Reverse Discrimination Amid the Cubicles

My corner of the cube farm on my birthday this year....

I'm not what people would generally classify as an Alpha Male.  I've never been one to ever "pick up chicks," been confused with what one might identify as "a player" or have ever used my gender to impose upon women.  My wife complains that I'm too nice and need to fight with her more often, so I guess I'm a jerk because I'm too nice and I can deal with that.  My point here is that I'm not an aggressive person, especially when it comes to women, but at work I've never really had any gender related issues.  In fact, one might say I thrived when I worked at a mid-west, regional bank that predominantly employed women.  I was one of maybe 30 or 40 guys out of about 150 people in our sector.  For some reason it didn't bother me, as everyone was friendly, equal minded and fair.  That's what makes my experience in a similar role, working in a suburb of Oregon that much more confusing.  One thing that is different is that I am a man working in the historically female dominated world of Temporary Employment.  Yet I've felt more gender bias at work in this position than any other I've had anywhere else.

Well, there was this one time, fresh out of High School that I worked at a pizza joint in LA where I quickly found myself to be the last male employee amid the host/wait staff and was soon replaced by a buxom beauty.  Did I feel slighted?  You're damn right I did.  Did the owners (a collection of three middle-aged Italian guys), who had no real reason to fire me, look sheepish and guilty as sin when they fired me?  You're damn right they did.

So it's not like I haven't to some degree felt this before, yet for the first time I truly felt I could make a serious sexual harassment claim or as some refer to it, reverse sexual harassment.  It feels easier to do when working in a department comprised of 6 men out 25 total (only 1 male, non-temp out of 10, making it all but impossible to be male AND hired full-time) and our supervisor is a woman.  A person who often strolls around the department, gossiping with the women, rarely taking the time to pay such courtesies to the not quite "fairer" sex.

In fact, she has gone as far as to have discussions with other women, right near me (albeit in a slightly hushed tone), talking about how her daughter's father didn't want anything to do with her before she was born, in turn generalizing about the irresponsibility of men and how it specifically effected her perception of them.  They talked about dating men and what jerks they were.  Most every group conversation, ordering of take-out for lunch and so on was kept within a tight group of women who almost never included those outside their circle. There have been a number of other instances and personalities I could portray here but it was these specific instances that I found most frustrating and inappropriate. And to be clear, there wasn't anything I ever did to individually deserve such treatment nor was anything ever directed specifically at me, yet it hasn't exactly made for a cordial, male friendly environment.

Conversely, it must also be said that I have previously worked in a predominantly female department where everyone knew each other well and there was a more collegial atmosphere where everyone was included and where if someone crossed the line, they let it be known.  My current employment is made more awkward by the fact that most everyone wears headphones almost all day long, making those unused to the environment more socially detached and less conversive, thus a temp-dominant department where everyone is less trusting of each other, in turn making temps all-the-more wary of the persons in charge.

So, I thought about filing a complaint but I knew it wouldn't augur well for my future as a temp in this female rich department, so I kept it to myself.  And of course I had to keep in mind the inherent bias that comes with being a lowly temp, such as having to park clear over on the other side of our huge campus, which takes at least 10 minutes to cross to reach my desk (it used to be worse: temps were once asked to park off campus then be shuttled to campus). Or the confusion that comes from being employed by a temp agency, then contracted by a corporation, which in the end means I'd be filing a claim against someone who technically works for a different company.  I could go on about never receiving a raise in my 13 months of a 18 month contract (something most others were afforded), but I'm not a "real temp" - those often without a college degree, who've worked at multiple sites and tend to be female... which might more specifically explain the slights I perceived to be against me, not my disposition which I had no control over.  Or maybe it's just their way to compel those they know aren't expected to be with the agency long term or complete the contract to leave, making way for those not demanding a higher wage.

What it really has made me stand up and pay attention to, aside from what I've found to be a growing and increasingly socio-economic bit of discrimination in the over use of temps in corporate America today, is the distinctly female environment found in the banking sector today.  This isn't a bad thing, in fact, I'll go as far as to say it's a great thing.  Though it does make me wonder what it is about retail banking that has drawn so many women into it's ranks.  I suppose it could be attributed to the abundance of entry level positions available to everybody, regardless of gender, at branches and call centers in our service obsessed culture.  I don't quite understand why exactly this is, so if anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.

Lastly and maybe even more disconcerting to me, is the lack of women in the higher-echelons of the financial/banking sector.  And those that do get there, at least in my experience, tend to be hard wired, tiger-lady personalities, often modelling themselves in a high-fashion, sexually intimidating and socially terse way.  I'm not saying that all women who've reached higher financial management positions are like this, but it's been a distinctly obvious phenomenon in the banking departments I've worked in.  Is it the attitudes or sexual bias of men that have pushed them to such extremes?  Is it purely a drive to succeed at any cost, using their youthful looks, dress and attitude to not so much advance but to keep from losing the position they've already attained to some one younger and more attractive?  Is it in anyway the same for men?

Being just a little guy in a sea of cubicles predominantly occupied by women, I've never quite been able to know the captain of the ship. The whole phenomenon is really intriguing to me and it makes me want to know who these women are, what drives them and to better understand this culture.  I doubt I'll learn anything more as I'll most likely be leaving this odd reality in a few weeks having finally found a real full-time job that doesn't reside in the banking world.  It's a liberating feeling, yet we shouldn't escape the reality that we're all curious beings with difficult questions to ask with even tougher answers to derive in light of the accusations and repercussions one might face in attempting to be heard above the din of commerce.  Believe you me, I know how that feels.

Why is protecting workers a good idea, again?

Reader's Digest collected a bunch of anecdotes from HR specialists about what it takes get hired, or fired.  A couple of gems: 

“A lot of managers don’t want to hire people with young kids, and they use all sorts of tricks to find that out, illegally. One woman kept a picture of two really cute children on her desk even though she didn’t have children [hoping job candidates would ask about them]. Another guy used to walk people out to their car to see whether they had car seats.” –Cynthia Shapiro, former human resources executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know

“Is it harder to get the job if you’re fat? Absolutely. Like George Clooney’s character said in Up in the Air, ‘I stereotype. It’s faster.’” –Suzanne Lucas, a former HR executive and the Evil HR Lady on bnet.com

“Yes, we do look at your credit as part of our background check. And if you’ve got a bankruptcy or if your credit score is below 650, you’ll have a hard time getting a job. [But] background checks are expensive. Sometimes we bluff, get you to fill out the form, and don’t even run it.” –Cynthia Shapiro

The printed version has more:

"Once your unemployed more than six months, you're considered pretty much unemployable.  We assume that other people have already passed you over, so we don't want anything to do with you." –Cynthia Shapiro

"If you're in your 50s or 60s, don't put the year you graduated on your resume." - Rick DeMatteo

"If there was someone we no longer wanted at the company, we'd give him all the worst assignments on impossible deadlines, set him up to fail, and document that.  After  few months, we could safely terminate him." - HR professional in New York City 

It should go without saying that practices such as the ones admitted to by HR professionals are discriminatory or otherwise unfair to the worker.  The bit about checking credit is particularly frustrating for me, as I find the entire concept of using a credit score to determine employment as extremely problematic.  If one has a low credit score, they either have bad or no credit, both of which require a decent income to overcome.  Decent incomes are impossible to earn without a job.  It's like prohibiting people with drug convictions from accessing financial aid.  Not to sound trite, but the system is obviously built to keep working class people down.  

Yay, unions.  Let's keep them around, and fight to protect people who get fired because they tried to organize to protect their rights.  Because, obviously, we need it.

Sheryl Sandberg on why there are so few female CEOs

Ben Parr summarized her talk:

"Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” Sandberg stated before citing data that explained why. For example, men tend to cite themselves as the primary reason for success, while women tend to cite external factors. And 57% of men negotiate their first salary out of college, while only 7% of women do the same.

This is a frequently cited reason for why women are less successful than men in the professional world.  One thing that stood out to me about her talk was one of the first things she said: "...Let's start out by admitting that we're lucky.  We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited."

The world that our mothers lived in.  That's just one generation.  Sometimes I think in awe about the fact that my mother was alive when Kennedy was shot, when schools became desegregated, when we first landed on the moon, when abortion went from illegal to legal.  

The major civil rights victories that my generation takes for granted were only gained within the last generation.  That's not very long ago.  To think that it hasn't even been a century since people with whom I can immediately identify -- women, all women -- were not legally allowed to vote is sometimes a little overwhelming.  One of those losing-faith-in-humanity things.  And then to remember that, for many other people, there is no "gee, it's been only a generation since we were legally equal in some extra ways!"  They're still fighting.  And that makes me think that we're not as civilized as we think we are.  As long as there are still people fighting for justice, there is no real civility.  As long as we can say things like, "In, like, 30 years, we'll think of gay marriage like segregation in the 60's," we are not really civilized.  It's just proof that we still have a long way to go before we don't have to fight anymore.  And we should probably just admit it.  While we're always better off than we were, this is no place to slow down and get cozy.