From my google reader feed (I need to go google a replacement for google reader too). The Last Psychiatrist writes about Sheryl Sandberg and women in the workplace. He puts up this picture:
Then he says:
No, the insightful criticism isn’t that they didn’t artificially include a black woman, it is that they artificially excluded Asian women– that this photo could only be made by actively denying a reality: among women, Asian women are proportionally overrepresented in successful positions, especially tech jobs, especially Silicon Valley, and yes, Apple Maps, India is in Asia. Putting this shot together is like staging an NBA publicity photo without any neck tattoos or handguns. “What?” When I was in my 3rd year of medical school and we all had to select our tax bracket, the Asian women went into surgery, ophthalmology, or the last two years of a PhD program, you know where the borderline sleeves went? Pediatrics, which I think is technically sublimation but I’m no psychiatrist. The logic was straightforward: they wanted kids, and, unlike surgery, pediatrics offered future doctor-moms a bit of flexibility, while the Asian women apparently didn’t worry about working late because their kids would be at violin till 9:30.
Which made me laugh out loud. It is one of those truths that will keep you from being invited back to the next dinner party.
He also had this little insight:
The feminism debate, labeled equivalently as “gender discrimination” or “women sabotage themselves”, is not about women, it is about LABOR COSTS, making working for something other than money admirable. If some women rise to COO that’s unintended consequences, what the system really wants is people, especially the still not maxed out women, to want to work harder for it, to be a producer/consumer for it, by making noble and desirable the long hours, “a seat at the table”– the kind of things that give away the majority of your high heeled, productive life in exchange for the trappings of power.
This is true. Your job is, for 99% of us anyway, going to suck. You might as well get some money in exchange for your time, as all the rest of it is crap.
There are more gems in the post. It’s long but worth the read. Women in my small audience should take a look.
Tags: Facebook, Tiger Moms, Women