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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
"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. Theyre represented in smaller numbers at the top in fields from science to arts to business.
Some suggest that there is something different about womenwomen have stalled because of their personal choices, or their cognitive and emotional characteristics, whether innate or socialized. Another possibility is that the obstacles to womens advancement are located within their environmentsthat they face barriers unique to their gender.1
But while bias has been experimentally demonstrated, its hard to study in the real world: Just as its hard to isolate a single environmental pollutants effect on human health, its been near impossible to isolate gender as a variable in the real world and watch how it affects a persons 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 variablesskill, career, personality, talentconstant, these individuals reveal exactly the way ones 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
(110,159 posts)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.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Even explores race in transgendered life
The effects of FTM transition, however, arent 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 manand 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
(6,036 posts)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?