Apparently, there's a problem with getting into verbal mêlées over pay disparity and gender: the woods are teeming with well-meaning duders who profess a quixotic fascination with getting women equal rights - sadly, most of them are risibly clueless as to why we don't have them in the first place, and insulted by the suggestion that their spirited support for the Equal Rights Amendment doesn't somehow equip their bodies with an autoimmune response to their own unequal treatment of women. It's rare to meet the dyed-in-the-wool liberal guy - and I know a lot of 'em - who doesn't nominally support feminist efforts to strengthen women's position in society, while also displaying a special canniness at pointing out when a woman is being bossy/smug/obnoxious/shrill/annoying/fake.
As it turns out, those armchair impressions leave an economic dent that can't be pulled with your standard two-minute pop song about how "If that girl were just less bossy/smug/obnoxious/shrill/annoying/fake, she'd get that job/raise/promotion/Vince Vaughn/equality." A new study by Professors Linda C. Babcock and Hannah Riley Bowles finds that
telling women that their own behavior is the sole determinant in their employers' decision to favor an equally qualified man is actually as stupid as it sounds:
Their study, which was coauthored by Carnegie Mellon researcher Lei Lai, found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women's reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more -- the perception was that women who asked for more were "less nice".
"What we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not," Bowles said. "They always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate or not."
I'll be frank: I love my guy friends, but the thought of some of them one day being endowed with hiring power makes me blanch in the face. The fact of the matter is, aggressive women - the kind who are more likely to push for a raise - make them nervous or irritate them. They wish we'd pipe down and
let them talk a little. How many times have you heard a man claim that a loud or forceful woman "scared" him? Have you
ever heard a man say that about another man? The unheard grammar of the joke is that aggressive women are abnormal and threatening. Jokes like this only work because the language of monstrosity is available and very common when the subject is a woman who fails to tend the orchid of her feminine grace and demureness. It's a commonplace attitude, and it's no surprise that men
and women take it to work with them. Yeah, we get the joke too; we learn to pipe down when the stakes are highest. So much for the welkin-eyed hypothesis that you can possess male privilege without actively contributing to a social order in which men are privileged.
And so much for blaming women for their own undercompensation. Like a battered spouse will sometimes find that staying with an abuser is less dangerous than leaving and being tracked down, women in the workplace know exactly what the deal is, and the oft-cited female preference for docility over assertiveness is actually based on rational decision-making rather than a lack of furry testicles pumping awesomeness to their guts:
Subsequent studies used actors who recorded videos of themselves asking for more money or accepting salaries they had been offered. A new group of 285 volunteers were again asked whether they would be willing to work with the candidates after viewing the videos. Men tended to rule against women who negotiated but were less likely to penalize men; women tended to penalize both men and women who negotiated, and preferred applicants who did not ask for more.
In a final set of studies, Bowles's team had 367 volunteers play the role of job candidates and left it up to them to decide whether to ask for more money than they were offered. Women were less likely than men to negotiate when they believed they would be dealing with a man, but there was no significant difference between men and women when they thought a woman would be making the decision. The applicants, in other words, were accurately reading how males and females were likely to perceive them.
Well, of
course women are more likely to pull back the reins when dealing with male superiors. We've been taught all our lives that men are the face of authority, and women are all sister-girly-pals. (Incidentally, when I was an undergrad, it would have been unthinkable for a student to refer to a male professor by his first name, but people automatically referred to female professors by theirs.) And since the study bears us out in our perception that men will react with disgust and consternation at our attempts to be active players in our economic destinies, why the insistence on blaming women for being too timorous with their employers? Seems to me like a case of broke if you do, broke if you don't. Might I chime in with the suggestion that we start holding men accountable for their role in women's continued oppression - not just the guys with the keys, but all those hilarious motherfuckers keeping us in stitches with their patriarchal organ-grinding? Do me a favor, my grizzly-chested friends: next time you see an opening for an "overbearing woman" crowd-pleaser, ask yourself if a joke is worth being complicit in the subjugation of women. Humor is a hieroglyphic master class on power - who has and deserves it, and who the joke is on.
Via
Amanda.
