Wanted: Adoring Female Students from Inside Higher Ed

And more handmaiden complexes...

Inside Higher Ed looks at a Twitter thread started by a blogger asking respondents to

please share with me all your stories of the male professors you had in college who thrived upon and demanded female admiration to function

and the resulting tweets, including messages about how this was not part of their student experience and pointing out that the Other Sex professors also enjoy adulation.

Again, it is this idea that women do not show up to work/study, or that getting sexual attention from professors is just part of the experience. To be fair, this is also a part of exploiting youth, of either gender, to quench a midlife crisis.

I also liked this quote from Allison Kimmich, executive director of the National Women’s Studies Association, where she stated that,

“Men are overwhelmingly the majority of full professors by rank,” she said, noting recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics. “So that means male faculty by definition have greater power and authority on campus by virtue of both rank and numbers.”

She continued: “Does that mean every male faculty member abuses that authority (as the Twitter [thread] suggests)? Obviously not, but clearly there are structural issues at work in higher education that lend themselves to potential abuses of authority.”

I also don't want any comments about how students dress that invite such flirtation. I went to school in Canada and staying swathed in a parka to fend off the chill of the classrooms does not dissuade the most determined perv, since they want verbal, but sexually charged, adulation, at a minimum, and for you to disrobe, at close to the maximum access. It's not about clothing, it's about attitude and self-control.

The Handmaiden Problem

One of my co-workers passed around this article from the LA Times, Sexism a problem in Silicon Valley, critics say, and in addition to the overall breathless tone of Newsflash, gender issues an issue in the workplace, and some weird statistics, I also had a problem with this comment:

Speaking before a gathering of women in technology, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg recalled an uncomfortable exchange with two men on a different stage discussing the scarcity of women in the industry.

One commented that he would like to hire more young women but not all are as competent as Sandberg. The other said he, too, would hire more young women but his wife fears he would sleep with them and, he confessed, he probably would.

I would like to call this The Handmaiden Problem; in other words, the urge this male executive has to visit one of his female colleagues and say, I'm so glad you brought your lady parts to work today! Let's take them on a test drive over lunch! and that the female person would, of course, screaming with eagerness, copulate with him until his nuts fell off. Or lunch was over. Whatever came first.

I'm not sure what Sandberg said when trapped with this nugget in an enclosed space. Hopefully, it was along the lines of, most of the men who worked in harems were eunuchs with some seriously potent stink eye. But her husband telling her, they told the truth and that now she has to deal with it, is ludicrous. I think I'm not here to have sex with you, no matter how nicely you ask, Mr Married Executive, should be a given.

This is not about anti-romance in the workplace, either. This is about how all females supposedly swish their tails aside when the alpha male arrives. The women he would have hired--once his wife gave him said permission, of course--were not obliged to sleep with him, even if he really, really wanted it. The assumptions are not only, "career girls" are available all the time, but also, women are just making time at work, but not really working. Handmaiden, come hither and service me.

I do think most men understand their female co-workers are a) here to work, b) are competent, c) are not obliged to have sex with them, but the persistence of this belief annoys me.

The Problem when Sexism Sounds So Darn Friendly on the SciAM Blogs

According to the blog post author, The Problem when Sexism Sounds So Darn Friendly points out that this is a repost in light of current events, so you may have read this before. Like the author, I think this might be a good time for a revisit.

Melanie Tannenbaum, the author of The Problem when Sexism Sounds so Darn Friendly, comments on recent events, such as the controversy over the obituary for Yvonne Brill and the outcome when the author of I F-ing Love Science revealed that she was female, while referring to research into hostile and benevolent sexism. The research she quotes is from 1996 (17 years ago) so if anyone knows of an update, I would be happy to read more on this topic (benevolent sexism, not sexism in general). I am especially interested in light of this result:

...those who endorsed benevolent sexism were likely to admit that they also held explicit, hostile attitudes towards women (although one does not necessarily have to endorse these hostile attitudes in order to engage in benevolent sexism).

Tannenbaum also posits an example where benevolent sexism is alive and well, and working to the detriment of both men and women.

However, to those people who still may be tempted to argue that benevolent sexism is nothing more than an overreaction to well-intentioned compliments, let me pose this question: What happens when there is a predominant stereotype saying that women are better stay-at-home parents than men because they are inherently more caring, maternal, and compassionate? It seems nice enough, but how does this ideology affect the woman who wants to continue to work full time after having her first child and faces judgment from her colleagues who accuse her of neglecting her child? How does it affect the man who wants to stay at home with his newborn baby, only to discover that his company doesn’t offer paternity leave because they assume that women are the better candidates to be staying at home?

The post is worth a read, though, as I mentioned, I would like to know about more recent, possibly international research into these attitudes.

I also wanted to share my favorite comment from researching this post (and quoted in the linked article from The Guardian about the fracas) came from a person responding to all of the commenters* talking about the science blogger's lovely femaleness: "My fellow dudebros: Chillax. In science, sex is just a single genome characteristic,"

*And yes, I looked up commenter, since Google hated the spelling: commentator is for sports, commentor might still win in common use, though one source I checked suggested that "-er" is preferred over "-or" as a suffix (that explains computer, but not tormentor), and commenter just hasn't been added to the New Words and Slang. For now, I am going to use it, but let the best neologism win.

It's not always about gender

In my stream last night, I saw that Gay Kawasaki had reposted a listicle from Cristina Cordova about how to attract more women to startups. I agree with most of the post in that you need to clean up bro culture in the workplace, for civility and for clarity in job titles and postings, but I'm not sure you need to do it on account of my fragile lady parts.

First of all, suggesting that Team Lady is the only group of people who would be upset by bro culture overlooks a significant group of people who dislike aspects of that culture and don't think it is good for business.

1. We love your cultural symbols--especially when I don't have to think about what they mean. Oh, god, the ninja thing. This is a bit like talking about how your Jedi mind tricks worked and meaning it. This is about what we believe an icon is and not what it actually represents--and how little it has common with the job you have to do. These job titles don't make sense on your resume, so if your startup fails and you need to look for a paying job with another company everybody in their HR thinks you ran an anime club for three years.
   
   And while we are misappropriating cultural icons, why can't we use [code] slinger, gangster, naut or crusader? Because they sound silly and childish and only the Japan of our imagination is cool enough to rate a job title. Cordova does point out that some startups use rockstar and hacker, but again, we use them because we don't have to think about what the term really represents, and she doesn't mention how those titles undermine the credibility of your employees when they are engaged in the work of growing, marketing, representing or selling your startup.


2. Alcohol makes the money come round. Recently, I toured a startup facility with a friend of mine who abstains from drinking alcohol for religious reasons. As the guide spent five minutes expressing how much business got done in the tavern below the startup space, my friend just put her hand over her eyes and tried to block him out. His argument was that if you don't drink, there was no reason for the other people in the space to talk to you and give you advice and assistance. And the space was awesome. I wanted to bring my sleeping bag to work and fuel my enterprise with the coffee from the excellent coffee shop below that he failed to mention on his tour, except as another tenant in the building. The insistence that alcohol lubricates business persists in many industries, not just in coding, and that the cool and knowledgeable drink beer and lots of it, is a myth that we perpetuate, as in the Hipper Crowd of Shushers.
   
   Reliance on alcohol to facilitate business cuts out a whole group of people who don't want to mix alcohol with work and who might make stupid decisions if they did mix alcohol with work. It's like we're back in high school, all being pressured by the cool kids to drink. And if you did give in to their pressure, let's remember how that turned out. Now imagine it posted to YouTube while you are trying to get VC funding.


3. Lets have a discussion about how jerks are replaceable. At one of my interviews, I had a grilling from the IT team leader who used a common programming term incorrectly. I corrected her, but SHE quickly established that her usage was correct. I let it go and got the job, but she continued to bring it into the conversation for two weeks after my hire until our supervisor told her to let it go. My point is, jerk is genderless and not limited to coders. Maybe we should talk about how these people strain the workplace, as well as misrepresent us to clients. Hire well is good advice for all hires, regardless of gender, and maybe your college roommate who joined the startup in its first week is not as good at their job as you think.


4. She doesn't talk about the roles that women will be hired for. This is one issue where there appears to be a workplace gender divide. I have suggested that the post focuses on hiring women coders, but women do play other roles that a startup needs to thrive and they are not treated as if they understand the arcane mysteries of technology, as in this ad from Samsung.
   
   
   
   Ah, the ladies, bringing down the code bros with their insistence on not spending money on two kegerators. And not being smart enough to recognize the redundancy reducing technology the bros are using to mock them with. 

Though they could have trotted out the silverback stereotype, the middle aged, suited dude who refers to all of the code bros in the diminutive, as in Danny or Jimmy, and who hasn't updated his technological know how since teletype. But there are no old people in startups anyway.

So yes, I admit that gender does play a role; however, there are some areas, such as alcohol and protecting crappy employees, that should be discussed without gender, since some arguments that use gender fairness as their rationale put women in the position of being the angel in the workplace.

Do Men Really Earn More than Women? Infographic from Payscale.com

If these arguments are correct, women should be reading Women Don't Ask before their salary negotiations.

The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp

During her homeless year, Brianna Karp chronicled her homeless experience on the blog The Girl's Guide to Homelessness. She was young, educated and according to her own account, had worked for over a decade, even as a teenager, at a variety of jobs that left her with plenty of marketable skills. When she was suddenly laid off from a job that she loved, she was forced to move back in with her parents, though coming back into the household with her abusive mother would not make this a long stay. However, Brianna was resourceful: she was able to use the unexpected inheritance of a trailer and move onto a local Walmart parking lot, find a place to shower and soon a job--though she did remain homeless, she was able to enter a community of homeless activists.

And she also met the man she thought she would marry. A significant portion of the book is devoted to her romance with a man from Scotland who would ultimately abandon her, and in the cruelest of ironies for a homeless activist, abandon her to the elements in the middle of winter. (Yeah, asshole is not quite the word...)

Brianna is remarkably resilient, turning a string of misfortunes into a job, a blog, a book deal and finally finding a stable job, at least at the time of the epilogue, and a place in the homeless activist community.

Caveat emptor: If you have any association with the Jehovah's Witnesses, you may not be happy with Brianna's depiction of the church or their position on several issues, or how she categorizes the group as a "cult"; however, she is basing her description on her experience with the church. I would also like to give a fair warning for the brief depictions of child sexual and physical abuse. These warnings should not scare readers off from the book, especially since I think it is an important book for librarians who have no or limited experience with homelessness, to read, since many homeless people use libraries for places to job search, research and rest, and Brianna's book does put a youthful, educated, female face on homelessness after the recent recession.

Malled by Caitlin Kelly

In 2007, Kelly, at that time a freelance journalist, decided to take a part time job in retail so that she would always have some dependable funds in her account for living expenses. When she heard about a new North Face store opening up in a suburban mall, she decided to apply there and despite her lack of experience in retail, but plenty of life and travel experience, as well as fluency in two other languages than English, the management at the new store decided to hire her. According to Kelly, she was a consistent top-seller at her store, and the store that she was employed at was one of the top performing stores for that company.

Kelly's account as a retail salesperson and her examination of the industry focuses on two areas: how poorly retail salespeople are paid and how poorly they are treated by the customers that they are there to help, despite how essential they are to the company and the lipservice that companies pay to the quality of their customer service. She talks about the makeup of the staff at her store: usually minorities (though, minority to who and where? I always wonder), but well educated and ambitious, some with college degrees, others are former military, some are single parents, but they all seemed to be trapped on the retail roller coaster, moving on or up only if they can escape retail. Retail sales is not a career, Kelly argues, you can barely make a living at it, the physical demands are enormous, there is no concern for perfecting a professional salesforce, and the staff just doesn't seem to care--but they would do anything to get out of their retail jobs.

Kelly describes how the corporate focus on the bottom line means that frontline sales staff will remain poorly paid--supposedly shareholders don't want to pay salespeople more, but shareholders are always the villains--and not given adequate tools to perform their jobs. Indeed, the fact that many corporations are apparently clueless about sales, ergonomics, customers and products, is a recurrent theme in the book. The corporate mindset appears as inexplicable and implacable as Kafka's Castle.

A different generation?

I think it may be a generational difference, but I am surprised that she was shocked by how retail salespeople are treated, mainly because almost every person I know has had some experience working in retail as a teenager or young adult. This was Kelly's first experience on the other side of the till (or cash wrap, as she prefers) and at times she appears a little naive at how craptastic a job in retail can be.

She is right about one thing: it is not going to get better for retail workers unless customers stop shopping at stores with crummy service, and who become know for treating their sales associates poorly, as well as for crummy products. And though I liked the book and the immersive journalism, Kelly could have gotten that response from any teenager on their first job--and I would have liked to hear more about how teenagers and young adults can be exploited by this industry, in addition to the few glimpses of mature workers who, after the economic downturn, found themselves working in retail.

I might have enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed more, but I still think that Malled is an important part of the immersive journalism literature on workplaces.

Women less interested in competitive pay structures

According to a study from the University of Chicago, women are less likely to apply for positions where the pay structure involves a competition with other employees--unless local wages were less than what the position offered as a base rate.

Cleavage career guides

I have a weird tag for some of the business/career books that I come across that are written for women, but seem to have more to do with how much cleavage we show (toe or otherwise) than our skills and capabilities. Reading these books make me all nostalgic for the day the the boys discovered bra straps and a new way to bully girls. Next up, slut shaming, in which all participate.

I want to say no one depends on their boobs to get ahead, but Pamela Anderson springs to mind. And not all boobs (or biceps, for that matter) mesmerize equally: there is usually some cunning and social engineering involved on the part of the person attached to the sexy flesh.


Some of these books may have some good advice interspersed with Wonder Bra and cosmetic surgery ads. So, I call them cleavage career guides and let you make up your own mind.

Recently, there was a some chatter about a tip sheet that was supposed distributed within Citibank, adopted from a book called Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. Jezebel spurned it. Cynical Girl (former Punk Rock HR) wrote a sorta defense of Citibank and the book.

The problem is this: masculine and feminine behaviors are perceptions, which means they exist in our minds, either as we project them or receive them. This doesn't mean that we turn off our biological sex, but people project some of their perceptions on to us and we roleplay back. These behaviors are also dependent on culture. You might think you are a feminine cheesecake in North America, but you may seem pretty beefy beyond these borders.

My hearty handshake and aggressive humor do not make me a male--but some people perceive these behaviors as masculine. If they are really smart, they will skip the category. The brisk handshaking does come with bored hair twirling.

Do we really need rules about how to behave and where to put our eyeballs? Sometimes, because we are creatures that need rules. But they should be applied fairly to individuals, not to categories.

Excelle releases The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women

Excelle, a career and networking site for women, has released a list of The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women. There isn't much info as to how they devised their ranking, but these lists can be fun for a person who decides they can really go anywhere once they graduate.

Try searching for opportunities in these cities by combining your keywords and the locale on the SimplyHired Special Searches.

Gender and the Recession

Emily Bazelon and Rebecca Traister discuss the effect of the recession on the depiction of gender, [hetero] relationships and the pay gap. This video-dialogue is from early March, but it is still full of good stuff that people are thinking and feeling, and how the recession continues to be depicted in major media.

The He-cession

A colleague of mine sent me an article about how women, especially older women, are doing surprisingly well, despite the recession. What's interesting is that, according to the article, women are finding work in battered industries: finance, real estate and insurance. They are also becoming self-employed--not always an indicator of improvement for standard of living, since some entrepreneurs don't make more than what they did as salary workers, and they usually have to pay their own benefits and pension.

But it is good to know that there are glimmers in some areas.

From Canada's He-Cession from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In the U.S., they’ve begun calling the recession there a “he-cession,” because 80% of American workers whose jobs have been wiped out are men.

In Canada, we’re experiencing a he-cession of our own: 71% of Canada’s unemployment victims in the recession thus far are men. Canada’s official unemployment rate for men in June was 9.2%, compared to 6.8% for women.

Women stay in school longer, get married sooner

Statistics Canada has released a research paper based on responses from the Youth in Transition Survey (conducted every 2 years) that looks at the differences between the genders as they enter adulthood.

The following passages in italics are from the Daily announcing the release:

However, a higher proportion of men left school and started working on a full-time basis earlier than women. In contrast, a higher proportion of women left the parental home, formed a relationship and had children earlier than men. Throughout the eight years, a higher proportion of men worked full time and still lived with their parents.
-and-

Participation in all types of postsecondary education was higher for women than men. Even though participation rates for both sexes increased over the years, the gap between men and women persisted.

By the time they were aged 26 to 28 in 2008, participation rates were 8 percentage points higher for women than men in university, and 7 points higher in college.

There was also a statement about how men get into the labor market earlier, and another article I read about the research paper stated it was because men choose "marketable" programs (like business and engineering) whereas women choose social sciences and fine arts.

Research Paper:

• Education and Labour Market Transitions in Young Adulthood

Data Sources:

• Youth In Transition Survey

Pay gap between childless women and women-with-children

Statistics Canada released a study today about the earnings of women who have and don't have children (the release on the Daily, the full text of the study is available on Perspectives on Labour and Income).

From the summary of the study:


On average, the earnings of women with children were 12% less than those of women without children, and this gap increased with the number of children: with one child, the gap was 9%; with two children, it was 12%; and with three of more children, 20%.

The study also looked at the differences between single mothers, singletons without sprouts, and partnered women with children. And yes, it was worse to be a single mother:

A comparison between single mothers and childless single women showed that the average earnings gap was close to 20%. But for married/common-law mothers versus childless women in couples, the gaps was only about 10%.

Other interesting findings from the study included that the less time off with children (a gap) could positively influence earnings, as well as delaying a family.

Since so many librarians are women, I thought the study would be interesting; maybe we should just be interested in the results since so many of us know women.

We should also be interested in this study, especially in light of this post that I saw on Appetite for Equal Rights, Bad economy causing women to get naked.

Hike up your boobs career advice

The Brazen Careerist does it again: suggesting that we take career lessons from Eliot Spitzer's call girl, Ashely Dupre. I have a love/hate relationship with the Brazen Careerist: some of her advice is just plain common sense and some of her wise pearls are barely fit for swine. Usually, this is when she veers into life coaching, as opposed to career coaching, and suggests that we get a bra with better support instead of a strong support network.

Yes, this young boobalicious girl made lots of money--possibly lying about her family life, sleeping with men and posting some songs on her MySpace page, like an American Idol wannabee--but should we take career lessons from a naive young person who appears to have "pillowy" as her only career skill? (If she did a version of If I only had a brain, I swear I would download it). And we are supposed to take a page from the book of someone who her mother described in the NYT as: "...a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor...But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her.” I admire the very bright part, but not the swept away, chewed up and spit out part.

Since Ms Dupre is probably the only one who will come out, money-wise, better than she was when she started, perhaps we could take advice from her. That is, if our lives were all about money.