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posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 10 2019, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the unsurprising dept.

From ieee

Female IEEE members say they face significant discrimination in the workplace, including demeaning comments, inappropriate job-interview questions, and exclusion from networking events and important business meetings.

Those were among the most common negative experiences reported by more than 4,500 members—associate member grade and above—from around the world who answered a survey IEEE conducted in 2017. The results were released last year.

Almost half of those surveyed worked in academia, and about 30 percent were from private industry. The rest worked for governmental or nonprofit institutions, or were graduate students or self-employed. The majority of respondents (65 percent) lived outside the United States.


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  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @03:01PM (15 children)

    by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @03:01PM (#841859) Journal

    I think the first part of your comment is correct, but the second part isn't. Behavior like this can go both ways at some scale while still mostly going in one direction. Just from what I've seen in workplaces anecdotally I have a hard time believing that this behavior goes both ways in anywhere near equal measure.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @03:53PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @03:53PM (#841884)

    The fact is, there are significantly more males in high technology fields than females.

    So if we assume that "being an asshole" is a trait which is equally likely between males and females, the expected result will be that, in the technology sector, there will be significantly more male assholes than there will be female assholes.

    This may cause things to look like there is a disproportionate amount of male assholes in the technology sector even if no such bias exists, just due to sheer differences in numbers.

    Studies should probably also consider female-dominated fields, such as public education, and see what the proportion of assholes looks like there.

    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @04:04PM (12 children)

      by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @04:04PM (#841892) Journal

      First of all, I don't assume that "being an asshole" is equally likely among men and women -- men are statistically more disagreeable than women on average. Second, it's not just "being an asshole" that we're talking about, it's "being an asshole when somebody of the opposite gender does better than you at a task in the workplace." I don't know of good data concerning that, but I've anecdotally witnessed it so much -- sometimes with gender being explicitly mentioned by the offending party, as in (literal quote from a newly hired guy I worked with for one day when we both had a female boss) "I'm not taking orders from a woman" -- that I find it highly likely that this is behavior disproportionately exhibited by men.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @05:06PM (9 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @05:06PM (#841922)

        First of all, I don't assume that "being an asshole" is equally likely among men and women -- men are statistically more disagreeable than women on average.

        I'm not necessarily saying I disagree with you, but I would like a citation for this. After all, if you are going to claim this is a statistical fact then you should have some statistical data to back it up.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @05:28PM (8 children)

          by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @05:28PM (#841937) Journal

          These sorts of requests are reasonable when a claim is difficult to search for, but this one isn't. Here's the second* Google result for "men are more disagreeable than women" (no quotes): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ [nih.gov]

          Relevant section of linked article:

          Agreeableness
          Agreeableness comprises traits relating to altruism, such as empathy and kindness. Agreeableness involves the tendency toward cooperation, maintenance of social harmony, and consideration of the concerns of others (as opposed to exploitation or victimization of others). Women consistently score higher than men on Agreeableness and related measures, such as tender-mindedness (Feingold, 1994; Costa et al., 2001).

          You can find full citations at the bottom of the article. This is a widely accepted claim in psychology.

          *The first Google result is a pop-sci news article that also backs up my claim.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @05:42PM (7 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @05:42PM (#841942)

            These sorts of requests are reasonable when a claim is difficult to search for, but this one isn't

            1. The burden of proof lies on the one making the claim.
            2. When the reported claim is easy to find, then it is trivial to add it. When the reported claim is difficult to find, then it is required.

            I'll grant that these can be thrown out if the questions are disengenous or if someone is just trying to control the debate by "just asking questions" repeatedly, but that was not my impression in this case.

            • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @05:50PM (5 children)

              by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @05:50PM (#841950) Journal

              If I claim the sky is blue, you would be clever to look up before asking for a citation. If I claim that the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering, you would be clever to look it up before asking for a citation. You're already on the internet, learn to Google.

              • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @06:13PM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @06:13PM (#841966)

                The claims "men are statistically more disagreeable than women on average" and "the sky is blue" are not even close to being on the same level. Someone asking for a citation for "the sky is blue" is making a joke or being disingenuous.

                You're already on the internet

                My mistake. I forgot that the internet is absolutely full of honest, objective people that only make factual claims that are not the product of motivated reasoning. I've certainly never run into anyone using a "motte and bailey" or any other forms of fallacious argument styles./sarcasm

                https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey [rationalwiki.org]
                https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy#Argumentative [rationalwiki.org]

                • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @06:31PM (3 children)

                  by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @06:31PM (#841974) Journal

                  It's not that the internet is full of honest people, it's that you have a crazy amount of information (and an AI to sort it for you) sitting at your fingertips. I made a statement that included all the relevant keywords. This part isn't necessary, but the context even that made it clear that the claim was one I believed to be easily citable as it was contrasted by a claim that I clearly stated I wasn't aware of any good sources for. I don't think the original AC was trying to derail the conversation, I just think they were silly to ask for a citation rather than making a good faith attempt to find it themselves. I ask for citations from people on occasion, but not before searching for the information myself if it seems like something that could be easily found.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:00PM (2 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:00PM (#841995)

                    I ask for citations before debating points because I've wasted far too much time dealing with people who don't have a source, "can't remember the source", say "just google it", only attack my sources without providing any of their own, etc.

                    I also think having an unwritten rule or expectation of providing sources for your claims would raise the level of discussion. This site could certainly use some more > +3 informative posts compared to the insightful and interesting mods that seem to get thrown around as an "I agree" mod.

                    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @07:18PM (1 child)

                      by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 10 2019, @07:18PM (#842011) Journal

                      I'm assuming you're the original AC, and not the second one. I honestly considered saying "just google it," or giving you a lmgtfy link, but decided to include a link to a valid citation because I felt it would make it more clear that my point about learning to search for information wasn't simply an attempt to evade providing one. I don't think providing citations for all claims is reasonable, there are just too many claims we make about reality in passing that are easy to verify to a reasonable level of certainty but cumbersome to include citations for. If I feel like a given piece of information is hard to find I try to include a source for it (or, if I can't remember one and I know that from prior experience, own up to my sketchy memory and the probabilistic doubts it should raise up front when making the initial claim). The line between "easy to find" and "hard to find" is a blurry one, as most (all?) lines are, but I try to walk it and I think it's reasonable to expect people to search for a well-phrased claim before asking for a citation.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @11:22PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @11:22PM (#842131)

                        Honorable intent but DFTT!

                        You should have stopped once they questioned your anecdote. You gotta live under a rock not to know that misogyny in tech is a real problem.

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @06:20PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @06:20PM (#841970)

              I'll grant that these can be thrown out if the questions are disengenous or if someone is just trying to control the debate by "just asking questions" repeatedly, but that was not my impression in this case.

              The reason why I asked for a citation was that the claim had all the look and feel of someone talking out of their ass, something which many have the habit of doing here on SN. Well, in this case I learned something. Thanks for the citation, JNCF!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:47PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:47PM (#842029)

        Women are better at quietly being assholes.
        Thankfully I never have to deal with assholes of any gender these days but I can remember the days when I was young and naive.
        I was super motivated and did 1/2 of all the work by metrics my first 6 months at one job. I also would go around looking for people who had work they could split (fresh out of military)
        Lots of "great jobs!" and "Thanks a millions! XD" from one of my female co-workers. Surely she must be my friend we're hi-5ing like 4 times a day! They must all love the extra capacity I bring to the team right?

        Wrong. She unloaded literally every shitty clerical task she could onto me and then was running and telling the boss about my every mistake the whole time. Oddly enough I took a class at the end of my enlistment where I was warned against doing just this... and it was playing out exactly like they said it would. Except quietly where I couldn't tell that my "friend" was concerned I would make her look bad.

        Not saying this is common from just women. My dude boss was a huge douchebag too but being fresh out of the military I didn't have the emotional intelligence to recognize bad co-workers as long as they were smiling and acting upbeat. I will say under other circumstances my guy boss would have been considered immasculine.

        I didn't catch on for years that he was a raging overt asshole in a past life and he "fixed" himself by smiling and talking about church and shit all day and apologizing for literally everything practically pissing on himself like a scared dog when bringing bad news to his own bosses or really when interacting with anyone who he didn't have some sort of pull over. The whole thing was a cover because at some point he discovered that life is easier when you don't advertise the face you're a total sociopath.
        He encouraged people who were gossips and snitches because he liked having the office dirt more than he gave a shit what it did to the workplace. He also had this soul sucking lumburgh way of dealing with even the smallest mistakes "Oh hey buddy I noticed you made a mistake and I didn't notice because I thought you were doing your job but apparently you did not. Could you please blah blah blah that would be super!" CC:like a 50 person email chain. Or he'd loudly command you to go meet him in some backroom and everyone would hear it. He would frequently toot his own horn that he "praised in public and punished in private like a good leader". After I quit I realized he always talked about being around other people, going to church, or hanging out with his family but he never once mentioned being around friends. Never hanging out with his wife's friends husbands, never sunday afternoon with friends from church.... anyhow I digress.

        Asshole women usually figure out how to play nice faster than male assholes. The average soylentel is probably employable enough that they don't need to tolerate workplaces full of assholes unless they have worker stockholm syndrome and believe they can't do better or they're assholes themselves.

        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 11 2019, @01:11AM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 11 2019, @01:11AM (#842173) Homepage

          " He encouraged people who were gossips and snitches because he liked having the office dirt more than he gave a shit what it did to the workplace. "

          It's called handling spies, running an intelligence network, and all competent bosses do this to some degree. My own boss told me that he did this, and I was fine with that, as long as the reporting was factually honest and not bullshit gossip. Some people love this kind of Game-of-Thrones shit worthy of a Medici and have fun trying out their own counterintelligence skills. Others like me do what they do, and as long as they don't hear anything bad and get the occasional raise, don't give a fuck.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @04:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @04:08PM (#841895)

      My wife is a teacher, and to hear her stories, 90% of her complaints are about other women at work! Bitches! But then, 90% of the workers are women.
      Hmm... you may have a point.