Friday, November 2, 2007

Women Can't Win

I wonder if any of you read this piece in yesterday's New York Times? It concerns popular notions of leadership ability. Guess what? People (even female people) generally don't think women make good leaders. I'm shocked! Shocked!

To add a little spice to the whole thing, guess where the Grey Lady ran the piece? You know, their important piece explaining the research about women not being taken seriously as leaders?

The Fashion and Style section.

Oh.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have just been complaining to friends about work today. I'm a church secretary, Anglican, in Canada. We use software for our charitable donations accounting, and I was mailing out third-quarter givings statements today to the parishioners.

I've hated this software from the beginning. It does what it's supposed to. And it automatically sorts males into the priority positions in the data bases for family lists. So even if you don't identify someone as "Head of the Household" it sorts the adult male as that. And the children aren't listed by age alone -- the boys are listed oldest to youngest first, and the girls after all the boys are done.

And what do we do? The software does the job it's supposed to very well other than that -- has journals and ledgers for donations, makes tax receipts in the twinkling of an eye. So, my diocese continues to recommend it to the parishes.

Next week is my mother's birthday -- the last of the firsts; she died a week after her birthday last year. She would tell you, she was a feminist. She believed it. But my brother, and later my stepbrother, got preferential treatment, because their standard equipment included testicles. My 49-year old sister is lesbian, not closeted, and my mother couldn't bring herself to introduce her partner to anyone as anything other than "her flatmate". There is so much denial, ignorance, refusal to see ... Sometimes it feels like all the air is being sucked out of the room.

Thanks for letting us know, Cecelia. I wonder if writing letters to the Times would help?

RevDrKate said...

Seems hard to believe we are reading this in 2007. Thanks for sharing it. Good consciousness-nudging!