7 ms·

I'm sorry, but this is a sexist point of view. Your argument seems to be "hire women so the men have a chance of a date, they'll be much more well behaved as a

• erydo 15y ago
  Wait, why is that sexist? A proposition that mixed-gender groups behaved differently than homogeneous groups doesn't ring any alarm bells for me.
  • lwhi 15y ago
    Because women should be hired for their skills. Not because they provide a good 'mix' to compliment the men on a team. To think otherwise is patronising, condescending; and as a result, sexist. Edit: I'm genuinely shocked by the number of comments that contain a latent sexist pretext. Maybe I've been brought up in an overly liberal environment, but I find it pretty horrendous nevertheless.
    • jcc80 15y ago
      So, if we have a group of people that, are broadly speaking, all the same type and we think adding someone with a different set of characteristics will lead to the group performing better as a whole...we shouldn't do that? We should instead higher the "best" individual regardless of how it impacts the group? The goal is to get the most productivity from the team/group. Sometimes that means hiring for attitude over aptitude or ...oh yes, diversity - be it race, gender, degree, life experiences, etc.
    • wheels 15y ago
      That's because you're on a witch hunt. You put words in my mouth and then branded me a sexist based on that. So, here's the thing. I actually consider myself a feminist. I've been outspoken in the past on things like believing that the gender gap in computer science and IT is primarily a consequence of social conditioning and that people should be evaluated and valued within an organization based on their qualifications and not based on their gender. As such, I'm a bit uneasy with the premise of the article -- that work environments can and should be made more "girl friendly" (insofar as that goes beyond not tolerating overt sexism). But that premise came from the article, not from me. Personally, I'm conflicted there and could argue both sides. But, if we run with that premise, and try to answer the question in the title, I find it an impressive stretch to read sexism into saying, "I find mixed gender work environments more pleasant than single-gender environments."
    • dagw 15y ago
      When hiring anybody it's short-sighted to just look at their skills. If you want to build a great team you have to consider the effect the new employee will have on the existing team. Sometimes that mean passing up the person with the best raw skills and hiring based on other factors.
    • defen 15y ago
      The whole is sometimes greater/less than the sum of its parts. The goal of a company is to maximize overall productivity, not to assemble a collection of the highest performing individuals. See Miami Heat vs. Dallas Mavericks in 2011 NBA championship.
  • microarchitect 15y ago
    It may be that the sort of bravado that emerges in football-team-ish environments is useful to a startup. ... even if the things that made it enjoyable would be a net minus in isolation. This part reads like veiled sexism to me. Sure, there are disclaimers and "I-don't-knows" and "might-be's" thrown about but in the absence of real data I don't think there are good reasons to bring this up other than to reinforce sexist stereotypes.
    • wheels 15y ago
      This is one of the problems of honest debate of politicized issues. Positing the obvious gets you labeled as a closet bigot. Do you really consider it far fetched that there could exist a team that worked better when they were all the same gender? I'm not asking if you'd like such a team (I wouldn't), but it's fairly obvious to me with the variety of people that exist in the world that not only could such a team exist, but one almost certainly does. Have you not met a half-dozen socially awkward geeks (male or female) in your life that struggled with professional interaction with the opposite of sex? An important mechanism of earnest debate is the ability to differentiate between ideals and observed reality. I, for instance, find dogmatic fundamentalism unsavory, but it obviously has the ability to wield both a cohesive social force and give rise to political power. It's intellectually dishonest to assume that things we don't like are unable to produce advantageous results.
• wisty 15y ago
  No, he's saying that if you have 8 guys in a room (three male founders, then 5 hires who just happened to be male), they will think it's OK to dress like shit, bathe occasionally, put up lewd posters, leave rubbish under their desks, and no-one is likely to complain. OK, the founders could try to set an example, but they won't have any moral authority if most of the team doesn't really care. If there's at least one women there from the start, you won't get a subtly sexist or just uncouth subculture developing, because people will worry that "the girl" will complain. Guys are sexist - they often think that women will get annoyed by bad behavior, while other guys should just suck it up. Girls are sexist too.
  • lwhi 15y ago
    The alternative is to stop hiring teenagers, and hire adults instead ;)
    • wisty 15y ago
      So you can select 5 guys who are all mature and competent, or 5 competent people, at least one of whom is female. Whichever is easier.
  • jamesteow 15y ago
    I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
    • wisty 15y ago
      Maybe hyperbolic, which is a little different.
    • phugoid 15y ago
      I can assure you that he's not. The biggest shock I had when I moved into an all-male work environment, being male myself, was that people farted and belched all day long and left half-empty pizza boxes lying around. Needless to say, the gaseous emissions were temporarily suspended when a female voice was heard from down the hall.
  • 15y ago
• biot 15y ago
  The GP observed that there exists a different dynamic in mixed gender environments then speculated that whether or not a mixed gender environment is beneficial is dependent on the individuals, thus drawing no conclusion about the matter. That you saw this as a sexist remark advocating for hiring women only reveals your own biases. You misread the comment and what you read between the lines were your own thoughts.
  • lwhi 15y ago
    The post has been edited since I made my original comment, and the tone has been changed.
    • wheels 15y ago
      Nothing was removed. I added the last paragraph. (Actually a few minutes before you made your comment, but perhaps before you saw the edit.)
      • lwhi 15y ago
        We're all pretty capable of being sexist.. me included. I apologise for I calling you out in such an abrupt way. I can't help wonder how difficult it must be trying to make it in a male dominated environment as a woman. I think that it's vitally important to call out prejudiced behaviour when we see it, and that's what I was trying to do. I didn't mean to insinuate that you are a sexist person, but I did read between the lines and summise that you were inferring that women can provide social purpose in contrast to purpose based upon their skill. The only reason a person should be hired is because that person's abilities meet or exceed the requirements for the job. To hell with conditioning, social norms and tradional office hierarchies .. if we don't question the way we think or behave - society won't evolve in a positive way.
        • wheels 15y ago
          The only reason a person should be hired is because that person's abilities meet or exceed the requirements for the job. That's actually somewhat less clear than it would seem on the surface. It's a tenant of third wave feminism, which I generally subscribe to, and I think is approaching the correct behavior at present, but can't be considered outside of its historical context. The reason that we have any semblance of gender parity is a consequence of more radical waves of feminism that came earlier. The women's suffrage movement in the United States being a prime example of such. When ending a regime of officially sanctioned discrimination, such as women's suffrage in the west (which only became universal in 1990, when the last canton of Switzerland allowed women to vote), or in post-apartheid regions such as the American South after the Jim Crow Laws were repealed or modern South Africa, there is utility in overcorrecting. For example, I've typically supported affirmative action, since I believe that one of the precursors to minimizing racism in the United States (and South Africa, where a similar law exists) is the emergence of a strong black middle class. Given that in much of the country there was an effective ban on such for the majority of the nation's history, turning the dials to actively promote such seems a reasonable measure. Similarly, in countries where there was no strong women's liberation movement (e.g. Germany, where women's suffrage was a side effect of the constitution of the Weimar Republic around the time that women were given the vote in the United States), there's still a higher level of sexism that's tolerated in a professional environment. Again, I draw the conclusion that the overcorrection of the suffragettes produced a more equitable environment that laid the groundwork for the modern third wave of feminism that is more gender-neutral than pro-women. Since parity has still not been reached, it's reasonable to ask if liberal minded folk should come down on the side of actively bolstering women in positions of prestige or the growth of the black middle class and to what extent. I don't think there's a right answer, and smart, progressive people come down on both sides as to whether or not we're "there" yet.