In article <359E59AE.40FE at biokem.lu.se>,
Ann Magnuson <ann.magnuson at biokem.lu.se> wrote:
>>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.
But does he put the same effort into making his criticism palatable
as he expects those on the receiving end to put into taking 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.
My experience has been a bit different--I haven't had a lot of men or
women telling me to do a particular experiment. Mostly I've been told
that I should do what I think is the correct experiment.
>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?
If this had happened to me, I think I would have been quite happy to
"just go ahead and do it." But as I said, most of my training has been
of the "what do you think you should do?" variety. In venues outside
of science, I have seen the opposite: women just going ahead and
following the directions, and men trying to second-guess the motivation
of the asker and/or do something other than what was asked in order to
impress the asker or peers.
>He also thinks women take advice less often than men,
I don't know about this. My experience is that men constantly offer
women advice that they don't need or want. They think this is a way
of establishing "intimacy" or of doing them a favor. I have to remind
myself that this is not as patronizing as it can seem. Based on this
experience, I would suspect that he is observing women turning down
the unsolicited, unwanted, and unneded advice that he probably wouldn't
have offered to a man in the first place.
>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?
I have had pretty good relationships with the bosses I've worked with,
both male and female. Neither has gone out of their way to cultivate
an adversarial relationship with me, nor I with them, and as a result
I have usually felt that we are on the same side--working for the truth.
>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.
This is completely opposite to my own experience. I prefer collaboration
to working alone.
Karen
