Warning: Long post
Jan Henry wrote:
(...)
> There are some women in science who are as nice as they are intelligent and
> hard-working, but in my experience (in getting now to the end of a PhD) a
> great number of the women in charge are nasty, vindictive, spiteful and
> seem to have chips on their shoulders, and their behaviour seems
> particularly directed towards other women! Men under their care seem to be
> treated as golden boys whilst the women are treated like naughty, lazy,
> sullen little girls.
Hi everyone,
I've started to wonder if there is really no difference in
proffessionalism and fairness in male and female students. This is a bit
scary, but I'm just in the beginning of my own career, and so I'm trying
to understand what happens with all the bright female students after
they graduate (whatever it is, I don't want it to happen to me).
I have talked about the issue of proffessionalim with my (male) boss,
who thinks that women have difficulties both with taking orders, and
receiving criticisms. My boss expects people to understand that he is
trying to drive the project forward, not critisize someone just for the
hell of it.
Also, when he asks someone to do an experiment, he doesn't mean
it as a recommendation that the person is free to follow or not.
He says men just go ahead and do it, more often than women do. I have no
idea if this is just his own view, what are your experiences?
He also thinks women take advice less often than men, and that male
students try to "listen and learn" much more than women do. I tend to
agree with this.
In my own experience, the female world-view is often " me against my
boss" whereas a man tries to be coherent with his superiors. Of course,
as bosses are mostly men this is maybe not so surprising. How do you
feel about your boss?
Women also seem to collaborate less smoothly than men, and are often
negative to the idea even when there's a clear benefit in the
collaboration.
I used to resent collaboration (:-/, but when I realized I could
benefit from it I changed my mind :-D. I think I was negative at first
mainly because I wanted to show off. I still do of course, but it made
all the difference to realize that I could show off *and* get faster
results if I collaborated. Are girls used to showing off on their own,
whereas boys do it in groups?
One important point, which I have only recently come to understand, is
how women seldom accept that other women can be more competent or have
higher ambitions. Everyone in a group of women must be completely equal,
*in absurdum*. This leads to a forced status quo where little
development
can take place, because any change will tip the balance. In the end this
situation is frustrating for all parts, and so the group or
collaboration
is disrupted. I always used to close my eyes to this kind of behavior, I
didn't want to accept that it could be gender specific, but now I have
to admit that this is disturbingly common. Accepting that other people
drive harder and want to be ambitious, seems to come more naturally to
men. I do think we have something to learn here.
These are but a few stereotyped arguments about male and female. Geez, I
just realized that I wrote more about women students than women bosses.
But a boss was once a student...
Please don't flame me, but I would be happy to receive adequate
criticisms.
Yours,
Ann Magnuson
Dept of Biochemistry
Lund University, Sweden
