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Originally posted by thatweirdgirl:
I don't have any stats in front of me, but I've seen it. I've seen men get better raises. Not everywhere, but it does still exist in places.

The field I see it most is politics. I can name a dozen countries that have twice the percent of women in high leadership positions. We have about the same percentage as France. Cuba, China, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Norway are just a few that have a greater percentage of women in charge than we do.

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Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown

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Barres’ experience as a female-to-male transgendered person led him to write a pointed commentary in the July 13 issue of Nature rebuking the comments of former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers that... the dearth of women in the upper levels of science is rooted in biology. Marshalling scientific evidence as well as drawing from personal experience, Barres maintained that, contrary to Summers’ remarks, the lack of women in the upper reaches of research has more to do with bias than aptitude.

“This is a street fight,” said Barres, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology and of developmental biology and of neurology and neurological sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, referring to the gang of male academics and pundits who have attacked women scientists critical of arguments about their alleged biological inferiority... After he began living as a man in 1997, Barres overheard another scientist say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s work.”

From Barres’ perspective the only thing that changed is his ability to cry. Other than the absence of tears, he feels exactly the same. His science is the same, his interests are the same and he feels the quality of his work is unchanged.

That he could be treated differently by people who think of him as a woman, as a man or as a transgendered person makes Barres angry. What’s worse is that some women don’t recognize that they are treated differently because, unlike him, they’ve never known anything else.

The irony, Barres said, is that those who argue in favor of innate differences in scientific ability do so without scientific data to explain why women make up more than half of all graduate students but only 10 percent of tenured faculty. ... “I am certain that all of the proponents of the Larry Summers hypothesis are well-meaning and fair-minded people,” he wrote in his Nature commentary. Yet because we all grew up in a culture that holds men and women to different standards, people are blind to their inherent biases, Barres said.

In his commentary Barres points to data from a range of studies showing bias in science. For example, when a mixed panel of scientists evaluated grant proposals without names, men and women fared equally well. However, competing unblinded, a woman applying for a research grant needed to be three times more productive than men to be considered equally competent.... “Most people do think there is a level playing field despite all the data to the contrary,”

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Inequality of the Sexes

Hey all,

I was inspired to write based on something I read in the "I love America" thread.

Someone mentioned that women still don't have equal employment opportunity to men in this country.

I don't know any statistics or how they are derived, but my personal lifetime experience has not been thus.

I work for a Bank. My wife works for the same Bank.

She has been working for this bank for about the same time that I have.

We have identical schooling and we are the same age. She's much better at her job than I am. She dedicates herself fully to the job, and goes that extra mile.

That's why she's gotten promoted twice, and earns more money than me.

When I got hired by this bank, my Supervisor was a female. Eventually, I got a new supervisor. Also female. Then a third supervisor... Female. I am now on my fourth supervisor and this one is a male.

But his boss, the assistant vice president, is female.

Before this assistant vice president was in charge, the previous assistant vice president was a female.

The president of my entire division of the bank is a female.

This is a hundred-year old banking institution, traditionally seen in popular entertainment as being run by old-timey sexist males.

Before I had this job, I worked for a telemarketing company as a quality assurance representative. My boss was a female. She was replaced eventually with a male. That male was finally replaced by a female. THEIR boss (vice president of the company) was a female.

Before the telemarketing job, I worked as a security dispatcher for a hospital. My immediate supervisor was a female. Her boss was a male.

Before the security dispatching job for the hospital, I had a security dispatching job for a major security firm providing luxury condominium security. My first boss was female, though most of my co-workers and all of my subsequent bosses there were male. It might have been because of a male-sexist environment, but if so, I never saw it. I never heard any conversations or suggestions about keeping women 'down.' I also noted that very few applicants were female. I've always attributed the low percentage of female employees to the low percentage of female applicants. Perhaps a near-minimum wage security job wasn't attractive to the average female? I don't know.

Before that, I worked as a Police Department dispatcher. My immediate supervisor was female. HER supervisor was female. The lieutenant in charge of the communications department was Male.

Before that, I worked as a salesman at Radio Shack. My first store Manager was male, but my second and longest-serving store Manager was female.

As I look back into my life, I can not draw upon any personal experiences where I noted that women were denied opportunities for advancement. I have never seen the ceiling that keeps good women down. I have never heard the back-room discussions about preventing women from reaching success.

Have I just led a very odd life with a miracle career path? Or has the legend of the female glass ceiling persisted past the reality of it?

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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