Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    The note on interaction styles prompted me to ask this.
    
    1. If you do not remind people often, sometimes they will not
    do what you have requested.
    Later, if the deadline is missed, you get to hear "why didn't
    you remind me, I would have gotten right on that."
    
    2- If you remind them constantly, you run the risk of having them
    feel pressured, and accuse you of nagging.
    
    D*mned If You Do, D*mned If You Don't-
    Where is the Middle Ground?
    
    Cindi

    785 sparks this one.
    
    1- If you respond with your emotions, and true feelings in business
    situations, you can be considered flighty and called "too emotional".
    2- If you respond with pure professionalism, or clear logic you
    can be tagged "cold" , "too impersonal", or unfriendly.
    
    Where is the middle ground?
    2(DIYD)
    
    Cindi

    1- If you keep tons of records, monitor everything, expect all things
    to match preset/promised schedules- you can be called too rigid.
    2- If you miss a record, sometimes even ONE section, you get
    repremended for being too irresponsable or flighty.
    
    2(DIYD)
    
    Where is the middle ground?
    
    Cindi

    While striving for credibility in a predomenantly masculine field:
    
    1- If you read manuals, you may be informed that you are being 
    "too technical".  At the same time you will be expected to gain 
    expertise.
    2- At the same time, you may be informed not to "ask too many
    questions".
    
    How many questions is too many?
    How can you gain expertise without doing either?
    
    2(DIYD)
    Cindi

    > Where is the middle ground?
    
    In some peat-bog, I presume ...
    
    One of the classics:
     "We can't hire women into <name that job> until they proven they can
    <do that job>." 
    
    No middle ground. Pure-D Catch-22.

    I will admit, I was raised in somewhat of a Skinnerian box-
    inside this box, things were mostly either good or bad.
    
    I have recently married a lawyer type, who helps me appreciate
    some of the shades of grey here.  However, sometimes I feel,
    that even Escher would be impressed at the manipulations of
    perspectives contained in the aforementioned logic/social situations.
    
    Any ways out? Or books on perspectives and hues that you know of?
    
    Cindi

    I know you have heard this one...
    1- If you do not respond to people, often males, making propisitions
    to you, you can be called "butch" independant of your personal
    preferences.
    2- If you do respond, you are called loose, easy, or a slut.
    
    --- and -----
    
    1- If you dress plainly, keep to flats, bland colors, you may be called
    plain, too masculine, or rated negatively in terms of impressions.
    2- If you wear bright colors, high heels, or somewhat flashier 
    clothing, you may be called a "fashion flitter", and be considered
    unprofessional.
    
    
    Where is the middle ground?
    2(DIYD)
    
    Cindi

    
    These are interesting scenarios.  You asked for one by one.....
    
    First one......Nagging vs. being ignored:
    
    	My take on this one would be at the very beginning.  Set up a
    review schedule, say weekly if it's a long project or daily if a short
    one.  This puts it into a one-on-one situation where the person doing
    the work can present where they're at and where the manager (whatever)
    can ask any questions that may be pertinent.
    
    Second one......Emote vs stone cold:
    
    	I had a terrible time learning to balance this one.  I have a very
    patient boss that helped me find the middle ground.  What I have found
    works is to voice the feeling without getting all emotional.  Yeah, I
    know...sounds ackward.  Example....I was very upset about a particular
    instance.  Instead of showing my boss a very upset person, I told him
    that I felt very much like I had just been stabbed in the back.  This
    was done in a calm voice.  It explained in words how and why I was
    upset.
    
    Third one......inflexible vs irresponsible:
    
    	Sounds like trying to find a balance between being perfect and
    being human to me.  I simply choose to be human and allow that I do
    make mistakes......like all humans.
    
    I'll pass on the last one.....
    

    Re -.1   Thank you...
    I think I may also try the primal path.
    Cindi

    So is it true then ....?
    
    You can't win.
       You can't break even.
          And you can't get out of the game ( and hold your position ).
    
    Cindi

    
    re -.1
    
    Ah, yes.......when all else fails :-)!
    

    There isn't much of a "middle-ground" for women.  More accurately, you
    could call it the "acceptable zone".  It's the age-old perception
    that women are not good enough at things other than turning men on,
    raising the resultant kids, cooking and cleaning and stuff. That 
    perception colors whatever they do that is out of the range of acceptable 
    activities.  Even if they do the unacceptable perfectly and in "proper" 
    moderation, it will generally be perceived with negative overtones.
    
    You've seen or heard the following, I'm sure.
    
    He's a stern taskmaster,  she's a bitch.
    He has great attention to detail, she's pedantic and petty.
    He's distracted by weighty thoughts, she's daydreaming about
    nailpolish.
    He knows when to bend the rules to get something done, she doesn't
    understand the rules and can't apply them.
    He can see a project through to completion, she doesn't know when to quit.
    He is strong and unwavering, it's her time of the month.
    
    And so on.  It's a function of her audience and not of her behavior
    because if you change the behavior, and you'll most likely just get a 
    different negative assessment.  It's a subconscious perception that men 
    are here to work but women are here primarily to soften the landscape, 
    help foster a friendly atmosphere and provide warmth and distraction for 
    the men engaged in the cold world of hard business.  The work she does
    is just the outward reason for her being here and if she does it well,
    it's just frosting on some guy's cake.   So if a woman is attempting to 
    engage overtly in the cold world of hard business as an equal, (you can 
    do it covertly, of course, as long as you keep your womanness in the
    forefront for male enjoyment or derision as needed), you're failing
    in being what women are here to be and you're just more competition for
    men. So the assessments of you will tend to be negative. 
    
    Oh - and don't forget to smile!  ;-)  
    
    Sandy

    Cindi,
    
    The conclusion I came to many moons ago was:
    
    There is no middle ground.  The ground covered by the two opposing
    areas of objectionability is all the ground there is.
    
    Or, if you can balance perfectly against what the judge-of-the-moment
    objects to in one axis (or two, or three), there will be another
    axis produced against which you are not balanced.
    
    					Ann B.

    Solution:
    I guess I'll have to hit the primal , then take a dip in the tank.
    My head is swimming already.
    
    I would assemble my bow, and go shooting, but in my present state
    of mind... weapons may not be a good thing to carry around.;-'
    
    
    Cindi

I agree the same thing happens to men, too.  But when it does, as 
the previous racing scenario so nicely illustrates, it's news, attesting 
to its rarity and to the belief that people will recognize and empathize 
with the indignation suffered by the victim, if it's male.  Here
we've got "news" of a single incident that happened to a male in 1968!
This was offered for balance??     

In the work world of women, it's still an everyday occurrence.  It is not 
news.  And since nearly every man is unconvinced that it happens to women 
with the suspicious regularity that it does, it is sympathized with by no 
one except maybe some of the other women who have recognized the strategy 
and its goals.  And when those women attempt to comiserate, one or more males 
within earshot is sure to interrupt them saying their basic premise is 
incorrect, as in 'men aren't doing this intentionally to women, look, they
did it to a man in 1968!  I think here is where we're supposed to suspend 
talking about the problem until we can prove to men that the problem exists 
for us, that we are able to tell the difference between games between relative 
equals, the difference between random and isolated acts, etc, and especially 
that recognizing and understanding the problem isn't the result of hating men, 
(a simple confusion of cause and effect).  Let's just not take the bait this 
time, ok?   
    
I don't know what goals the racing officials had, but when the goal of
such a game seems to be "we don't want women in the important jobs", it tends 
to weigh real heavy on women who are capable and desirous of more than the 
usual menial tasks women are allowed to be paid for.  Notice I didn't say 
tasks women are allowed to do.  Heck, you can run the entire group and
manage the VAXcluster too, but you can only be called, (and paid as), a 
secretary or some locally defined euphemistic term for "woman's job". 
That's just an example.  Take a woman in any position and chances are
good she's doing higher level work than she's being paid for.
    
If it's personal, as is usually the case when a wite man is intentionally 
given a raw deal, it can be remedied relatively easily by moving to a 
different job, a different car race, a different setting.  But when it's 
genderal, (or racial), and it's cultural, moving buys you nothing and so is 
no solution.  Random acts and isolated incidents are perils for both sexes
and I'm comfortable believing women can tell the difference.  But I don't 
think I'm in the majority with that comfort!
    
A woman's objections to this game have all been anticipated, (why?  men are 
incredulous and outraged when it happens to them and they expect it to be
treated as an individual case of personal righteous objection), and answers 
are at the ready to deal with them.  Her personal situation is dismissed
and she is given general platitudes and philosophy not to help her *do*
anything about it, (for what *could* she do, anyway?), but merely to help her 
cope with "this kind of a situation" and help keep her from feeling the full
impact of her powerlessness as a woman.  
    
So she may be presumed to be taking the situation personally, (women are 
emotional, you know), or if not, then she might be presumed to have some 
feminist vendetta, (you know how women talk and get each other "all whipped 
up").  She might be accused of blaming men for some shortcoming of her own, or
that she just hates men in general, (the good all-purpose silencer), or 
anything else that puts the blame on her and ignores any possibility that she 
has been intentionally manipulated out of position by one or more men who 
simply don't want her in the running by virtue of her gender.

Many people, certainly many men, sincerely believe that what she's seeing is
just the common dominance game that goes on even between men.  But men are 
relative equals by comparison, and that makes things very different.  In that 
kind of game, the incumbent "top dog" is willing to reserve judgement on 
competence, (and therefore position in the hierarchy), until the game plays 
out.  The man has *been given a chance to prove himself* and help define his 
ultimate position on the hierarchy.  That game has a positive purpose and a 
finite end.  Two dogs snarl at each other until one rolls over.  I guarantee
a woman playing along with this, and especially one doing well, has no hope
of her opponent "rolling over".  Her brave acceptance of the challenge will
work swiftly and fiercely against her.  The "top dog" does not expect and will
not appreciate the same reaction from her that he does from a male.  The 
"good snarling" that wins a man respect in his version of the game will get 
her serious demerits for snarling in the first place. ("Smile!  You look so 
much prettier when you smile".)
    
In the game women see, the judgement has already been made, (one tempered with 
negativity due to her gender), and the ensuing game is the *result* of the 
judgement rather than the means by which to gather information to make it.
This plays out as the wheel-spinning tasks women get, the invisible projects, 
the less important parts of important projects, the limited "helping" role of 
the secretary who works only behind the scenes, etc.  This game has no end as 
it does for men, and her performance is *expected* to be good, and therefore
not worthy of any special recognition.  For women the game isn't a test, it's 
an end in itself.

In short, this problem, when expressed by a woman, is seen as being with her 
alone and further, because she even admits she *has* the problem, add another 
one - she's too sensitive for the world of hard business.  Just peruse the 
topics in this file for countless examples of women being blamed for having 
this kind of problem in the first place, and then again for being unable to 
surmount it.  I don't understand why men forget about the common male attitude 
that exists toward women when they think academically about issues like this.
They often seem to see a male in the situation and offer solutions that 
assume a power level that the woman just doesn't have.  Perhaps they forget 
that much of what is male power is merely male "allowance" of power in
each other, those default assumptions of competency, of dignity, of worth,
etc, something men don't generally offer to women and which makes a world of 
difference in dealing with what appears on the surface to be the same 
situation.  

So somehow, I can't make an equal comparison between a woman trying to earn
what she's worth or at least a decent living wage with a guy who wants to race 
a car on Sundays with other guys.  But if the racing scenario gets the point 
across to men, (because I believe women already know it quite intimately), 
all I can say is imagine if it were your job that was being monkeyed with like 
that, (every job; the one before, the current one and most likely the next 
one, too, should you think quitting is a solution).  And now imagine it's 
being done by a collective of the opposite gender, regardless of whether or not 
there is any overt "conspiracy" you can prove.  I'm just asking how it would 
feel, how you might react, what you might do about it.  As you form your 
answer, remember that changing jobs will free you only if you are *very* 
lucky.  Chances are good you'll simply find yourself going from job to job, 
as many women do.  Oh yeah, and if you try that as a solution, you're setting 
yourself up, (yourself?  yes, they'll see it that way), to be seen as flighty, 
unserious, lacking in loyalty, etc, which will only add to the default
negative assessment, a kind of "original sin" that no baptism can wash away.
    
I just don't think I'd lose much sleep on learning that the women running 
the world of my Sunday afternoon hobby had a personal agenda.  I can deal with 
that much more easily than I can deal with learning that the men running the 
careers of women do, and with having to endure graciously and silently the 
outward manifestations of that attitude and with the disbelief that
that attitude is a cultural one and not easily escaped, regardless of
what hoops I can jump through or how perfectly the mousetrap I built really 
works.  Oh yeah - smile nice!  ;-)

Sandy Ciccolini
    

    Pls explain 2(DIYD). What does it mean?
    
    PerS

    Re .16
    
    Ohh, Sandy....127 lines!
    
    This must be close to your hart. And I fully understand, but....
    
    This is no excuse, but I think you might find a parallell to this
    in what every Digital salesperson sooner or later expirience..
    "..nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM".
    
    If you belive it hard enough, it might happen to you (can that be
    expressed in english as "self-prophety" (sp?)?
    
    If you really feel this so _hard_, in your day to day life, 
    as .16 may seem, don't you think other may pick up "bad vibrations"?
    
    
    PerS 

>> Pls explain 2(DIYD). What does it mean?
        
        2(DIYD) = DIYDDIYD = "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
        
        Dan

    
    It strikes me that the scenarios are talking a lot about what
    other people's opinion is of you - what you get "tagged", what
    "they" say behind your back (or maybe to your face).
    
    IMO, sod the tags.
    I have a job to do.
    I will do what is necessary to get that job done.
    If I chase up people who are working with me on a project to ensure
    that the project hits its deadline, and that project is part of
    my bosses criteria for my success (i.e. it's part of my revue
    criteria), then I'll do it. I don't care if people call me a nag.
    So what? As long as I'm comfortable with what I'm doing and
    why I'm doing it, professionally, then it doesn't matter.
    
    Having said that, the key is to take the actions and *only* the
    actions necessary to get the job done. So with a bit of experience
    you don't waste time on chasing people who don't need it (and if
    you know they need it so what if you nag them?).
    
    I don't know a single male colleague of mine who spends energy
    worrying about whether he is universally liked or approved of.
    
    Btw, I do see the Catch 22 around "women being able to do this
    job" as different - that's to do with whether you can get a job
    or not, not how you operate once you've got it...
    
    Just my 50p.
    
    'gail
    
    
    

    RE: -1  
    I would agree, and say to ignore the tags.
    
    However, I have "heard" that they do affect how you advance or if you
    get to remain in a particular position.
    
    Two people being considered equal by technical standards, will then
    be sorted out, if only subconsciously by the smaller tags 
    attached to them.
    
    Also... to clarify a few of the parameters in this discussion-
    For the two years I have been working since college, I have not
    been officially managed by a man.
    
    Cindi

    Gail,
    
    The basenoter *is* talking about her supervisor's opinion of her.
    
    						Ann B.

    Re: .23
    
    Some of them apply to me.
    Some of them do not.
    
    For instance : 
        The too aluring one does not apply to me...
    I wish it did but, I am sure it does not.
    
    However, they do stem from cycles I have felt or seen.
    
    Cindi

    The other day I got this one.
    It was from a male.
    
    "This job is not a training ground for your next position."
    
    So remember folks.
      The next time you are filling out a job application, or
    your resume... be sure to put-
    
    "Nothing I have ever done before has even remotely anything to
    do with the position I am attempting to attain."
    
    and/or
    
    "Although I was trained, I promise not to bring any of the
    value added from any of my previous positions to this job."
    
    and watch your results.
    
    Cindi