Business Standard: What Standards?
I became aware of the Business Standard article written by one Devangshu Datta via Abi's post (and via Blogbharti). Hmm, I am getting old. I don't want to spew venom at the moronic words written in the article.
Well the tone of the article at the Business Standard sounds like an immature Desi blog trying to give gyan about gender issues. What else can you call this?
Well the tone of the article at the Business Standard sounds like an immature Desi blog trying to give gyan about gender issues. What else can you call this?
As gender disparities ease, women in the workforce will also revert closer to quality norms and start making just as many mistakes as the men. That's statistical inevitability. It is also statistically inevitable that they will make their mistakes in more bizarrely entertaining fashion. Vive Le Difference! (emphasis mine)His two (or was it three?) examples make up for 'inevitable statistics'! Finding out two selective examples for men CEO's (or should I find out three to make the claim of inevitable statistics?) who goofed up big time in a "bizarrely entertaining fashion" would not be difficult but why do this pointless exercise?
Labels: Business Standard, gender issues
posted by Mridula at 12:46 PM
4 Comments:
Mridula,
I don'tknow if you read the following:
Forget hard work - women would rather flirt their way to the top
by LAURA ROBERTS -
Forget the sisterhood - the majority of working women would rather have a male boss and flirt their way to the top, according to a survey.
Despite the fact that women often complain of inequality in the workplace, new research reveals that women will don high heels and rely on their feminine charms to get what they want.
Too much assertiveness can ruin the sauce
Rather than combining strength with fellow female workers, they in fact see other women as the main competition.
As a result three out of five women would rather work directly for a man than a woman while a further 86 per cent would happily flirt with a male colleague if it meant they got their own way.
The survey, commissioned by magazine Harper's Bazaar, questioned 500 professional women with top jobs in finance, newspapers and healthcare about their attitudes to their office environments.
It found that while women continue to reach high-powered positions in the workplace, they are still prone to indulging in what could be described as typically female behaviour.
Crying in the loos was a common confession with 85 per cent of women admitting that they had locked themselves in the office toilet for a quick weep.
Despite striving for equality at work a third of women admitted to pretending to be less intelligent than they actually are to flatter a male ego and get ahead.
Seven out of ten women said that simply by wearing a pair of high heels to work they automatically felt more powerful and confident in their ability to deal with the working day.
Although only 58 per cent of women thought there was gender equality in the office, one in 25 admitted to selling out a female colleague for their own career gains.
Nearly 70 per cent confessed that they would secretly revel in seeing another colleague fail while one in five have taken the credit for someone else's work.
According to the research there is conflict between mothers and childless women in the workplace.
More than half of women thought that women with children held more power in the office to the disadvantage of those without.
Harper's Bazaar editor Lucy Yeomans said: "We anonymously polled a variety of professional women from City high-flyers and health care managers to newspaper editors. Some of the results confirmed our suspicions - the power of high heels, for instance - while others were surprising, in particular the fact that the majority of women polled would rather work for a male boss.
"We work in a female-dominated industry and were amazed at this lack of 'sisterly' support. But considering so many also confessed to flirting with a male colleague as a means to getting their own way, perhaps we shouldn't have been so shocked!"
Although many women may prefer working with and for men they still find themselves excluded from typical networking opportunities.
While 70 per cent of women thought that socialising outside office hours brought them more influence at work two in five women had not been invited to traditional male bonding activities such as a round of golf or a game of poker.
My comments on the above are :-
Nice to know confirmation of what I knew all along.
In India women of all hues (i.e caste/religion/language) have been victims for centuries. Remember "midnight's unspoken voice of sorrow in an ancient bedroom" of T. S Eliot?.
They need all the help to catch up. If their womanhood comes handy for that, good for them and all of us.
Aniruddha, I had not seen this one. Thanks for pointing it out and sharing your thoughts. I am not aware of the Eliot reference but will look up for it.
I second Aniruddha's comment. I think it is rather odd that a survey of this nature could be held, as if explicitly designed to prove that women get by by charm and high heels to get to the top. Such gender discrimination at work places only go all the way to prove that men have a tunnel vision wrt women and that they need to re-look at their body of beliefs about women, not only in work places, but also otherwise.
The survey stinks of an already existing bias.
Julia
Dear Mridula,
I seem to agree with Aniruddha totally. It is inevitably a biased survey that might have been done only with the objective of proving that women in work places rise by throwing their looks around and by tickling the Boss' whatever!Or for that matter clicking their high heels!
In India, we know that at almost all levels, it is the men who have not been able to get out of their fixation with women being "objects" of their desire. Hence, in work places too, women have had to battle with such patterns of thoughts apart from the fact that she has to work harder to get her work done, despite the accusation she might receive at the end as having used her "ways" to get around the job/Boss.
Most of us, who are working women know that it has not been easy to fight such biases from our male colleagues and that breaking the glass ceiling has been made even more harder because these biases have solidified over ages.
I have liked this piece very much and have linked it to my blog to be published in a few days from now, if you have no objection to it. May I request you to please drop by on my present post and let me know your willingness or lack of it.
Julia
Post a Comment
<< Home