My immediate thought when I saw this a few days ago was "sampling bias" -- not that the author had a biased sample of professional women, but rather that professional women are a biased sample of women. Given the social environment -- pushing both females and males away from what they might have preferred as a life trajectory -- I think it's very likely that the average professional woman is significantly more aggressive than the average professional man, simply because the non-aggressive women tend to not enter professional careers.
This mirrors an observation I've heard from several faculty members in computer science and engineering programs: As complete populations, girls aren't any smarter than boys on average, but in those programs the girls are always among the top students -- because it's only the most exceptional girls who overcome the social factors which keep most of their peers out of those subjects.
There may be a real effect here, but the evidence presented is inconclusive.
As complete populations, girls aren't any smarter than boys on average, but in those programs the girls are always among the top students -- because it's only the most exceptional girls who overcome the social factors which keep most of their peers out of those subjects.
Social factors like the assumption that women who consistently outrank their peers are 'significantly more aggressive'? I'm sure you mean well but your post here seems like a classic example of circular reasoning. You assume that because the total population of women entering such programs is not any smarter on average, those who consistently perform well rather than quitting must therefore be of only average intelligence, and are making up for it by being more aggressive and competitive (than, I assume, the average man). It's equally possible that women of average or median intelligence deicde they're unlikely to succeed in that field and drop out, leaving only the best female students.
My wife is an EE and there were only 2 women in her graduating class out of a total of 30 or 35. She's had to put up her share of colleagues complaining about her being 'abrasive' and so on. It seems to me that this only exists relative to the complainant's prior expectations of women, eg her emails tend to be short and to the point rather than chatty or friendly. The horror.
Your argument is not logical. These were professionals in the same sphere: tech. And one could make the argument that the sample of men was also biased--towards men who liked tech.
No one claimed this was an iron clad peer reviewed scientific study--and I'd love to see some done on this in addition to those that already exist. Deborah Tannen is one of the more well known researchers in this area to uncover distinct gender patterns in speech that affect performance, for example.
There are now hundreds and hundreds of data points, and anecdotes. At what point is there enough evidence to convince some people that there IS a problem, and believe those of us who have experienced this exact phenomenon?
TBH this response is exactly what I thought I'd see on hacker news: attack the methodology, thus missing the forest for the trees.
I don't see the problem in sampling only professional women when the hypothesis is whether professional women are rated differently than professional men. It would be problematic if this hypothesis was tested with a sample from the overall female population. Non-professional women don't have reviews to be useful to the study. What you described is an explanation for WHY they are rated different. It doesn't discredit the study methodology.
Given that the frequency with which the key critical words are applied to men (essentially never) and women (essentially always), your explanation cannot tell the whole story.
Saying that this is inconclusive is a strange thing to claim - the evidence is plentiful. You are describing a serious but separate problem which adds to but does not explain this difference.
Let's boil that away even more: suppose that the population entering CS is representative of the total population. Then, let's suppose that the social barriers to graduation & the professional workforce are adequately high that it filters out women who are not exceptionally determined to succeed in this environment[1].
When I've talked with women about this, they generally seem to agree with that.
[1] Some women get death threats over their analysis of sexism in video games. I can't think of a more hostile environment.
I think this is an outgrowth of our general social tendency to judge men by what they do ("he works at a hedge fund!") and women by what they're like ("she's really sweet!").
I found this paragraph in particular interesting:
> Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead . . . . Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.
My current boss told me after I got hired that he liked me at my interview because I came across as aggressive. It's a personality trait that works great for men, because we're given a wide latitude between "aggressive behavior" and "abrasive" behavior. To a certain extent, we correlate a certain level of aggressiveness, credit-taking, and talking over others with leadership potential. But it seems for women, such behavior can result in being told: "Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine."
I have a pet theory that the reason that women (as well as non-traditionally-masculine men) are considered bossy, while other men are considered "go-getters" is due to a lack of the threat of violence. Not that a type-A guy is going to assault you if you don't capitulate to their authority. More that there is a perceived or possible threat.
In contrast to women who would be considered bossy or abrasive because they don't "back up" their claims to authority. I suppose that there is often a feeling of resentment that society/culture/custom is taking the place of that threat.
Again, all supposition and musing on my part. Probably much better articulated by someone writing on the subject 50 years ago!
But if you remove the other advantages/disadvantages of being female/male, and just ask someone: "Would you rather be judged on your profession/career or personality/behavior?", I think most rational people would pick the latter.
Is it possible that professional women are more abrasive than men in aggregate? I am not saying that is the case, only that it is another hypothesis from the data. If that was the case and I had to guess a reason, it would be that groups with more power insecurity tend to overcompensate in other areas.
Another explanation could be industry. More women work in Fashion and marketing, which have generally more dramatic environments.
This could also be the result of misapplying articles such as this one (http://www.rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2014-...) where women are taught to be dominant, and say things like "Stop interrupting me", and "I just said that". [Said article was making the rounds on Facebook among my professional female friends recently.]
Topics tend to be rehashed quite a lot in discussion, and sometimes people interrupt one another. It is entirely plausible that this probably affects women more than men. But if someone compensates by saying things like "I just said that", or "Stop interrupting me.", it is not surprising that they would get reviews that label them as abrasive; whereas they might just be trying to be more assertive than usual by following this sort of advice too literally.
Solutions? Perhaps a more holistic approach, where all parties involved are reminded that women might be less assertive, or be dominated in the conversation, and take steps to mitigate this. (Or possibly also being reminded that speaking is not
It's possible. It's equally possible that there's a lot of men who like to dish it out but can't take it.I used to do a lot of work with hedge funds and the amount of preening and effort invested in maintaining the pecking order (in an all-male environment) was just ridiculous.
It's possible, but the likelihood is so low some might wonder why you're bringing that possibility up rather than discuss the much more likely alternative and how we can fix it.
Also; "I asked men and women in tech if they would be willing to share their reviews for a study and didn’t stipulate anything else."
This surprises anyone? I was engaged to a high achieving woman for a period of time. I loved her, but damn, if I had to work with her, I wouldn't put up with her personality. Very aggressive, pushy, and intolerant, to my mind. Very quick to take offense at the slightest provocation, whether offense was intended, or merely the result of ignorance or incompetence.
Then again, I'm a libertarian-minded introvert, so I basically just want to let other people do their thing and have them leave me alone...
On the whole, I see the adversarial nature of gender politics that is often pushed as profoundly dysfunctional. Men and women are not the same. Each gender is better at some things and worse at others, on average. Men tend to have more variance, so you see more male geniuses and male idiots (the tails on the bell-curve are bigger), where women tend to cluster towards the mean more strongly. If we could just accept this, and spend our time trying to be happy, rather than demonizing each other, the world would be a better place.
I'm not surprised by this, but I am surprised that the author didn't mention her past research on this topic. Her shock at the "discovery" seems a little disingenuous.
The down vote is interesting since I actually agree with her primary research. Women should interrupt more. I've said as much when doing reviews myself.
It's very hard for us to overlook sexual dimorphism in everything we do, and it's not even clear we should. It's however very trendy nowadays to pretend that it doesn't exist, probably for political correctness reasons.
it's not that women are more aggressive, it's that they're perceived as more aggressive relative to expectations (by both male & female managers).
also, it's much more acceptable to challenge a woman's authority than it is a man's. when all you want to do is get things done, this social norm slows you down. you have to explain, persuade, and butter up your peers more as a woman. this is just one way that these subtle biases can lead to divergent outcomes (seeming to be less effective and successful in this case).
So what's the best way to rearrange corporate structures so that doing well in business doesn't require traits that don't match our cultural ideal for what women should be like? Or would changing cultural ideals be easier (maybe find a way to get hollywood on board)?
I guess I'm assuming here that "I figured only strong performers would be willing to share" is correct, and selected for mostly people who do behave in a mostly-ideal fashion for business success.
Men and women get different from of criticism. Our current culture is to judge men by what they do, women by their person. This article simply include an other example of a rather well established concept.
It would be kind of fun to see what happen if the reviewer intentionally reversed this and judged women solely from what they accomplish, and men on their personality with a token "The work ultimately went well". The resulting culture shock and mixed signals would be an interesting pattern to observe.
An other kind of interesting test would be a dating site that write the profiles for its clients. If they wrote female profile that only focused on job, earning, and skills, and a male profiles that only describe the person personality and looks, would the clients be happy when they got to read their own profiles?
I am a bit surprised, the review process I participate in would probably automatically reject the review; there is a legal check and one other whose name escapes me done with software that is really restrictive on words you can use. So I doubt these would arise in any company which has a robust legal department, you just don't do that anymore especially in writing. Mandatory HR meetings, too many electronically signed HR type docs, and it all goes the same way - offend certain groups and your not going to receive any support.
Did you happen to notice the author's full name and workplace? And at startups where much of the more recent notorious and egregious behavior is happening, there is no such thing as a legal department, let alone a robust one.
[+] [-] cperciva|11 years ago|reply
This mirrors an observation I've heard from several faculty members in computer science and engineering programs: As complete populations, girls aren't any smarter than boys on average, but in those programs the girls are always among the top students -- because it's only the most exceptional girls who overcome the social factors which keep most of their peers out of those subjects.
There may be a real effect here, but the evidence presented is inconclusive.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
Social factors like the assumption that women who consistently outrank their peers are 'significantly more aggressive'? I'm sure you mean well but your post here seems like a classic example of circular reasoning. You assume that because the total population of women entering such programs is not any smarter on average, those who consistently perform well rather than quitting must therefore be of only average intelligence, and are making up for it by being more aggressive and competitive (than, I assume, the average man). It's equally possible that women of average or median intelligence deicde they're unlikely to succeed in that field and drop out, leaving only the best female students.
My wife is an EE and there were only 2 women in her graduating class out of a total of 30 or 35. She's had to put up her share of colleagues complaining about her being 'abrasive' and so on. It seems to me that this only exists relative to the complainant's prior expectations of women, eg her emails tend to be short and to the point rather than chatty or friendly. The horror.
[+] [-] melindajb|11 years ago|reply
No one claimed this was an iron clad peer reviewed scientific study--and I'd love to see some done on this in addition to those that already exist. Deborah Tannen is one of the more well known researchers in this area to uncover distinct gender patterns in speech that affect performance, for example.
There are now hundreds and hundreds of data points, and anecdotes. At what point is there enough evidence to convince some people that there IS a problem, and believe those of us who have experienced this exact phenomenon?
TBH this response is exactly what I thought I'd see on hacker news: attack the methodology, thus missing the forest for the trees.
[+] [-] blutoot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learnstats|11 years ago|reply
Saying that this is inconclusive is a strange thing to claim - the evidence is plentiful. You are describing a serious but separate problem which adds to but does not explain this difference.
[+] [-] pnathan|11 years ago|reply
When I've talked with women about this, they generally seem to agree with that.
[1] Some women get death threats over their analysis of sexism in video games. I can't think of a more hostile environment.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
I found this paragraph in particular interesting:
> Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead . . . . Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows up three times, twice with an exhortation to be more of it.
My current boss told me after I got hired that he liked me at my interview because I came across as aggressive. It's a personality trait that works great for men, because we're given a wide latitude between "aggressive behavior" and "abrasive" behavior. To a certain extent, we correlate a certain level of aggressiveness, credit-taking, and talking over others with leadership potential. But it seems for women, such behavior can result in being told: "Sometimes you need to step back to let others shine."
[+] [-] bkirkbri|11 years ago|reply
In contrast to women who would be considered bossy or abrasive because they don't "back up" their claims to authority. I suppose that there is often a feeling of resentment that society/culture/custom is taking the place of that threat.
Again, all supposition and musing on my part. Probably much better articulated by someone writing on the subject 50 years ago!
[+] [-] kngspook|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2012|11 years ago|reply
Another explanation could be industry. More women work in Fashion and marketing, which have generally more dramatic environments.
[+] [-] parennoob|11 years ago|reply
Topics tend to be rehashed quite a lot in discussion, and sometimes people interrupt one another. It is entirely plausible that this probably affects women more than men. But if someone compensates by saying things like "I just said that", or "Stop interrupting me.", it is not surprising that they would get reviews that label them as abrasive; whereas they might just be trying to be more assertive than usual by following this sort of advice too literally.
Solutions? Perhaps a more holistic approach, where all parties involved are reminded that women might be less assertive, or be dominated in the conversation, and take steps to mitigate this. (Or possibly also being reminded that speaking is not
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukasb|11 years ago|reply
Do you have data on this?
[+] [-] justinsteele|11 years ago|reply
Also; "I asked men and women in tech if they would be willing to share their reviews for a study and didn’t stipulate anything else."
[+] [-] megaman22|11 years ago|reply
On the whole, I see the adversarial nature of gender politics that is often pushed as profoundly dysfunctional. Men and women are not the same. Each gender is better at some things and worse at others, on average. Men tend to have more variance, so you see more male geniuses and male idiots (the tails on the bell-curve are bigger), where women tend to cluster towards the mean more strongly. If we could just accept this, and spend our time trying to be happy, rather than demonizing each other, the world would be a better place.
[+] [-] hownottowrite|11 years ago|reply
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=13513
[+] [-] hownottowrite|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadassFractal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|11 years ago|reply
also, it's much more acceptable to challenge a woman's authority than it is a man's. when all you want to do is get things done, this social norm slows you down. you have to explain, persuade, and butter up your peers more as a woman. this is just one way that these subtle biases can lead to divergent outcomes (seeming to be less effective and successful in this case).
[+] [-] chc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrownaw|11 years ago|reply
So what's the best way to rearrange corporate structures so that doing well in business doesn't require traits that don't match our cultural ideal for what women should be like? Or would changing cultural ideals be easier (maybe find a way to get hollywood on board)?
I guess I'm assuming here that "I figured only strong performers would be willing to share" is correct, and selected for mostly people who do behave in a mostly-ideal fashion for business success.
[+] [-] kelukelugames|11 years ago|reply
I don't know if that means I transcended gender or just needed to find a better place to work.
[+] [-] belorn|11 years ago|reply
It would be kind of fun to see what happen if the reviewer intentionally reversed this and judged women solely from what they accomplish, and men on their personality with a token "The work ultimately went well". The resulting culture shock and mixed signals would be an interesting pattern to observe.
An other kind of interesting test would be a dating site that write the profiles for its clients. If they wrote female profile that only focused on job, earning, and skills, and a male profiles that only describe the person personality and looks, would the clients be happy when they got to read their own profiles?
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melindajb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThoreauAway|11 years ago|reply