fester@math.berkeley.edu (08/08/88)
I've been thinking some about how, when I was working and given only writing assignments despite having interviewed and been hired for a technical position, I might have managed to alter the situation. Given the mail I've recieved lately, I know this is a common problem for women in the computer industry. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. So this is my question for the men reading this newsgroup. I'm posing it here because we clearly have a thoughtful readership, and the first time I posed it (a year ago, in soc.women,) the few responses I got essentially said I had no option but the one I finally exercised, quitting. I don't want to believe that. I don't want to believe it because there are too many women to whom this happens, not everyone has the option to leave, and most important, leaving does nothing to alter the situation at the given workplace. So, here it is: How does one negotiate getting out of this kind of situation without alienating the other people involved ? Is it even possible ? The problem is that women have traditionally been accused of not being "team players". I guess this is a good topic to bring up now because it has some relation to Trish's topic of the organizational structure. A team player is one who doesn't put the company's interests first, categorically. But if a woman is consistently the one getting the shit work, is it fair to berate her for being unhappy and vocal about it ? (That last was a rhetorical question :-). I'm asking my question quite seriously, however. Can a male manager hear a woman saying that the allocation of tasks is unfair and *really* hear her as an individual, and *really* listen to what she has to say ? To some extent I feel that men don't hear things coming from women the same way they hear them coming from men. No surprise, there is so much cultural support for this: aggressive women are hostile, or bitchy, aggressive men are assertive, and so forth. So let me try one more time to phrase the question: Is there an approach, and if so, what is it, by which a woman can negotiate an unfair situation with a man and do so successfully, successfully meaning that not only is the situation changed, but changed without rancor, without turning the manager (and whoever else) against her, without subsequently creating a bad work environment. In my experience, being polite and considerate got me nowhere. But I am sure that being sufficiently aggressive to have something DONE would have required CONSTANT whining and would have resulted in the above. Lea Fester fester@math.berkeley.edu "Do we still have time, we might still get by Every time I think about it, I want to cry The bomb and the devil, and the little kids keep coming No way to breathe easy, no time to be young."
fester@math.berkeley.edu (08/19/88)
The following is being posted for a comp.society.women participant in Europe. It needs to remain anonymous for personal (to him) reasons. ------------------------------------------------------------------ You might check out some of the sociological literature on small groups. It's an interesting field, because it's one of the only areas where experimental data plays a big role. Essentially (based on US research), it says overwhelmingly that small groups with little structure and a goal to achieve form their own structure quickly, as in the first 10 seconds. The same people raise their hand the most, make most suggestions, ask most questions, get most ideas approved, and so on. Hierarchy remains consistent throughout the time of a small group. The only thing that contradicts with hierarchy is who is most liked. In most small groups, the leader is *not* the most liked. Anyhow, the main problem is unstructured small groups impose tremendous inequality on all members. There's not much to do about that, since it happens too quickly to fix. More damaging data about small groups (supported in experiments with very high statistical confidence) is how some imported external characteristics determine the hierarchy of every group. For instance, all other things being equal, a white will almost always beat a black in the hierarchy. And a man a woman. And a smart person a dumb person. And a credentialed person an uncredentialed person. And a person with more occupational status a person with less. And a physically attractive person an ugly person. [note, m - lf] Social psychologists call these traits *status characteristics*, because status in sociology is the ranking of where one stands in a hierarchy. Anyhow, there is nothing to be done about white male Phds in good positions, unless they're very ugly. That's what the experiments say. I'm sure the results are even stronger when a company endorses the creation and results of unstructured small groups, called "teams" in the industrial world. It's sad, because I don't think there's evidence that teams do any good at all. Many successful countries, such as Germany and Japan, have no teams to speak of, unless you deform the word to include any form of corporate commitment. The success of these unstructured US teams seems completely anecdotal to me --- a lie generated by false attribution of results, mainly to flatter managers and occasionally the high producers (wizards). But inequality effects are very clear. And the demographics of managers ensures a captive audience for writers like Peters "In Search of Excellence," who advocate organizational forms which keep them in power. In article <13054@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> you write: >So, here it is: How does one negotiate getting out of this kind of >situation without alienating the other people involved ? Is it even >possible ? The problem is that women have traditionally been accused >of not being "team players". I would give the following advice: First, use your academic degree. Arrange to work in situations where your degree means something, *AND* your co-workers don't have as much education. Then prepare, and aggressively introduce what you know into discussions. Second, be assertive and arrange your tactics accordingly. I've seen many successful women who came from *foreign countries*: Mexico, Chile, India, the USSR. They were not taught to restrain their assertiveness as American women are taught. Read Martina Navratilova's autobiography and notice what she says about the difference between her Czech upbringing and the American women she met. Most of these women have a degree, they know just what they think about most issues, they can take over discussions and make presentations, and they know when to keep their mouth shut and how to introduce a matter tactically. They are also very aware of company politics, much more than most. What I don't know, but I suspect, is that because these women come from foreign countries which aren't Anglo-Saxon, people take more time to size them up. And this gives them the power to impose their real personalities onto situations, whereas if they were American or Anglo-Saxon, the stereotypes might enter from the first second or so. As far as alienating other people involved, you will alienate them. People get alienated all the time. But isn't that their problem and not yours? Why should you let worries about that affect your behavior, as long as you think it's right? Maybe their opinions about right or wrong are just silly. >Can a male manager hear a woman saying that the allocation of tasks is unfair >and *really* hear her as an individual, and *really* listen to what she has >to say ? >No surprise, there is so much cultural support for this: aggressive women >are hostile, or bitchy, aggressive men are assertive, and so forth. Cultural support? If you have one man who thinks you're bitchy, and another who thinks you're assertive, what matters is if the one who finds you positive can step on the one who thinks you're bitchy. Let him worry about the man who thinks you're bitchy, and take his advice. As long as you keep the negative relationship manageable and private, you can ignore it. Don't take advice from powerless jerks. Demographically, the more women that succeed with such strategies, the more confused the cultural support will become. So that's in your benefit. Don't expect to get an unfair allocation of tasks changed by the jerk who gave you the task in the first place. Just go to the jerk's boss, explain to him the situation, and demand a time limit on the unfair allocation or an escape clause. And do this on the same day you get the unfair allocation, if possible. Don't wait. If it's unfair, it's OBVIOUSLY unfair, and the jerk's boss will know it. Your manager never cares about what's good for the company, but his boss usually does. I did this. We had a manager put over our group, after we had been operating on our own for months. My boss before this manager was this manager's boss, and also head of the engineering department. The first day this new guy came in, the new guy met with everyone individually. When I met him, he said things should run a certain way, with bugs and changes reduced tremendously in the late stages of a project. Since I worked in user interface, I told him that doesn't work for us --- people don't see the fruits of our work until late on, and at that point they have to make decisions. It would be absurd for them to make decisions about things they can't work with a little, where user interfaces were concerned. His answer: well, then, you've got problems. I told him Brooks law --- the person who comes in at the last stages of a project loses more time in training than he gains for the group in productive work --- and said he proved it. I then immediately went to his boss (my former boss) and demanded protection --- indirectly. Some months earlier, I had proposed and he had allowed me to negotiate with a customer on-site, to repair a spec, despite objections from my manager at that time who was not on-site. The negotiation was completely successful, and saved a contract whose loss would have cost the firm a couple of hundred thousand dollars at least. So I'd proved myself to him. I said I saw big clouds on the horizon of my relationship with this new guy, and I wanted to get my work done. His answer was if I didn't couldn't work with this guy, I could still do my work but I wouldn't work for him anymore --- the next day if I wanted! If it came to that, he would work it out. I was both flabbergasted and very pleased. As a result, I tolerated this manager much longer than he deserved it, and exercised the escape clause prudently, in a way that wouldn't make anyone look like a fool. The guy then announced on his own that he would return to his old group. So I didn't ask for protection, but I got it. Right at the beginning. And I didn't abuse it. I've managed another job since where I had a nut for a manager, but left the firm on good terms. That wasn't so pleasant --- constant trench warfare. But people at the end decided he was such a jerk, and I had done such visible good work, that they didn't let him write my reference when I left the firm. So I think it can be done. Naturally, it's a little unusual, but good people get unusual breaks when they press for them --- that's just good business. Just prove to the boss with the power that you have what the company needs. >So let me try one more time to phrase the question: Is there an approach, >and if so, what is it, by which a woman can negotiate an unfair situation >with a man and do so successfully, successfully meaning that not only is >the situation changed, but changed without rancor, without turning the >manager (and whoever else) against her, without subsequently creating a >bad work environment. You're joking. Somebody backs down because a subordinate demanded it, and nobody else came in to help the subordinate out? No. If it's successful, somebody else will come in. If the man accepts this somebody else, then the situation will change --- with or without rancor, that's his adjustment problem, not yours. You just do what you think is right and smart. If you still stay in your job, your success against the man will mean that he will no longer have power over you at all. If he ruins your work environment as a result, you will be able to get out or get him ruined. Because you already beat him once. >In my experience, being polite and considerate got me nowhere. As my story describes, I was polite and considerate with his boss. I didn't demand protection --- I said we would have problems. And I didn't abuse the protection --- I tolerated the new manager for a long time yet. And after I had the protection, I was friendly and helpful with the new manager when it didn't concern these nutty views of his. Occasionally I would firmly remind him that we didn't agree on some things, but I didn't let it rise to a fight any more. >But I am sure that being sufficiently aggressive to have something DONE would >have required CONSTANT whining and would have resulted in the above. If you call it whining, then he must have felt that even more strongly. Don't beat a dead horse; bury it and describe its life positively at the funeral. Every human being deserves a happy goodbye. It preserves the community where we all live. The trick in negotiation is to add your supporters to the negotiation at the right moment. Always. That's the first rule of politics. The second rule is to plan these things beforehand, and be prepared for their possibility. The third rule is to fight power with other people's power. The fourth rule is to give people exactly the credit they want to receive. The fifth rule is that wins can be easily repeated and so can losses, but changing a win to a loss or a loss to a win takes special extra effort. So there's no need to rub it in, and also no use in whining. I often think it's especially American to ignore these rules and just believe in the power of unsupported argument and justice. People believe too strongly in the power of commercials.