A recent study found,
"We found that employed husbands in traditional marriages, compared to those in modern marriages, tend to (a) view the presence of women in the workplace unfavorably, (b) perceive that organizations with higher numbers of female employees are operating less smoothly, (c) find organizations with female leaders as relatively unattractive, and (d) deny, more frequently, qualified female employees opportunities for promotion."
In an interview, one of the authors of the study said:
"One of the reasons why there aren't as many women at the top is perhaps men at the top tend to be benevolent sexists who tend to see women as people who should be shielded from danger and risks," says Desai. "They are probably thinking of women as fragile beings who need to be taken care of, that want to stay at home and raise kids and don't want to take risks and move to the top."
Comments?
Apt. 11d 
My head exploded at the “fragile beings” line. I wonder if that was introduced in interviews or whether that was an authorial way of putting it.
That said, my anecdata supports this study. When I had my first child I was on mat leave from a full-time senior role. I discussed my return date with the CEO and he was very, very concerned — genuinely, I believe — about the stress on me and my life and my kids. He told me about how hard it had been for his wife until he was able to support her and she could stay home.
Which is one of the big reasons I am no longer with that particular organization.
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I’ve always felt that the worst colleagues are men with sah wives (major generalization, of course). I’ve never had a problem with any childless women as colleagues.
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On the other hand, working women with children do drop the ball.
There are a number of very sweet, very competent professional women who are very important to my family’s well-being, but I can’t help but notice that their professional availability is not the same as you’d expect of a working father.
From the teacher who just had third baby and is working half-time (creating continuity issues), to the doctor who doesn’t see a patient in the hospital because of a daughter’s volleyball game to the psychologist who has radically cut down her practice and cancelled the last two appointments due to child illness to my work-at-home friend who had to tell her contract bosses that her morning sickness is hurting her work timetable, it does make a difference. These are all very good people and good at what they do, but they aren’t always available in the way that they would be if they were working dads or non-mothers. It is worth waiting for them to get through a rough spot, but I do notice.
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I think the point you’re making only makes sense if you can show the greater availability of the men in the same professional roles with respect to your family. Are the male teachers not taking leave? is the male doctor more available in the hospital? is the male psychologist less likely to cancel the appointment?
In our case, I do think that the men have been less likely to take maternity leave (but, that’s possibly because they are not eligible for it — in our state, leave is sometimes covered under disability insurance, which, means it is available only to a woman who gave birth. The rest, well, yes, we see women with schedules they’ve designed to be friendly to their family, but we’ve also seen the male doctors 1) take sabbatical 2) retire 3) move on to teaching positions, which releases them of patient care time.
The litany reminds me of the story an engineer mother of a friend used to tell. When she was hired, everyone said that she would just leave when she had children. Eventually, 20 years later, she did leave, and she said, everyone said “she left for the kids.” But, in fact, every man she had been hired with had already left for their own reasons.
And, of course, none of these has anything to do with the fact that you have to judge individuals on what they do, and not on what someone else who shares an X (or Y) chromosome or skin color or ethnicity or religion does.
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Eventually, 20 years later, she did leave, and she said, everyone said “she left for the kids.”
The obvious solution for that problem is to say you are leaving because you hate everybody there (to be done after the cake at the going-away party) and to follow-up the next day with an emailed list of supporting details for each person you work with.
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I’m with everyone, except I’m missing the “benevolent” part . . .
A “benevolent sexist” would think “women aren’t good at handling stress, so I will provide her more support in her job . . .” Not giving the woman the job is pretty clearly in the “malevolent sexism” category.
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Yeah, I’m not sure if the behavior of 4 women constitute a reason to discriminate against an entire class. I know far more men than women who skip out on work-related duties or drop the ball because they’re alcoholics, or lazy, or feel no sense of group responsibility, but I wouldn’t say that’s a reason to discriminate against men as a class. Not to mention the socialization and gender inequalities of why it’s always the women expected to take time off for children’s doctor’s appointments.
One benefit of feminism for both genders has been revealing the cost on family life for anyone who isn’t allowed some sort of work/life balance, and up until now we’ve never considered or naturalized away the cost to men of never seeing their kids.
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The only time I’ve ever purposely chosen not to work with a woman was when we were buying a house and the recently divorced working mom realtor did keep cancelling appointments because of issues she was having, so eventually we found another woman realtor whose kids were grown.
However, I agree with Ragtime — this sounds more like malevolent sexism to me. I’m uncomfortable with the notion that someone else thinks they should be able to decide for me how much I’m going to be able to handle — I’m actually really good at going without sleep, working nonstop, multitasking, etc. and just because someone else couldn’t handle it doesn’t mean that they get to decide that I can’t. (Recently went to an academic conference where a single male colleague seemed almost angry that I had outpublished him while simultaneously raising three kids, etc. It’s almost as though he was angry that I hadn’t been sufficiently handicapped by the circumstances. Very strange. . .)
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@AmyP, I wonder if part of it (the not-pregnancy-related part) is that women give you a reason, as opposed to men who may not — or whose staff may not — tell you they’re at a game but instead are simply unavailable.
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Louisa’s example of her strength at handling more than the average bear might be able to is precisely the reason why it’s wrong to judge the individual by the class.
(but, I’ll note that you chose not to work with a realtor who kept cancelling appointments. Presumably you’d have done so if they were a man cancelling for a divorce, golf, an attachment to a car that keeps breaking down, or a midlife crisis, too).
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“I think the point you’re making only makes sense if you can show the greater availability of the men in the same professional roles with respect to your family. Are the male teachers not taking leave? is the male doctor more available in the hospital? is the male psychologist less likely to cancel the appointment?”
I wouldn’t know, because I don’t use a male OB, a male child psychologist, my kids’ homeroom teachers aren’t male, and so forth. For one, I would be very uncomfortable with leaving a child shut up alone with a male psychologist for an hour. In fact, my list partly reflects my own pattern of discrimination against certain male professionals. It’s just that there is a price we have to pay in terms of availability. In exchange, there’s greater child-savviness, less anxiety about possible misconduct and other intangibles.
To add to the list, my kids are patients of a female pediatric dentist who is always rated #1 as the community’s best pediatric dentist. It took us 5 months to get an appointment with her practice, which is quite routine for her new patients. She also keeps bankers’ hours, but her office runs like clockwork and she and her staff don’t scare my kids, which I appreciate.
Shandra said:
“@AmyP, I wonder if part of it (the not-pregnancy-related part) is that women give you a reason, as opposed to men who may not — or whose staff may not — tell you they’re at a game but instead are simply unavailable.”
That is a very good point.
I think “never apologize, never explain” is not a good universal rule, but it does have its uses.
I know in my husband’s case that there were times when he could have done more professionally if his home responsibilities were not so pressing. Just recently, he had to cancel a talk he was supposed to give in Portugal because it’s too close to my due date. There’s definitely a difference, though, in that his cancellations or slow-downs in productivity are unusual, rather than routine.
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There can be real gender differences in work performance. For instance, apparently one reason for female doctors making less money than male doctors is that female doctors spend more time per patient, and so have to bill for fewer patients.
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/02/female-physicians-money-male-doctors.html
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@amyp you lost me with not allowing male professionals serve in roles where they work with kids. My son has had a male psychologist for years. We have a male pediatrician. My kids have had male teachers a number of times, and I work with some wonderful male colleagues at an all girls’ school. To me this is perpetuating the problem. If we continue to believe that men aren’t as good at nurturing, then they won’t expect to take on those roles and will assume that women should.
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It’s not that I don’t think that men can’t be nurturing, it’s just that they are disproportionately more likely to be perverts. I don’t want my kids to be alone unchaperoned with men other than their father, especially when they’re little, more vulnerable and have trouble speaking up for themselves. Something like 5% of men are inclined toward pedophilia, so the odds are that at least one man that you trust and think that you know well has some weird stuff on his computer.
(Apologies to all male non-pervert commenters.)
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Frankly, the interview with the author slowed me down: “one of the reasons” “perhaps” “tend to” “probably”. I can get this kind of speculation about men’s motives from my friends.
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Someone around here asked his boss, a single woman, if he could work at home last week. His parents, who haven’t been here in nine months, were coming into town and he wanted to skip the 2 hours of commute time. He hasn’t worked from home in a year. She said no. Angrily said no. She was ticked off because so many co-workers just had kids and were working from home. She felt pressured to say yes to them, and was pissed that the person who lives in this home asked, too.
I haven’t seen the details of this study, but will probably look at it later this week. I have some major questions about the methodology. I imagine that norms differ, between different professions. I also wonder if women, like the boss in my example, behaved in a similar manner to men.
As the economy has gotten worse, businesses are demanding more from the remaining workers. The economy has taken a real toll on people who want to have some sort of work-life balance.
re: the realtor example. Totally funny. I chose not to work with a male realtor who was going through a divorce. He found out that we knew a few people in common and then couldn’t stop talking about his ex. Our house was similar to the home that they first lived in, so this brought back all sorts of memories. He was still clearly in trauma, so I went with the female realtor with a stable marriage.
We’ve had two fairly disastrous situations when teachers left for maternity leave. In one case, the substitute was an idiot. In both cases, the teachers were mentally absent before the babies were born. Honestly, parents groan when they hear that their kids’ teachers are pregnant. Of course, this doesn’t mean that teachers should not get pregnant, but school systems need to find a way to maintain quality during these transition periods.
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Re pregnant teachers: our school has had this happen a lot, but neither of my kids has had a teacher who’s been out for pregnancy. One teacher was unexpectedly out because she broke her leg, though!
My daughter could handle a long-term substitute, but I just found out one of the 5th grade teachers is pregnant. It’s a summer baby, but she might have a few weeks off in the beginning of the year. I haven’t spoken to the principal about this yet, but I really would rather my son (going into 5th grade next year) have a teacher who is not absent for any longish period of time. He needs consistency above all else.
I’ve generally worked for women with children (yes, in academia). My one exception was the most non-confrontational man ever. Poor guy–I was basically a wreck through that year I worked there (9/11 happened on my second day working there; I got pregnant in my second month there). So I’ve never had the benevolent sexist.
My husband’s boss is a dad with a working wife, and he shares parenting equally, so he totally gets my husband’s shared parenting duties. More tricky was my boss’s boss (a woman–not sure if she has kids but if she does, they’re college aged). Commencement is always Memorial Day weekend, and my husband works Saturday and Sunday (day of actual commencement). On Monday we had a BBQ, but his boss’s boss wanted him to work. My husband said no. And he still had a job Tuesday.
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We’ve had a long-running joke about how many of our son’s therapists have gotten engaged, married or pregnant while on his case – to the extent that we’ve told prospective new therapists “Are you looking to [do any of the above]? Then you should start working with our son!” Of course, when the pool of therapists is overwhelmingly women ages 25-40, maternity leaves are an occupational hazard.
You’re right that schools have to try to maintain quality during maternity leaves. That requires effort and planning, neither of which come naturally to busy institutions. And if the pregnant teachers are absent mentally before delivery, that’s a big problem with those teachers.
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One of the reasons I personally support the 1 year Canadian mat leave (although is *can* be split by the parents it rarely is) is that you can get rid of the tired out new mom for a year, get in someone on a one-year contract which makes it worth the training time, etc., get all their ideas; they get your experience and network, and then everyone moves back/on.
In teaching it does depend on where the school year falls but you can often get a decent LTO in and a lot of boards allow for people to negotiate say, May and June off as well.
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Laura said:
“He found out that we knew a few people in common and then couldn’t stop talking about his ex.”
That’s one of the major social problems with divorce–it turns a lot of people into monomaniacal bores for the next five to ten years.
“We’ve had two fairly disastrous situations when teachers left for maternity leave.”
At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, we had our initial meeting with my daughter’s teachers. I was concerned to discover that her 4th grade teacher was due over Labor (!) Day weekend and that there was going to be a substitute for much of the fall. When the teacher returned, she was on a half-time schedule, which hampered communication and coordination. Despite that and my own similar situation, it was an OK year for C, although the situation probably would have been catastrophic 2-3 years ago.
We really lucked out the previous year having the angelic and improbable Miss D, who is 1) super cute 2) single 3) uncannily skilled with children.
Dr. Manhattan said:
“We’ve had a long-running joke about how many of our son’s therapists have gotten engaged, married or pregnant while on his case…”
The problem with people who like kids and are good with them is that they are very likely to want lots of their own. (Our child psychologist has FOUR kids.)
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Amy P said: “I can’t help but notice that their professional availability is not the same as you’d expect of a working father.”
I would not be surprised if those two things are connected, y’know?
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I have noticed that in the past ten years it has become more common for slackers to use family stuff as a crutch. You take some guy who always misses his dates, and now he’s bailing on calls with offshore because of a doctor’s appointment for his kid. Really?
Meanwhile the people who take their parenting and work responsibilities more seriously either bow out of positions where they know they can’t deliver or set up infrastructure to make it work. That may be a spouse who truly does his share, or a nanny, whatever.
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“You take some guy who always misses his dates, and now he’s bailing on calls with offshore because of a doctor’s appointment for his kid. Really?”
My dad had a community college student recently who was planning to blow off class because of a scheduled vet appointment for his dog (he wasn’t rushing it to the doggie ER).
I was looking at my daughter’s report card for the past year and I have to revise my remarks about the past school year. The results of having a very pregnant teacher initially, a substitute for the fall and then a mom-of-three with a baby who was at school only half the time plus a pregnant mom at home were a lot worse than I thought upthread. C’s academics were really good, but she got away with a lot of conduct stuff and corner-cutting that should have been nipped in the bud, because there was a breakdown in home-school communication and cooperation. Nobody was up to it, the teacher wasn’t there a lot of the time, and I wasn’t as proactive as usual. Nothing totally disastrous happened with C at school, but it could have been a lot better, and hopefully next year will be. Now, to go consult with the mom-of-four child psychologist who has cancelled the last two appointments…
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