What do you do when the only person in the conversation speaking up for women is a woman?
–––
Friday night and the Opera Bar is heaving: suits staring at skirts, skirts staring at suits, tourists staring at the opera house. Andrew arrives twenty minutes late under a dark cloud. This isn’t just a metaphor; the first drops of rain start falling as he says hello to me and Lauchlan and kisses Annia on the cheek.
“You alright?” I ask him as we shuffle closer together around the bird-table we’ve been guarding since we arrived. It’s one of the few which stand under the canvas canopies sheltering parts of this open-air bar.
“Fine” he says “Absolutely fine.”
“Fine as in good?” says Lauchie “Or F.I.N.E. as in Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotionally unstable?”
But Andrew is in no mood for an old joke. He tells us he’s going to the bar, asks each of us what we want, and turns into the crowd which is thickening around us in an attempt to escape the rain.
“You said Andrew had an announcement.” Annia looks at me accusingly, like I might have wasted her Friday night. “You told Lauchie he had some good news to share.”
Actually I told Lauchie in absolute confidence that perhaps Andrew might possibly (nothing definitely, just my speculation) have some good news on Friday night. Maybe.
“No I didn’t” I say to Annia.
We both look at Lauchlan.
“You did” he says with unusual eye-contact. “You said Andrew had important news, so we should all make sure to be here.”
Backing down in front of Annia the Nemesis is more than I can bear.
|
My loyalties are torn. Lauchlan is lying – who knows what domestic has ensued for him to persuade Annia they need to be here? – and normally I would cover for him. But backing down in front of Annia the Nemesis is more than I can bear. I’m saved by Andrew’s return from the bar. All of us have a superpower and Andrew’s is being served first at any bar he approaches.
“Ged says you have news” Annia says to him, where perhaps I would have said “Thanks for my white wine”.
Andrew looks at me furiously, then remembers he’s got a beer for me and shoves it in my direction.
◊♦◊
“I do have news, actually” he says. “My news is that the promotion I’ve been working on for the last two years is, as of today, not happening. Cheers.”
Lauchlan and I make sympathetic noises, while Annia asks Andrew what led to his misjudgement of the situation.
“My ‘misjudgement of the situation?’” Andrew says slowly, and I think Oh great, at last I’m not the only one who doesn’t like her. “That’s good, Annia. Perfect in fact. My misjudgement of the situation was that I thought the best man, sorry, best person for the job would actually get the job. I hadn’t realised that due to the firm’s policy of diversity in leadership, they would choose to place a woman, no matter what happened.”
I hadn’t realised that due to the firm’s diversity policy they would promote a woman no matter what.
|
“Ouch” says Lauchlan. “Not that one from the competition?”
“Yes, exactly that one from the competition. My new boss is the same person who stole two of my best clients last year.”
“Sounds like she’s better qualified for the job,” says Annia, “if she took two of your clients from you.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.” Andrew swears and pushes back on two guys behind him who are trying to welcome a friend out of the rain and into their circle. “I’ve taken just as many clients off her. We’ve met loads of times over the years; we actually get along and joke about it. But she’s not better qualified than me. We’re ‘clearly matched in almost all areas’, the powers that be made that very clear. It’s just they want thirty per cent of leadership roles given to women.”
I ask him if the bank actually told him that’s why he didn’t get the job, trying to make it sound less unlikely than it really does.
“It’s in all our comms” he says. “Everywhere you look, this thirty per cent target, more women in senior roles. So when two of us are equally qualified, the woman gets the job.”
I have strong views about positive discrimination but now doesn’t seem like the time to share them.
|
I have strong views about the importance of positive discrimination, but now doesn’t seem like the time to share them. Annia doesn’t have any such qualms.
“I think your first comment was right” she says. “Before you corrected yourself. You were going to say ‘I thought the best man for the job would get the job.’ You didn’t think it might be a woman. That’s the problem they’re trying to fix.”
“Annia” says Lauchie. “It’s just an expression.”
“It’s not just an expression, it’s a cultural norm. It’s a mindset. That’s exactly what they’re trying to change.”
It bothers me that the only person in this conversation speaking up for women is a woman. What should I do? Sympathise with my mate or speak my truth?
◊♦◊
“Do you really think she only got the job because she’s a woman?” I ask Andrew.
“Well, it certainly didn’t hurt.”
“But it would have in the past?”
Andrew looks at me sourly and takes a swig from his beer. The crowd around us is thicker than ever – the guys behind Andrew pushing into him again – and now loud rain on the canvas overhead. Andrew shakes his head like it’s still sinking in.
“She’s not even the kind of woman they normally promote. She’s nice, you know. Friendly, always talking about her kids, bit of a laugh.”
“Jesus” says Lauchie, “sounds nothing like any of the female execs I’ve ever had to deal with.”
The old system only ever promoted women who behaved like men.
|
“I think that’s the whole point” I say, before Annia can. “The old system only ever promoted women who behaved like men, or more so to prove themselves. The whole point of positive discrimination is to break the mould. To ensure more types of women have a chance.”
“I’m not so sure” says Andrew. “I’ve always promoted on performance and potential, not on whether someone had a dick or not.”
Annia laughs. “Men talk about sexism like white people talk about racism. ‘I can’t see it so it doesn’t exist’. Maybe you men need to understand that your time in the sun is over.”
“Great!” says Andrew. “So I’m never going to get promoted again.”
“No” I say, a bit annoyed now. “That’s not how it works. It’s not that your, our, time in the sun is over. It’s just that now we don’t have the sun exclusively to ourselves. You say your company has a target of thirty per cent of senior jobs for women. So there’s still twice as many senior jobs going to men. Positive discrimination is about inclusion, not exclusion. It’s about opening up opportunities for people who didn’t have them before.”
“Easy for you to say” says Andrew. “How would you like it if next month, just before your book comes out, someone says ‘Oh no, sorry. Only books by women are coming out this month?’”
“But that’s not a good analogy. It’s more like ‘Sorry, until now almost a hundred per cent of books have been by men, and now we’re reducing it to seventy per cent, and I’m sorry but you didn’t make that seventy per cent.”
Would you rather get a promotion in a field where only men can compete?
|
I’ve kind of raised my voice during this exchange and it’s followed by an awkward silence. Like I’ve just told Andrew it was right he didn’t get the job. “Look, you’re competitive. Would you rather get a promotion in a field where only men could compete, or would you rather get on where you the best of a much broader field?”
“I guess it’s like paying high taxes” says Lauchie. “It hurts, but it’s the price you pay for living in a country which tries to look after everyone. In theory at least.”
Lauchie’s trying to help me out here, move the conversation into a familiar economic argument. Andrew’s about to respond – he can never resist an argument about tax – but he’s interrupted by Annia.
“What did they say when they told you why she got the job rather than you?”
Andrew sighs and loosens his tie. “They said she was better at collegiality and had a more nurturing style of leadership. They said I could learn from her in those areas, and then be ready for a more senior position.”
“Ha! So maybe she did get the job because she’s a woman” says Annia.
Andrew and Lauchie don’t get it, so I explain.
Companies don’t only want women in senior roles because of equal opportunity.
|
“Companies don’t only want women in senior roles because of equal opportunity. It’s because they also bring to the table skills generally lacking in all-male environments. Collaboration, coaching, a more rounded approach.”
The guys behind Andrew push into him once again and suddenly he’s had enough. He turns quickly, clearly about to push back more violently than before. Before he can, Annia is around the table and between him and the other suits. She taps the nearest of them firmly on the shoulder and then explaining, in that sweetness she can produce from nowhere, how we all need to share the space, and could they be careful, and let’s all watch out for each other please.
She then pushes Andrew aside, into the space she was standing in before, and takes his place at the table.
Looking for more conversations about 21st century social issues? Check out more from 5 Bad Surfers
Photo Credit: Getty Images
I agree with the sentiments in this article. I don’t think we’ve gone far enough in terms of gender equality. Women’s underrepresentation in the prison population is absolutely scandalous. Let’s shoot for modest goal of 30% of prisoners being women by 2030. Come on, America, we can do it. I won’t go so far as to suggest that women be 51% of those executed by capital punishment. A modest 30% would be acceptable, just to get the ball rolling. Let’s stop turning down all these women who are fighting to work in coal mines. Let’s stop restricting extremely dangerous jobs… Read more »
Look, I’m probably older than most of you responding and can remember in the early 1970’s the advent of ‘Affirmative Action’. As a young man just starting out on my own life journey, I was somewhat miffed by how proponents could claim that by giving preference to certain individuals we would promote ‘equality’. When I questioned how discriminating against those not of the ‘chosen ‘ group was promoting equality, I was told this was a TEMPORARY measure needed to quicken the “Leveling of the playing field”. As we enter the 5th DECADE of this’ temporary’ measure, I’ve come to realize… Read more »
Andrew isn’t qualified for a promotion, because he clearly doesn’t know how to play the games that his employer wants him to play. He’s not able to think the way that upper management thinks, so how can he ever be part of upper management? He needs to identify something about himself that is under-represented in his business or in his company. If he thinks that being a white male is an insurmountable obstacle, then he either lacks imagination or has no head for diversity politics. Don’t be a quitter, Andrew, just learn how to play the game better. I guarantee… Read more »
P.S. Andrew: dump these two so-called friends and find people who are better able to be your friend.
“When you play the game of quotas, you win or you die.”
Ha! Winter is coming, Andrew. Winter is coming.
“Positive discrimination is about inclusion, not exclusion.” False dichotomy. It’s actually BOTH, if we’re talking about percentage targets. Math is cruel and terribly inconvenient. If the goal is to include 30% of one group, then you are automatically excluding people who are not in that group. How is it even an argument that there’s no exclusion involved? No matter how you slice it, the number MUST add up to 100%, no more no less. Percentage quotas are by definition exclusionary, even when done in the name of inclusion. Here’s what the argument boils down to in Andrew’s case: he must… Read more »
I see Annia’s point. I also see an incredible irony in the way she responded to Andrew’s complaint. She did something that men have been criticized for doing over and over again, something that men are supposed to be working on improving: She expressed no empathy or validation of his feelings whatsoever. She went straight into pointing out to him why he’s wrong. She set out to show him why his responses are illegitimate, show him that he misinterpreted the situation, and tell him that he must bear the consequences for an entire gender of people. She is NOT behaving… Read more »
Maybe that’s meant to a subtle, satirical point here? “See how it feels when a woman dismisses YOUR feelings because of her own gender agenda.” ? If so, it’s a little awkward.
No just awkward but pretty much hypocritical. Can you imagine what the outrage would be if someone started telling that to women? “See how it feels when women are told they can’t be raped because they are women.”
There is a way to argue for more inclusion without male bashing. This article unfortunately fails to do so.
One of my wife’s oldest friends (since childhood) was over about a month ago. Now this woman is ‘Super Competitive’. The opposite of my wife (go figure) and sees ‘sexism’ under every rock and behind every tree. I basically tolerate her for my wife’s sake. Anyway, here she was ranting and raving that her one and only child, her son, had been denied a spot in an prestigious engineering college while female candidates with lower S.A.T.’s and entrance exam scores had gotten in. It seems the school had a ‘Target’ (that’s the newspeak word for quotas) and he got squeezed… Read more »
Let’s remember here that 30% is a target, no a quota. At the end of the day, any business’s first aim is to make money – and they wouldn’t have this target if it wasn’t going to make them money. Also, if we assume that men and women want top jobs in equal numbers, then until the number of successful candidates is roughly 50/50, then there’s something in the way of that natural outcome occurring. Positive discrimination is a way of ensuring those obstacles are removed. I don’t think anyone who hires anyone in a commercial business is dumb enough… Read more »
But having a target means you go that extra mile to ensure all candidates have an equal chance. If I, as a white man, only ever hired white men, I would begin to ask myself why. Nothing wrong with asking yourself that. But are you sure the answer must be, “I only hire white guys because I’m intentionally ignoring all other demographics of candidates.”? In this particular case mentioned in the article its clear that the hiring managers though the woman they hired was the best candidate. That’s fine and most people wouldn’t argue with that. However can we say… Read more »
And, it will always backfire at some point, because every floor is also a ceiling.
Quotas are great until you become the new “over-represented” group. When there are “too many people like Annia”, will she be okay with getting passed over for promotion because of positive discrimination? Somehow I think not.
Looking at the bottom line, I’m surprised no one mentioned an obvious financial benefit to hiring women over men: women make less than men do.
So, is this company trying to be more inclusive, or trying to find people willing to work for less?
There’s been a lot of wordplay with “quota” meaning whatever people want it to mean. Using “target” instead of “quota” evolved in the 1990’s as a way to maintain affirmative action programs under a different name. In fact, the Federal government in the 90’s redefined “quota” to mean “a target that you reach.” Therefore, you were only guilty of quotas if you were fully successful. Come up 1% short on your quotas and the Feds won’t call it a quota. So, here’s how that logic played out. You could discriminate as much as you wanted in the name of affirmative… Read more »
I think affirmative action of this type is always going to come across poorly, for the simple reason that while men still dominate certain jobs, there’s no active policy towards hiring them. The disparity isn’t necessarily always intentional – possibly inadvertant, or simply due to lack of interest from women for other reasons.
The difference is, any attempt to correct this by forcing a quota is imposing an actively discriminatory policy on a workplace. Active discrimination comes across as a worse thing to me than unintentional discrimination.
The guy should’ve been told that the job was going to be offered to a woman from the get go instead of having him waste two years working his butt off for nothing.
Ah, but then upper management wouldn’t have been able to string him and maybe others along and get them to work extra hard for two years thinking they ‘Had a shot’. In fact, think about it, if you worked for a company knowing they had a specific gender quota in mind and if you weren’t the ‘right’ gender, but you do the math in your head, realizing it’s going to take several promotions to reach this percentage, you might start freshening up your resume, right?
“Easy for you to say” says Andrew. “How would you like it if next month, just before your book comes out, someone says ‘Oh no, sorry. Only books by women are coming out this month?’” “But that’s not a good analogy. It’s more like ‘Sorry, until now almost a hundred per cent of books have been by men, and now we’re reducing it to seventy per cent, and I’m sorry but you didn’t make that seventy per cent.” Actually it is a perfect analogy. Because they aren’t rotating management on a monthly basis. If they are looking to increase the… Read more »
There’s a very easy solution to all of this. This is mostly about paper representation. Get some of the men in the company to officially declare themselves women on some forms, and bingo, the percentages have changed.
How could anyone ever enforce these percentages without doing chromosome tests or physical exams, assuming those would be conclusive anyway?
I keep hearing how gender is contingent and fluid and everything, so how dare anyone protest when someone who you think is male declares she is female.
Yah I would not respect a boss who only got the job for being a women/Black/ or white/male. It is pretty hard to know for sure however.
“Men talk about sexism like white people talk about racism.” This is, once again, perpetuation of stereotypes. And there is no such thing as positive discrimination.
The only leg that statement has to stand on is the presumption that female/male dynamic are just as one sided as white/black dynamics.
Funny thing is most people who would say, ““Men talk about sexism like white people talk about racism.” are the very first people to complain about Oppression Olympics if you challenge that statement. And by complain I mean they will accuse YOU of playing Oppression Olympics. Yes in their minds its okay to liken being male to being white and being female to being black but actually exploring those differences is a no no.
Especially since as a group, I honestly don’t think anyone has gotten the s**t end of the stick more than Black Males!
Gay or straight? Cis or transgender? Would most black women agree?
I keep seeing statistics suggesting that atheists are actually the most distrusted minority in the United States. They’re at the bottom of everyone’s sh*t list, across the board.
Sorry, maybe it’s *top* of the sh*t list? A dubious honor either way.
Let women have all the jobs! Men can lower their overhead tremendously. No reason for me to be a slave to the grind 😀
I don’t understand what is the point this website? It seems like it’s supposed to be for men in a good way, but all of the comments from men are hateful? I don’t get it.
This is a good question!
Silke, go read “advice for women” from America in the early half of the 20th century.
This is what GMP often sounds like to us.
Disagreement & criticism =/= hate
Hope this helps 🙂
As ever, if you’re offering help to a group, it needs to be the sort of help that the group actually needs and wants.
Since when is disagreeing with someone hateful? It reminds me of when Bush said, “You are either with us or against us.” That mindset is the real problem.
Maybe we should have some positive discrimination on the comments. Men’s comments can only comprise 30% of the total. That ought to cut the hate down some.
That would be a great thing for the internet, actually; if males’ hateful comments and/or threats could only comprise 30% of the total, the internet would become such a MUCH better, peaceful and civilized place! 😀
Why single out men’s hateful comments? Why not both hateful comments from both men and women? I don’t see the point in ignoring the other side of the problem, do you?
If you don’t want to hear comments from men that aren’t blowing smoke up your rear, perhaps you should go elsewhere
For the last approx 100 years (ish) women have received the lions share of custody decision in child custody case, I wonder how people would feel about a policy that says “We are going to give men at least 30% of custody no matter what”
Hold on now, I mean, let’s not get crazy here! Next you’ll be suggesting at ways to get more men into education and nursing and places where women hold an overwhelming advantage.
Bobbt , that is what happens in some other countries.
Why is that such a terrible idea?
I was being sarcastic Silke.
Very ridiculously done sarcasm, as that is actually a good idea.
It is a good idea, but a lot of so-called equality activists aren’t suggesting such
“Hold on now, I mean, let’s not get crazy here! Next you’ll be suggesting at ways to get more men into education and nursing and places where women hold an overwhelming advantage.”
Like college.
…Oh wait no, that’s all well and good because… uh…. STEM. (and, you know, not all of STEM… just some parts of it.)
Women hold an overwhelming *advantage* in college? Why?
More of them are graduating from it than men, for one.
DItto high school in some countries too.
Well, yeah. More women graduate at all levels of education than do men. What else could that *possibly* mean?
is Positive Discrimination the same as “Good Cancer”
All discrimination is “positive” to the people who benefit from it and bad for the people hurt by it. It’s positive until it bites you on the ass, and then it’s unfair. Annia, et al, need to remember that eventually they will be the ones hurt by “positive discrimination.”
“Positive” doesn’t always mean “good.” Maybe it’s positive like being “HIV positive”? Testing “positive for ebola”?
That bar conversation felt like someone dragging their fingernails across a chalk board.
If I ever have to make an announcement of this sort, I will make sure to go to a noisy music playing bar. Less chance of a stupid brush fire of a conversation starting up.
Yeah, but at least it let him know how his “Friends” were really there for him. Yeah , right.
Yikes, with friends like you guys I can’t imagine what his enemies must be like. When someone makes an announcement like that they don’t need to be educated, they need some sympathy. Save your opinions for later when the wound has closed up a little. There’s a time and a place for everything, and rationalising stuff when he’s been working towards something he didn’t get for 2 years (regardless of your thoughts on the matter) is a really shitty thing to do. You’re lucky he didn’t throw his beer in your face and walk off, most people probably would have.
You’ve got a point!
Sometimes uncomfortable conversations need to happen at uncomfortable times to change the normative conversation that we all sometimes fall into. It’s serious time to break some major stereotypes and it sounds like this conversation was confronting social issues. It sounded like this conversation was needed considering how Andrew seemed to hold some prejudice that a woman gaining a leadership position he was competing for too, only got it because she was a woman and not on the merits of her accomplishments. Andrew thought he was the best man for the job. He didn’t even consider the fact that maybe his… Read more »
So, let’s do a recap here Erin. Friend is supposed to have important news which is shared in confidence. Friend’s news turns out to be completely wrong – he has seen two years of work culminate in nothing. It doesn’t matter if he lost the promotion to a Nobel Prize recipient, that’s seriously going to hurt. Friend is upset at said news and doesn’t even wish to discuss it, but it is brought up anyway. Now he’s no doubt embarrassed to be sharing his bad news, plus dealing with the fact something he said in confidence was betrayed. Friend is… Read more »
Bob,
Next on The Goodmenproject:
Read all about how a woman loses a custody case, comes to her friends for support who then go on to tell her how it’s just fair and that she shouldn’t be all that entitled about having it all…
Bob puts it very well. Please! Never count me in your circle of friends Ged Gillmore!
Erin, Fighting for the cause isn’t an excuse to put sympathy, empathy, respect, kindness, and tact on pause. Bob’s response to you is an excellent breakdown of how that interaction went down. And that’s not the first time this has happened the problem is people are so anxious to “change the system” that they are actually taking pleasure in hurting other people or even breaking the rules of common courtesy to do it. As dads take a larger role in parenting do you see any posts are articles where women are just spoken to any old kind of way? No… Read more »
Most people *YOU know or is close to. Most people I know and am close to are civilized enough not to do that.
So, discrimination can be positive as long as it’s aimed at white males? I guess the same holds true for exclusion?
Hi Bobbt,
I think it’s all about inclusion rather than exclusion. No one is excluding men from these jobs…they’re just opening up the field to everyone.
gg
You think the people pushing for quotas- many of whom have their livelihoods dependent on ‘the struggle’- will stop when they reach 50%? They didn’t for college admissions.
It’s just that all my life I’ve been told discrimination is a BAD thing and now you come and say that so long as it’s directed at white males, it’s a GOOD thing. An ‘inclusive ‘thing?
Yah I have issue with using discrimination to solve discrimination… but that just means I am racist.
“No one is excluding men from these jobs…they’re just opening up the field to everyone.”
Yes, actually, they are. 30% of the jobs are guaranteed to go to women. Absolutely nothing guarantees that any of the remaining 70% will go to men.
So, in order to combat discrimination against women that is illegal-but-still-occurring (or so we’re told, anyway) the proposal is to not only legalize discrimination against men… but to *mandate* it.
“Collaboration, coaching, a more rounded approach” …. Oh, and the women that just was hired as director of business operations? As “performance improvement” surveys were done, common complaints are she micromanages, condescending, not open to suggestions and controlling.
Yeah… I’m starting to see why others are saying you’ve made these up. They fit a little *too* well with the point you’re trying to make.
Also, it’s funny to me how you (general) can say “oh well, women are better at (caring, nuturing, compassion, cooperation, whatever) and nobody bats an eye, but if you try to assert men being better at something than women, everybody loses their collective bowels over it.
I’m with you 8ball … you have my up vote.
“Collaboration, coaching, a more rounded approach” As a man, the best bosses I’ve ever worked for have been men. The worst boss ever was a women. My wife, who has been in and out of the professional work force as stated that she would never work for a women again. With the exception of one women manager at my company (there are 5), all of them have had official complaints filed against them and MOST of the complaints have been from female staff.
And for me, almost the contrary happens.
That must be awesome being married to a sexist woman… as long as the sexism is against other women, right? Maybe that brings her closer to your own point of view about women.
So, his wife speaking honestly about her own experiences- that she’s had bad female bosses is sexism but you speaking about your experiences- that you’ve had bad male bosses (which is what I’m assuming you mean by “almost the contrary”) isn’t?
why?