Women failing for no good reason
Unfortunately, when you fail for no good reason, you're likely to latch onto a dumb explanation for failure and therefore advocate fixing the wrong thing.The Wall Street Journal descended to a little pandering recently with an article about how women don't get promoted enough because they get asked to do scut work that's considered "non-promotable."It should be obvious that any corporation not run by saintly geniuses is full of people who are very good at figuring out which hapless co-workers can be conned into doing their scutwork. The ones who qualify for promotions have the good sense to decline. It does seem that men disproportionately figure this gambit out, perhaps because women are too focused on playing Nice Girl and expecting a a warm, nurturing pat on the head as they are positioned for success, and therefore miss the chance to play Competent Team Member and earn a promotion honestly. If Nice Girl is more important, fine, more power to you, but accept that a promotion isn't in the cards. Your reward will have to take another form. Luxuriate in your indifference to filthy lucre and rejection of tainted patriarchal status.The Journal cut off comments after receiving only about 55, but not before several women exposed the article's absurd premise.
Schools reward many behaviors that do not carry over into many workplaces. Girs who succeeded at school - disproportionately, I should add, because of many things in the education structure - become women who feel ripped off because the rules have suddenly changed. Lots of boys get culled at school, and fortunately many of them find other avenues to success. But boys are alerted earlier to the idea that life isn't fair, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and other sayings that became cliches for good reason. The boys who survived school, or even excelled at it thus have received two educations by the time they become men. Also, that population is now more select. A hundred women who came through a gentle system are competing against a hundred men who came through a tough one. They suddenly have new rules while competing against a more selected group. It's going to feel unfair, and they naturally start looking for referees to appeal the game to.
ReplyDeleteI admit I am overgeneralising. There are plenty of females who figured out something was up, usually long before they left school and adapted in any of a hundred ways, as you noted. Plenty of males survived and excelled at school without figuring out they were about to enter a world with different rules.
I agree--women traditionally were raised to believe that the path to success was deference and service, and so it is, if they're in a certain path. If they reject that path, however, and want success in a competitive social organization organized along traditionally masculine lines, complete with power, status, money, recognition, etc., they have to adapt and overcome.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, a boy raised to claw his way to success on a football team would have a terrible time succeeding in a field that called for traditional feminine skills of tact, collaboration, and self-denial. The boy would be equally absurd complaining that the feminine field failed to reward his inherently excellent masculine qualities.
Whatever the challenge is, it's up to us to exhibit the qualities that equal success in it. It's not up to the challenge to alter itself. We can, of course, decide that we reject a particular sort of challenge on ethical or other grounds, and march to a different drummer. But rejecting a challenge on its merits is not the same as excelling at it or making out like a bandit on its unfair social or material rewards, and we have to choose.
The same applies, I think, to the constant complaints about what endeavors pay well and what don't. If money is all that matters, then do what pays best. If money isn't that important, then earn less, but for Heaven's sake, quit complaining about being put to the choice, or about how much more money someone else has got.
I spent a while as a consultant. At one client company, a young woman (considered high-potential) was assigned to me as an assistant. I had her gathering data--you could call it scut-work. She did a pretty good job. But I decided some more data was needed in order for us to draw the proper conclusions.
ReplyDeleteShe basically had a temper tantrum...it became clear that she didn't really care as much about the quality of the recommendation we made and its impact on her employer as she did about wrapping up this task, getting a check mark on her internal resume, and moving on to something else.
Guess who *didn't* come to mind when, a couple of years later, I was hiring people for some very lucrative positions with a lot of potential?
You read through 55 comments?
ReplyDeleteThe scutwork the article referred to was fetching coffee, picking up dry-cleaning, bringing food, that kind of thing. Nothing to do with on-the-job training for a junior team member.
ReplyDeleteI’m hoping when we do build back better that only men will be able to vote
ReplyDeleteGiving women the ability to vote was a really bad idea. And yes I’m sure I’ll be despise for this comment.
I will never work with a woman as a boss again. Honest.
Greg
No man can be responsible for a woman’s feelings. Impossible task for any man Not our problem. In order to combat socialism and communism if we take away the vote from women it’ll put us in much better standing To wipe out those evils
ReplyDeleteGreg
https://www.thinkinghousewife.com/2010/04/is-it-acceptable-to-question-the-franchise/
Did you see the video called “Chanconne”? That guy is ugly like I am. He learned Medieval lute to try to be attractive to women. His whole life is built around that, as is all of ours.
ReplyDeleteWhether they vote or not is beside the point. If you can’t see that you’re as blind as the women who bother Tex.
We tend to think about rewards and rights and powers as things that land in our laps. I've known many people trapped in what I call the "Raise Fairy" thinking: a raise in pay is something that the Raise Fairy leaves under your pillow while you sleep. (Similarly, a political right or power--or good roads or healthcare--magically appears.) I believe the root of this kind of thinking is that it's very uncomfortable to imagine asking for things and being turned down. It's so much more comfortable if the waiter comes and puts the plate in front of you. (Or, more to the psychological point, Mommy.) Then, if the Raise Fairy (or other caretaker surrogate) lets you down, you can get resentful. The standards are unfair, the wrong people have gained influence in our society, and so on.
ReplyDeleteBut even children contribute to the world they live in, and grownups absolutely must be building it all the time, cooperating and negotiating with each other. Of course we can point out injustices and errors to each other, but that will never substitute for figuring out how we must act in order to induce the people around us to behave as we would hope. We have to bring solutions to the table. We have to care what other people want.
That was very courteously expressed.
ReplyDeleteTex..."We tend to think about rewards and rights and powers as things that land in our laps"
ReplyDeleteI observe that a lot of people say something like "I did everything I was supposed to do, but..."
For example, "I got my advanced degree like I was told to do, but here I am in this lousy non-prospects job"
Of course, it matters less whether you do what you were *supposed* to do, according to some authority or other, than whether you do what *works*. I suspect that this point is better understood by farmers and hunters and mechanics...and salesmen...than by those in many typical careers today.
David, I concur. I did everything I was "supposed to" and had to switch careers twice. "Supposed to" didn't work when the rug got pulled out by forces beyond my control. Hard work, knocking on "wrong" doors, and sweat equity did lead to results. Either I could resent that I'd done everything "right" and still ended up in the cold, or I could roll with it and find a different way to feed myself.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like it, don't like it, but that's how the world works.
LittleRed1
Yes, a lot of people are looking for a failsafe way to check boxes, which may work in some public sector jobs, I don't know, but it's no good path to success in a self-respecting competitive private business. The managers of a business want to hire people who will increase profits, over and above their pay package. That's who they give raises to, too. There's no such thing as "everything I was supposed to do." No one is going to be writing us out a simple list of things we can do and then head home in the secure hope of regular raises and promotions, as if we were satisfying the minimum requirements to be issued a permit. And even if we really are Heaven's best gift to the company, if the company fails, our job isn't guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteImagine a business complaining that its customers faded away even after it "did everything it was supposed to do." Actually, I represented businesses like that in bankruptcy. They had a strong tendency to draft statements to include in their bankruptcy petitions that stressed how little they were at fault in the business's failure. Of course, they often did have catastrophic events to point to, market collapses, abrupt regulatory changes, fraud, and so on. But their creditors (who would eventually be voting on their bankruptcy plans) weren't interested in whether they did everything they were supposed to do. The creditors needed to evaluate whether management had what it took to turn the business around, or whether all-new management needed to be installed.
And boy, you know who really makes noises like that? Protected monopolies, like regulated utilities. The spin that emitted from the many power company bankruptcies after about 2000 was amazing.
ReplyDeleteMany, many years ago I read a book called Games Mother Never Taught You. I would still recommend it highly for any woman in the business world.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, my memories of that excellent book were in the forefront of my mind in everything I said in this post and comment thread. I particularly liked her description of "knothole polishing"--the obsessive attention to the details of a task that become important and fulfilling to the employee but are perfectly irrelevant to the goals of the company as established by its decision-makers, who also decide on raises, promotions, and terminations. The employee resents management's failure to ascribe appropriate value to the beautifully polished knothole, while management simply can't get rid of the employee fast enough, in despair that she will ever learn which ball she's supposed to have her eye on.
ReplyDeleteI recognize the problem all the more readily because I am an almost incorrigible knothole-polisher by nature. My challenge was always to find a kind of knothole-polishing that fire me up and at the same time was of some value to someone in a position to pay me a salary or a professional fee.
This career trap used to be a particular hazard for callow young women entering the workforce without appropriate social, educational, or familial training. I wonder if it's becoming more of a problem for all 28 genders in the Snowflake Era? For me it has a particularly socialist appeal: the job is there to nurture me, and my bosses (if not all of society) should act like idealized parents.
I stumbled into being a computer programmer/analyst for application programs. It's the perfect job for a knothole-polisher.
ReplyDeleteAs for the job being there to nurture the employee, years ago I heard some radio guy say: it's a job, there's a reason they call it work; do it well but don't look for it to provide meaning- you get that from the rest of your life.