Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.

[ehrnst]

"Fifty years after The Feminine Mystique and 40 years after Title IX, the question of why women lag in the workplace dogs researchers and lay people alike. While women are entering the professions at rates equal to men, they rise more slowly, and rarely advance to the top. They’re represented in smaller numbers at the top in fields from science to arts to business.

Some suggest that there is something different about women—women have stalled because of their personal choices, or their cognitive and emotional characteristics, whether innate or socialized. Another possibility is that the obstacles to women’s advancement are located within their environments—that they face barriers unique to their gender.1

But while bias has been experimentally demonstrated, it’s hard to study in the real world: Just as it’s hard to isolate a single environmental pollutant’s effect on human health, it’s been near impossible to isolate gender as a variable in the real world and watch how it affects a person’s day-to-day experience.

Until now. Trans people are bringing entirely new ways of approaching the discussion. Because trans people are now staying in the same careers (and sometimes the very same jobs) after they change genders, they are uniquely qualified to discuss the difference between how men and women experience the workplace. Their experience is as close to the scientific method as we can get: By isolating and manipulating gender as a variable and holding all other variables—skill, career, personality, talent—constant, these individuals reveal exactly the way one’s outward appearance of gender affects day-to-day interactions. If we truly want to understand women at work, we should listen carefully to trans men and trans women: They can tell us more about gender in the workplace than just about anyone."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119239/transgender-people-can-explain-why-women-dont-advance-work

[seabeyond]

1. very interesting article, but nothing new or unexpected either. the most obvious

is as a woman, to speak up, one is aggressive or hell... just a bitch. where as the man is take charge.

thanks for the article. the very essence of learned that we need to address.

[valerief]

2. Kick

[lunasun]

3. Excellent article Thank you

Even explores race in transgendered life
The effects of FTM transition, however, aren’t universally positive. Race, it seems, has the ability to overshadow gender when it comes to others’ esteem. Black transmen, for instance, found they were perceived as a “dangerous” post transition. One subject said he went from being “obnoxious black woman” to “scary black man”—and was now always asked to play the “suspect” in training exercises.

Sexual and racial discrimination in the workplace - a bunch of bull now days? Hardly.....

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. I find their stories fascinating

Have found that Trans people are much better at presenting life from the other side of the gender divide. Which I suspect is because we make assumptions about what the other knows, that isn't the case.

Going to have to rethink my views of some female colleagues. My perception has been that some lack confidence. Perhaps they are just trying to avoid being called a bitch?