

Why I'd Rather Work For A Man Than A Woman - jigsawhacker
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2012/05/02/work-for-a-man/

======
run4yourlives
This "article" is garbage, which is sad because it hints at a much more
interesting discussion about women and men in the workplace.

I'm not in a position to give this a proper analysis either, but what the
hell, it's the internet after all.

I work in insurance, which is a female dominated field (at least until you
look at the top) and am married. My wife openly admits that she prefers male
bosses. Personally, I've had as many good female managers than I have male.
Here is what I have noticed though:

Women hate each other. With a passion. Even their "friends". I also think
women have a very under-developed (okay, let's concede "different") idea of
conflict, at least when compared to men, and I think it is evolutionary.

Men seem to me to be able to "team bond" almost instantly, perform a high
level of conflict engagement with very defined "rules" (whether on the sports
field, the boardroom or even combat itself). Within this arena, men are
ruthless assholes at the best of times, and downright immoral at the worst.
But almost always in support of the team - those that act otherwise are
ostracized. After the conflict though, men revert to a rest state where the
actions of the conflict are almost immediately discarded to a simply won/lost
equation. Strangely enough, women that either prefer or can adapt to this
environment seem to excel.

Women though in almost every case seem to approach this situation in the exact
opposite fashion: team bonding takes forever, and can be shattered by
something as simple as a perceived slight at first introduction, women limit
their actions within the arena, and the events that occur during the conflict
are remembered almost forever. I've seen 10 year friendships end over
something as simple as not properly crediting someone enough during a
boardroom presentation.

I think it all goes back to the caveman days - men needed to find allies fast
to tackle that mammoth, or "enemy of my enemy is my friend" when the threat
was more human. Women needed to be much more guarded - everyone who wasn't a
long term immediate family member was a threat to the tribe, and even then you
advance by being with the alpha male, so getting him is the main objective,
your sister be damned.

But this is just my 5 cents. It's really nothing more than an opinion on the
internet. So don't read into it too much.

~~~
lotsofcows
I think it comes down to that sport field thing. The average geek fits your
description of females. Conversely, I know a number of rugby and hockey
playing women who are much closer to your description of males.

------
methodover
The opinion expressed in the article is the very definition of unjust
prejudice.

Here we have a person who refuses to work for a person for no other reason
than she is female. That is an unjust reason. It's no better than refusing to
work for someone who is black, or gay, or any other non-relevant trait.

A woman certainly can be a satisfactory supervisor. I work for a woman who is
an excellent boss. Come to think of it, she's probably the best manager I've
ever met.

Also, if the author is an independent contractor and discriminating against
clients for reasons of gender alone, there might be legal concerns in addition
to the obvious moral ones.

~~~
Clotho
Ya. Am I cute and edgy if I write an article titled "Why I'd Rather Work for a
White than a Black?"

------
thejteam
This is a fluff piece and is barely coherent. But one thing I have observed is
that my female coworkers have a harder time getting along with the female
bosses than the male ones. I remember one especially tense project where my
team lead was female(very experienced, smart and a pleasure to work with) and
another one of the team members was female. She was also smart although less
experienced than me. I got along great with both of them although they could
not stand each other. I ended up having to be the go-between, taking tasks
from the lead to the junior engineer and taking status back up the other way.

------
rayiner
Poor delivery, but there is definitely something to her first point. Women do
generally have less power within organizations than men do. So measures
designed to help women succeed, like pairing them up with women mentors within
the organization, can actually be counter-productive because those women are
statistically less likely to be the ones with real power in the organization.

That being said, much of what is often cynically ascribed to "cattiness"
between women is better understood as a reaction to the power dynamic. My wife
used to hold the same opinion as the author--she hated the idea of working for
a woman. She held this idea until she worked at an organization where her
department had a critical mass of powerful women, from the top with women
partners that brought in their own business, down the ranks to women who were
senior associates and ran their cases, etc. She discovered that there was very
little friction between the women in the organization, and indeed a lot of
camaraderie, because women were not in the minority within the power dynamic.
When the women who had seniority also had real power within the organization,
when they were no longer the self-conscious minority, they were freed to
become good mentors without having to constantly worry about protecting their
own turf.

This is one of the reason I'm quite skeptical of people who argue we should be
"gender blind." The fact that women are a minority in many fields is something
that by itself perpetuates the disparity between men and women. In this
context, affirmative action measures are not sexist because they don't help
women because they are women, but because they are in the minority within the
power structure.

------
yarrel
I salute a troll of the purest kind.

------
niggler
Why do people continually upvote trash from forbes.com?

If you want a concrete example of a woman that blows away men in the criteria
that the author chose, consider Margaret Thatcher
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher>)

~~~
run4yourlives
The reason Thatcher was so successful though is that she worked like a man.
You don't earn the "Iron Lady" nickname for being the one to talk to around
the water cooler.

That said, although I like the sentiment it was a pretty rubbish article, if
you could even call it that.

It's also quite clear that gender has little to do with it aside from the
likelihood of a particular gender to have the more positive traits in
question.

~~~
illuminate
"The reason Thatcher was so successful though is that she worked like a man."

Spoken from someone with a limited imagination and adherence to gender-based
stereotypes.

------
blart
If the writer was a true independent consultant, they realize their bosses are
their clients, regardless of gender, if you cant make them happy you will be
out of work. If she comfortable enough to be catty and bring emotion into
their business, they will not be an independent consultant for long. Suck it
up

------
bluebaby
Junk article

