Quote:
Originally Posted by DGthe3
That implies that men don't experience the effects of hormones & never let their personal feelings affect their jobs. Which is complete & utter BS. If you are too 'macho' then you probably won't be able to listen to, let alone accept the advice, from others. It also means you'll be ultra competitive. Competition is fine for business, but always having to have the biggest whatever just so the other guy doesn't is not necessarily the best business move (and I suspect that men may inherently have an inclination towards showing everyone that yes they do have 'the biggest' that women do not posses).
And nobody can keep their personal feelings out of their work. I'm not familiar with that study regarding women playing favourites more, but depending on the methodology used it could be completely meaningless. First off, how was it determined that they were in fact playing favourites anyway? Were they simply asked? Because all that tells you is that women are more likely to tell you, not that they're actually doing it more. Men could simply be lying to the researcher more often. Or, each group could also be responding in a way so that they conform to a set of expectations for their group with reality falling somewhere in the middle. That happens all the time in gender studies. Its also possible that men might be less aware that they're exhibiting any favouritism in the first place.
Assuming they managed to somehow cover all that, there is also a reverse of favouritism: punishing your rival. Did the researchers study that as well? And if so, were the results the same with women being more prone to it? Or were men more likely to keep potential competetion down? If so, how is that any better than playing favourites? And really ... is it any different? If you are hurting your enemies, aren't you by default helping your friends?
On top of all that, there is also the possibility of the researcher being a misogynist themselves, likely unwittingly. The study ends up being biased towards validating their beliefs in both the experimental design and the interpretation of the results. Experimenter bias happens all the time throughout science, and is much harder to get rid of when studying psychology or sociology.
I know you didn't conduct the study and probably don't have all of its scientific details memorized. But its just some things to consider when you read about studies like that.
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What I got out of if was that they went around to various types of industries and offices setting. They then polled employees both men and women to ask them if they preferred a female or male boss. They claimed that the results leaned toward a male boss and the funny thing was that the woman employees percentage of who would prefer male bosses was a little higher than the male employees. They also ask what the main reasons for leaning one way or the other were.
Like I said before, as for me it doesn't matter if they can do their job well and are respected by the people they are working with. I have a woman that runs my office and does a very good job doing so. I will say though, I just ask my wife they other day, who works in a large office setting, if she would prefer a male or female boss. She said a male hands down. Her reasons were about the same as the study I read. I never told her about the study before asking or influenced her in any way. I know In my business of doing HVACR. We work in a lot of office buildings, manufacturing facilities, nursing homes, banks and schools, and most of the ones that are run by females are a lot harder to deal with when it comes to getting anything done or trying to explain a problem. I can be very frustrating. I'm not entirely sure why that is.
I know this was long winded, but I wanted to add that I wish the new GM CEO well and hope that she keeps things moving in the right direction.