> posters arrogantly asserting that "women should just ask for more"
I believe I remember the posts to which you're referring, which centered IIRC around posts of "what you as a woman can do to improve your salary", by at least one feminist and one recruiter. The thesis of both posts - and many of the comments - was that a heavy contributing factor to the lower average salary for women, at least in "higher" professions (C.S., engineering in general), was that the system was biased towards giving higher salaries to those who were bolder and greedier, traits which women seemed less likely to display at the negotiating table. I suppose one could argue that emphasizing the "what women could do" rather than "fix the damn system" aspect was sexist, but it's a stretch, especially given the authors.
Re: jokes. Whenever someone complains about a joke, or about an aspect of language, I always feel like we're attacking the tip of the iceberg in a way that won't really affect the rest of the problem at all. I'd rather people spent their time dealing with the roots of these sorts of problems than arguing over words and jokes.
Not to attack, but you're missing the point too. Saying someone "could do X, Y" especially where X, Y are "bolder" and "greedier" has very different implications for a woman than a man. And the resulting discussion revealed just that. Both anecdotes and studies were posted that revealed that not only were those tactics NOT very successful for women's advancement in the workplace, but that it actually caused resentment towards them as male collegaues took that behavior to, well, were it normally goes. Look at most bold women and the jokes that people make about them being "bitches" or "cold" or what not. It's undermining and it's why women are often conditioned to NOT be bold and ask for more, etc. (Why don't people ever ask, how did we get to this level of inequality and disrespect in the first place?)
As for the jokes, I agree. As I commented elsewhere, it takes a sexist culture to excuse and allow sexist jokes. I think that being less tolerant of such jokes is a good first step towards reforming the broken aspects of such a culture though.
Look at most bold women and the jokes that people make about them being "bitches" or "cold" or what not.
I would respond "bold" men are often called "predators" and "douchebags" by the very same people. I find that there are always people who dislike those who put their necks out, no matter their sex.
I'd say that there are fewer women that are both bold and well-liked than men. Admittedly this is just my opinion, and I don't have any numbers to back it up.
The relevant question, however, is whether (# well liked && bold) / (# bold) is larger for men than for women. You may observe very few bold and well liked women merely because # bold women is low.
So, I think its definitely true that a lot of "bold" women are unfairly called bitches by men who resent their boldness.
However, there's also a group of women whom no one seems to acknowledge in the bold/bitch debate: the women who claim to be bold and claim suffering the bitch-label from sexist men, but who are in fact bitches.
I think the confusion stems from the fact that bitch and bold are actually composite characteristics. Bold is a combination of being assertive and compassionate, while bitch (or asshole, the male equivalent) is a combination of being assertive and arrogant. You'll notice assertiveness is a quality common to both descriptions.
One situation where this distinction really shows itself is in team projects in college. I'm sure everyone has experienced suffering under the leadership of an asshole -- a male who claims the leadership role, asserts a direction for the group, and completely ignores contrary opinions and input, even in the face of evidence that his direction isn't working. What's somewhat less common is a bitch who leads a group project.
I recall a group project in an Electrical Engineering lab where we had to build a line-following Lego robot. A woman in our group quickly asserted herself into a leadership role. However, her bitch-hood quickly became apparent when she repeatedly ignored my criticism of (and suggested solution to) a design flaw which was ruining the performance of our robot.
(Technical aside: the root of the problem was that we only had two wheels, and started with a design of a long and narrow "car", with powered wheels in the rear and skid plates (and sensors) up front.
Because the battery box / CPU was quite heavy, a significant portion of the weight rested on the skid plates. The resulting friction made the robot sluggish and prone to getting stuck. Further, the weight of the structure was causing the front end to frequently fall apart.
I suggested "Hey guys, I think what's happening is that we have too much weight transfer onto the friction pads. If we redesigned the robot to shift the weight more towards the axle, it would reduce the friction problem as well as the fragility problem". "No, we just need to reinforce the frame. That will solve the problem," said the bitch.
Now, I was auditing this class as a university employee, so I was older and more experienced than my teammates, and I recognized it would be doing them a disservice to simply take charge. The highest quality learning comes through experimentation and self-determined results, rather than simply being shown what the "best" answer was. So I backed off and let them try it their way.
Of course, the reinforcements only exacerbated the problem by shifting even more weight onto the skid plates. However, I felt it was important that they realize this on their own. After several hours with no progress, I chimed in again with the redesign suggestion, this time putting heavier emphasis on trying to explain the root phenomenon which was causing the problem, and trying to engage them in "what sort of design would result from attempting to reverse that phenomenon?". The bitch simply rejected this input again, and we all continued watching our robot get stuck and fall apart.
Finally we were nearing the competition deadline, and we hadn't made any forward progress. We had to make it through an entire maze, yet our robot couldn't reliably travel more than a few inches. I asked to be the overnight care-taker of the robot, claiming I wanted to "tweak the code a bit". I tore the robot apart and redesigned it to shift all of the weight over the axle, with two opposing skid pads on either side. This eliminated the friction problem, made the robot much more structurally sound, and actually ended up being one of the fastest and most nimble robots in the competition.
When I showed my teammates the next day, all of them were overjoyed by how much better the robot performed. Except for the bitch. She was silent for a while, and then became even bossier than usual towards the rest of the team, visibly angry. She said absolutely nothing to me.
I felt bad for taking over at the last minute (because that's a poor way to lead), but quite honestly, I knew I was right, I knew she was wrong, and I wasn't about to let this bitch's arrogance needlessly drive our grade into the ground.)
I think what happens in these situations is that Women, in a male dominated field, recognize the quality of assertiveness in the leaders of that field, and they try to emulate it themselves. However, some of them fail to recognize that simply being assertive isn't enough to be a great leader -- you have to be compassionate as well. You have to provide your team a firm guiding hand, yet still be willing to consider critical feedback fairly and objectively, and especially be willing to change course in the face of supporting evidence. No one wants to be lead by a bully.
Bold women are a very valuable asset, but bitches be crazy.
Sorry, but you're being extremely biased here. Mistaking assertiveness for arrogance can happen with any outsider in a certain field. It's not related to gender at all, and your example doesn't even argue for it. The project leader could perfectly be a man. What you describe is a problem with people in general, not a problem with women at all...
The gender difference I'm pointing out isn't mistaking assertiveness for arrogance (in fact I'd say this happens more frequently with men, as statistically they end up in a greater number of leadership roles).
The gender difference I'm pointing out is in how those who take offense to the bitch/asshole label push back against that accusation.
Anecdotally, I've noticed its often the case that women will make an appeal to victim-hood ("You're just calling me that because you have a problem with powerful women"), which is something I haven't seen men do. Sadly, they are often correct. But a small portion of the time, they are mistaken, and somehow the specious claim of sexism is particularly odious. That tiny portion of the overall picture is what I was pointing out.
With men, it seems more often that either they shrug off the accusation because they are fine with being an asshole (which is particularly distasteful), or they respond by further turning up the arrogance dial ("I'm not an asshole, its just that I'm better than you").
I believe I remember the posts to which you're referring, which centered IIRC around posts of "what you as a woman can do to improve your salary", by at least one feminist and one recruiter. The thesis of both posts - and many of the comments - was that a heavy contributing factor to the lower average salary for women, at least in "higher" professions (C.S., engineering in general), was that the system was biased towards giving higher salaries to those who were bolder and greedier, traits which women seemed less likely to display at the negotiating table. I suppose one could argue that emphasizing the "what women could do" rather than "fix the damn system" aspect was sexist, but it's a stretch, especially given the authors.
Re: jokes. Whenever someone complains about a joke, or about an aspect of language, I always feel like we're attacking the tip of the iceberg in a way that won't really affect the rest of the problem at all. I'd rather people spent their time dealing with the roots of these sorts of problems than arguing over words and jokes.