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I have been self-employed most of my life so I lack experience in the world of work. Recently though, I got a job that I really like which allows me ample freedom and technical support to do the kinds of things I was unable to do on my own. Plus, I'm learning new things every day.
One thing I've noticed in our office environment is that though we all have the same professional degree and basic intellectual abilities, all three of the women in our office are on one team and the balance of the employees, who are men, are on the other two teams. And though there is some cross-over on the tasks we are doing, in general, we women are doing the artistic and writing projects and most of the men (with the exception of one man who works independently on artistic tasks) are doing the more technical and mathematical tasks.
I'm not complaining. I asked for a mathematical task and was given one to strengthen my skill sets; but isn't it odd how the kinds of work in our office is divided along gender lines?
Personally, I think it shows you've got a good office manager who is able to delegate to the best for the task that may have nothing to do with the gender of the employee. I don't know if its true in your case or not, but I've worked in situations where folks weren't put at tasks that enhanced or complimented their abilities, rather highlighted their weaknesses. I'm thinking its beating a dead horse, but women are better than some tasks than men, and vice versa. My opinion is women are more artistic, men more analytical, but I certainly don't know if it is true in your office. My $.02.
I guess I've lived so long in a world where women (and I among them) have worked their tails off to be able to do the same kinds of work that men do (and receive the same pay and have the same opportunities for advancement) And to finally get where I am and see an office divided by gender-specific tasks is still something I'm looking at closely.
I've had the pleasure of meeting (and even driving team with) a number of women truckers that IMHO, do a better job behind the wheel than many men!
(Women truckers also don't worry about macho law and don't care how long the truck's hood is!)
Ellie, I can definitely agree that women in the non-traditional fields in the military have DEFINITELY had to work twice as hard to go half as far as men. (As an aircraft maintainer, I saw plenty of that, especially back in the '70s...)
Last edited by Crew Chief; 06-17-2007 at 11:40 AM..
Reason: proofread, proofread, proofread!!!
It may have something to do with the different approach in functioning as to why they were chosen that way. Females tend to consult with each other more in decision making to arrive at consensus than men do. Whoever chose must have thought everyone would be more comfortable the way they set it up.
I've almost never worked around my same gender. You may be able to ask for assignment to the other team if you want. It might be interesting to see what they're up to.
I don't buy that. Most of the women I know are far more independent thinking than that old cliche. I've never liked doing women's work. But for the moment I'm just watching and working as hard as possible to move into a more open category.
Personally I am a website developer and I have always liked the designs made by women the most. I have yet to find a female programmers. Out of about 100 designers and 100 programmers I have worked with, at least 80 designers were and are female and not one programmer was female.
My opinion is women are more artistic, men more analytical, but I certainly don't know if it is true in your office. My $.02
The majority of famous artists are actually men.
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I have yet to find a female programmers
Yeah they are very rare. It seems women are rare in any field that is highly symbolic.
Anyhow, I don't think its a "artistic" vs "analytic" thing. I bet if you looked at average SAT and GRE scores you wouldn't see a big difference there. There does seem to be a difference with symbolic reasoning though, women are such a minority in any field that heavily involves it (programming, engineering, advanced mathematics, physics etc).
I wonder if fame is just a hold-over from less equal times.
Women get a biologically induced professional setback when or if they choose to have children and stay home. One of my female co-workers brings her infant son to the office, something that is surprisingly not as distracting as one would think. Once he's a little older he'll go to daycare. But you have to wonder why people have them (sort of like pets) if they're not going to be at home to play with them.
But I'm still interested, in the real world, given equal opportunity, that women and men tend to gravitate or get nudged in different directions professionally.
In our office, the other new employee is male. He also has a strong background in some of the same things I do, maybe stronger, yet he got the analytical set of assignments and I got the more aesthetic set of assignments. We were joking around about it today.
I wonder if fame is just a hold-over from less equal times.
Certainly in many cases it is. The point of my comment was mainly that the idea that men aren't "aristic" is pretty silly. Even today more than half of the world's artists are men.
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But I'm still interested, in the real world, given equal opportunity, that women and men tend to gravitate or get nudged in different directions professionally.
Its really hard to know whether such "gravitation" is from the culture or something else though. Although women have equal opportunity in many cases the culture still pushes them in particular ways. Most people have it in their head that women are "artistic" and men are "analytic" but from teaching logic/math courses I haven't noticed that women are less analytic. I have noticed that they aren't as good once you introduce symbolization though. Its actually weird, when dealing with real world examples etc men/women reason the same. You symbolize things and it seems to change.
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