong sense in which you can’t be too optimistic about your ability to change individuals who see themselves as above you. This is why I’m thinking that a group of people (not necessarily just women) who are aware of the issue and willing to point it out when it happens are more likely to have some success. Where your workplace is 80-90% men, recruiting some of them may be necessary to make sure you won’t be dismissed as the non-team-player and insignificant. It’s quite likely that most of the men are tired of being talked over too, so they may well see the benefits of promoting fairer models. YMMV, as you know well.
My daughter’s chemistry teacher, who actually was a super nice man who seemed like I was trying to connect to kids, told me my daughter’s problem in the class was that, “She was a teenage girl.” Um, yeah, that’s your job - to teach teenagers.
Thanks Missy_Pants for bringing this aspect up - it could possibly give us an input for a useful approach.
Simon Baron-Cohen used the term “extreme male brain model” to describe some types of autism in this respect.
If you imagine a spectrum from typically female traits to typically male traits, many ASCs move characteristics in the direction of male traits. In a man or boy with autism, this tends to move them out of the range of how men and women tend to be, but in women or girls, this tends to move them into the typically male region of the spectrum.
The problem here is the diagnostic criteria, which are based on either the typically male region of the spectrum, or on the neurotypical region for both sexes, so women and girls have to be more severely affected for the criteria to detect their difference.
It doesn’t however, address what sounds like more of a prejudice - seeing unusually quiet and introverted behaviour as a desirable thing for a girl or woman, instead of an unusual difference for a person.
The answer, presumably, is to note when there are measurable differences in the trends for the genders, and to make assessments based on the correct criteria - allowing for difference where it actually exists, but not assuming it where it doesn’t.
Maybe this is something that could also be applied to group dynamics for meetengs, etc - if we can move them from “how men talk” to “how people talk”. The difficulty is getting those of us with y chromosomes to actually pay attention.
Today I was in a meeting with two men and I ended up with the two of them talking over me even though I am in charge of the project. I got angry at what was going on and started to channel my anger to focus them to give me what I needed to proceed with my work. They are two people who like to go big picture, but I have a deadline and the time for shooting the shit has come and gone.
The conversation made me think a lot about Anger and how much of a factor that can play in our discussions. How is men’s anger perceived vs. women’s? With men it is threatening. With women, annoying. Men use it to intimidate people. Women tend to swallow it down.
I’ve been re-reading the excellent book The Dance of Anger about this, but am annoyed with the premise that it’s women’s job to diffuse anger. Men seem to be ignorant that they use it, that women sense it, sniff it, are so attuned to it and will avoid it as much as possible because they can never win a battle of anger through sheer force.
It was one of those things where it surprised me so much when he said it that I didn’t know how to respond. I have many times considered emailing him or conferencing with him about what he said.
He was definitely willing to work with my daughter; she used to arrive early to school every day and sit right outside of his classroom for 10 minutes or so. He was encouraging her to come in and work with him then but for whatever reason, she wouldn’t do it. He was a nice, relateable person and I think his comment was total cluelessness about his own bias.
I grew up at a school that was an all-men’s school when I was a tiny girl and then changed to co-ed in the 70s. I attended there for high school. Therefore, all of my science teachers had been hired for a all-male environment but then ended up teaching co-ed. There were other teachers who favored men, too, but the sciences were the ones where it seemed to be most noticeable. They all had their little cliques, all guys, that would do extra work with them after class. Latin, too. I think these teachers liked men and didn’t think at all that they were creating an unbalanced educational environment. They were doing what they loved - teaching boys.
I find it very disappointing that such bias still exists in education. It was bullshit when my 7th grade math teacher (woman) refused to promote me to algebra in spite of my over 100% A+ (tried to get my mom to override her, but that was a bridge too far into actual parenting for my mom to handle), but that was in the early 80’s. What the fuck is the excuse for today’s teachers to still harbor such bias, conscious or not?
Extra credit and bonus exam questions. This was available all the way from 7th grade math through calculus in my senior year. Finished with 103% that last semester.
Over 12% of the kids in my daughter’s school maintain over a 100% GPA. Partly they get adjustments for honors and AP courses. Partly they work so hard it’s unreal.
Talk to him in private, and approach the topic with both confidence and compassion. Instead of your boss, think of him as a human being who may be simply unaware that he comes off that way. I know I would personally appreciate this type of feedback.
p.s. If he reacts poorly, or you feel any type of retaliation, speak with HR. Culture is extremely important to companies, and everyone deserves a work environment that makes them feel both valued and safe to speak up.
The person who held the meeting was not my boss. He was a marketing person who is a couple of levels up above the person I normally deal with. I deal with him occasionally. I was more watching the whole situation as an outsider than personally affected by his behavior. I attended that meeting mainly for my own information, not to contribute.
This makes me think of something I noticed with a man* and a woman* helping a toddler down the stairs into the subway. The toddler is at an age where she wants to walk down the stairs herself, but needs help and goes slowly. No matter which person helps the toddler the line of people entering the subway moves slower. When the woman does it, there are almost always comments, whether offered as “helpful” or straight up aggressive. “Does she need help?” “Why don’t you carry her?” “Come on!” When the man helps the toddler, no comments.
It’s not going to be a revelation to any woman that women are judged by the people around them a lot more than men are, and that people feel much more comfortable voicing their thoughts about women than they do about men. I wondered, when observing this, how much that has to do with expected gendered responses to anger. By making a snide comment at someone you certainly risk making them angry, I think this is especially true when they are with a small child - people very defensive of their children and their parenting.
But the risk you are exposing yourself to by making a woman angry is perceived as small - she might give you a dirty look or even yell at you, but later you’ll tell your friends “I just thought she should help her kid get down the stares and she turns into a psycho bitch on me” and they’ll all nod along. The risk you are exposing yourself to by making a man angry is perceived as large. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility that he will not only yell at you, but really get in your face, refuse to drop it, and escalate it to actual violence. You don’t say something mean to a man unless you are ready to fight him.
‘man’ and ‘woman’ being labels that the observers in the situation would apply, not labels that the particular people I am thinking of would necessarily apply
So the risk is absolutely higher, no question. Completely plausible that people would be far more willing to offer “free advice” to women with much lower risk of retaliation (whether verbal, physical, or whatever), data definitely supports it.
One thing about kids, everyone else who is a parent feels qualified to give you “advice” about your kids. For better or worse, and I think generally better, this is the one human experience that is almost universally shared. I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman, or a muslim, or black, but I can certainly share what it’s like to be a parent with you. It’s the single most bedrock human experience that ties us together, across not only location, but all of recorded history.
I try not to offer “free advice” to any strangers on the street, as a general policy.
(I also think what people might be reacting to in this case, is the parent’s desire to let their kid take their time going down the stairs is selfishly judged as more important than other people’s desire to get into the subway quickly without being blocked on the stairs. In other words, what’s more important? My kid’s life experience, or the time of other rando adults entering the subway? But yeah, they’d complain more to a woman about it since the risk is lower.)
Yes, definitely. It is a fact that a man is more likely to hit you. I think that potential aggression is “rewarded” with deference in situations where actual aggression would not be tolerated.
Oh yeah. Advice about kids is one thing. Complaints about how your kids are inconveniencing someone else is another.
My view is that the 2-year-old is a human being. If I was walking into the subway holding the hand of my nonagenarian grandmother then people would still get annoyed, but they’d correctly recognize that they’d seem like assholes for saying anything about it.
Marketing people are so full of shit. They basically have their minds warped to the point that they have to believe any idea they came up with is GOLD. Their entire existence is to get you to also believe it is gold. To er, waffle, or to consider an outside idea would mean that they are totally worthless in the world.
If they were giving a presentation, and opened up their case only to find their two year old had taken a handful of shit and smeared it on the marketing item - instead of showing weakness, saying they needed more time to print out a new copy, they would put it out and sell the idea. That the shit makes it edgy and trending with the 3-13 female market, and the 3-85 male market. And see that corn? That lest customers know the all-natural tie in. An uh - its gluten free!
This is a bit off topic, but I am a toddler magnet. If there is a toddler within thirty feet they will spring like Usain Bolt directly at me. Every. Time.
I have no explanation, and I’m long past getting annoyed. Usually I just mutter, “Incoming!!” With a wry smile.
