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I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. That is a stereotype, but sometimes there's truth in stereoty

I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. That is a stereotype, but sometimes there's truth in stereotypes. I mean I recall studies that women are less likely to ask for raises or are worse at haggling. So if a person is speaking over you and rambling on, perhaps a man is more likely to speak up or butt in at the first opportunity. The quote in the top comment sort of hints at this. That she didn't feel as annoyed by his talking and so didn't speak up. I haven't watched the whole thing, but other comments mention he does this over male panelists as well.

ep103 9y ago
I read a study that comes to mind, that said, basically, women tend not to ask for raises as often as their male counterparts in the office. And when they do ask for raises, they tend to ask for raises to the level they are currently at, as opposed to where they think they will grow to, while its the opposite for men. Its just one data point, but it correlates
devmunchies 9y ago
At what point do we chalk up behaviors to sexism vs biological tendencies? IF being more assertive is proven to be a naturally masculine trait, then shouldn't discriminating against men for a natural behavior be seen as sexism as well?
- blowbaybestban 9y ago
  Anti-sexism might still be sexism, but with a non-negative connotation. The question is ill-defined, those terms, sexism and natural ..., don't have to be mutually exclusive. Thew comparison doesn't even make much sense, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature Your implication is paradox, because it paints with a pretty broad brush and out of line. You suggest that discriminating against naturally gender specific behavior is sexism. I don't think that's the case, although it's a loosely defined, broad term. At least sexism is a stereotype, too, yes. Paradoxically, women who are discriminating against men would be assertive. Therefore you would be in turn discriminating against this presumably unnatural tendency (unless women aren't vocal about this). That's ironic because as far as I know sexism fundamentally is against ascribing any character attributes based on gender, analog to racism. (I might be confused here, because it's not usually my debate. Popular sexism is rather against discrimination in face of obvious gender based properties, like pregnancy.) On the other hand, casual sexism is just the exercise of sexism, whether it be natural or not, in settings where it doesn't belong. In general, professionalism requires an extend of discretion and privacy and is certainly not black and white at that, but rather subjective. And that's what emancipation is about, incidentally, to be treated as a subject, individually, and not objective as a stereotype.
carapat_virulat 9y ago
Yes, women are in average higher in trait agreeableness[1][2]. This is well studied cross-culturally. There's still a huge overlap between men and women in most traits so it's not useful as a rule of thumb of how people as individuals. It can explain average population outcomes like men on average haggling for better wages as you said. It can also explain outlier outcome, for example the most disagreeable people are mostly men. This makes men more likely to end up in prison. Which doesn't mean that the average men is much more likely to end up in prison than the average woman. But the type of person who is more likely to end up in prison happen to be mostly men. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
jlebar 9y ago
> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. If this has been your experience, I'd encourage you to consider why that might be the case. Here's one possibility: Perhaps in our culture, assertive women are treated worse than assertive men.
- anjc 9y ago
  That's one possibility, yeah
- fav_collector 9y ago
  Or that non-assertive women are treated well and non-assertive men are treated poorly. Men have to learn to be assertive to be treated as well as women. You can see this dynamic in the dating world where non-assertive men are the losers of the game.
- oculusthrift 9y ago
  yeah or they don't have testosterone or any form of latent aggression built in, which is required for assertiveness
unicornporn 9y ago
> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. That's a descriptive, not necessarily a normative, statement. What's more interesting to me is why women and men act differently. Do you believe the differences could be the result of child rearing, social climate and norms etc?
sitoseb 9y ago
Of course women are less, I'd even say "aggressive". That explains so many other examples like IT interviews (and why men are doing better): https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma... We're different and both genders find themselves better in different roles. That's why in most egalitarian countries that difference in occupations is the biggest.
masondixon 9y ago
> I recall studies that women are less likely to ask for raises or are worse at haggling. The issue I see is that a lot of these issues are just about being in "a minority group". But a lot of complaints are levelled against the "male gender". This is sexist. Everything else is not. Sexism has to be when people are treated differently solely because of their sex. In the tech world and corporate world, there is often a large imbalance between male and female, so that the treatment of a minority group appears sexist, because females are usually the minority. The best test is to reverse the groupings and apply the same test. When you think about it like this, it becomes less about "men" being somehow inherently bad which is a gross generalisation, and more about "humans are terrible people sometimes". But the issue with the latter statement is its not easy where to throw the blame.

ep103 9y ago

I read a study that comes to mind, that said, basically, women tend not to ask for raises as often as their male counterparts in the office. And when they do ask for raises, they tend to ask for raises to the level they are currently at, as opposed to where they think they will grow to, while its the opposite for men. Its just one data point, but it correlates

devmunchies 9y ago

At what point do we chalk up behaviors to sexism vs biological tendencies? IF being more assertive is proven to be a naturally masculine trait, then shouldn't discriminating against men for a natural behavior be seen as sexism as well?

blowbaybestban 9y ago
Anti-sexism might still be sexism, but with a non-negative connotation. The question is ill-defined, those terms, sexism and natural ..., don't have to be mutually exclusive. Thew comparison doesn't even make much sense, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature Your implication is paradox, because it paints with a pretty broad brush and out of line. You suggest that discriminating against naturally gender specific behavior is sexism. I don't think that's the case, although it's a loosely defined, broad term. At least sexism is a stereotype, too, yes. Paradoxically, women who are discriminating against men would be assertive. Therefore you would be in turn discriminating against this presumably unnatural tendency (unless women aren't vocal about this). That's ironic because as far as I know sexism fundamentally is against ascribing any character attributes based on gender, analog to racism. (I might be confused here, because it's not usually my debate. Popular sexism is rather against discrimination in face of obvious gender based properties, like pregnancy.) On the other hand, casual sexism is just the exercise of sexism, whether it be natural or not, in settings where it doesn't belong. In general, professionalism requires an extend of discretion and privacy and is certainly not black and white at that, but rather subjective. And that's what emancipation is about, incidentally, to be treated as a subject, individually, and not objective as a stereotype.

carapat_virulat 9y ago

Yes, women are in average higher in trait agreeableness[1][2]. This is well studied cross-culturally. There's still a huge overlap between men and women in most traits so it's not useful as a rule of thumb of how people as individuals. It can explain average population outcomes like men on average haggling for better wages as you said. It can also explain outlier outcome, for example the most disagreeable people are mostly men. This makes men more likely to end up in prison. Which doesn't mean that the average men is much more likely to end up in prison than the average woman. But the type of person who is more likely to end up in prison happen to be mostly men. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

jlebar 9y ago

> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. If this has been your experience, I'd encourage you to consider why that might be the case. Here's one possibility: Perhaps in our culture, assertive women are treated worse than assertive men.

anjc 9y ago
That's one possibility, yeah
fav_collector 9y ago
Or that non-assertive women are treated well and non-assertive men are treated poorly. Men have to learn to be assertive to be treated as well as women. You can see this dynamic in the dating world where non-assertive men are the losers of the game.
oculusthrift 9y ago
yeah or they don't have testosterone or any form of latent aggression built in, which is required for assertiveness

unicornporn 9y ago

> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. That's a descriptive, not necessarily a normative, statement. What's more interesting to me is why women and men act differently. Do you believe the differences could be the result of child rearing, social climate and norms etc?

sitoseb 9y ago

Of course women are less, I'd even say "aggressive". That explains so many other examples like IT interviews (and why men are doing better): https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma... We're different and both genders find themselves better in different roles. That's why in most egalitarian countries that difference in occupations is the biggest.

masondixon 9y ago

> I recall studies that women are less likely to ask for raises or are worse at haggling. The issue I see is that a lot of these issues are just about being in "a minority group". But a lot of complaints are levelled against the "male gender". This is sexist. Everything else is not. Sexism has to be when people are treated differently solely because of their sex. In the tech world and corporate world, there is often a large imbalance between male and female, so that the treatment of a minority group appears sexist, because females are usually the minority. The best test is to reverse the groupings and apply the same test. When you think about it like this, it becomes less about "men" being somehow inherently bad which is a gross generalisation, and more about "humans are terrible people sometimes". But the issue with the latter statement is its not easy where to throw the blame.