This also opens the door to having one or two self-promoting types control the conversation by commenting early on and to never stop talking. I find its helpful to interrupt people sometimes as it helps cut the BS in meetings.
I doubt there's an easy fix here. My take is that there's a larger aspect not addressed in the article: women simply aren't socialized to be socially aggressive. The same way women often won't negotiate salary and then we wring our hands over women's salaries. How about of instead changing everything to suite these women, we encourage them to be more socially aggressive? Its not like these things are pleasant or easy for men either. I feel like if I didn't learn how to act this way, I wouldn't be competitive at my job. The same way I see loads of shy male techies who never speak up and don't contribute much and don't end up promoted or appreciated. I think its a skill that can be learned and things like "oh I'm INTJ, oh I'm a woman, etc" are excuses. Why aren't some people motivated to learn the proper social skills? As a previous shy person, I know that this is just a learn-able skill.
I don't think we need to make meetings longer and "nicer" and if we did, it would just lead to resentment and fleeing of talent to company B where that talent can thrive without a lot of politically correct baggage holding them back. Now company A is a bunch of quiet milquetoast types unable to engage in argumentation and eventually not be competitive against a more aggressive company.
Lastly, a lot of the more quiet people I've worked with are so because they just don't have a lot of good ideas. They're bureaucrats and desk jockeys or are ultrafocused on their little niche of the world and add the same things over and over regardless of context. Yeah, the TPS reports might be slow to load, but this isn't the time or place for it, yet the TPS manager has literally nothing else to add. Maybe those without much to add should be quiet.
The Harrison Bergeron-ing of all things really isn't the way to go. I really wish more people understood that.
> women simply aren't socialized to be socially aggressive
The article makes the point that women are socially penalized when they are aggressive. It's not a lack of socialization into aggressiveness, but rather an active socialization into passiveness.
Yeah sure, but how? It's not like you can pass a law one day and the next the values of every person in the country will have changed.
In my experience values drive law more than law drives values. Marijuana has been illegal for some 40 years (or more!) in the US but that didn't make everyone think it was bad. And now the fact that so many people are unconvinced that marijuana is bad is changing the laws and it's being legalized all across the US.
Critical theory is fine but "trying to fix the system" implies that there is some method by which the system can be fixed other than "everyone has to just grow up" since I don't foresee an "everyone must grow up" law being terribly successful.
EDIT: Let me state that I don't necessarily think the current state of affairs is OK, just that it's a fairly intractable problem that won't get solved quickly. I can figure out what's wrong with my car and install replacement parts. I can figure out what's wrong with society but there aren't any replacement parts.
Not to mention, the only system I can think of where competition, which is what we're really talking about, was systematically eliminated was the USSR and other implementations of communism, which were both economically and socially a disaster. There's a lot of feel good stuff when we talk about fixing things, but the "thing" that needs to be fixed is sometimes a feature and not a bug.
The USSR is also a good example, especially with women's rights. There was a top-down equality decree without any sort of legitimate social movement. In practice, women in the USSR, outside of propaganda, were treated poorly and once the USSR fell, Russians just naturally fell into their deep patriarchal views which are mainstream there. If anything, women have it worse in modern Russia because of the USSR's heavy handed idealistic decrees.
The Harrison Bergeron-ing all things is a terrible path and we should definitely encourage people to rise to the challenges of their environment, and celebrate those who do.
But that doesn't have to be the end of the story. Some of the challenges that women face in the workplace can't be solved simply by those women. I think that was a major point of the article. There are common subconscious biases that businesses would be well served to address. That doesn't have to mean that businesses treat anyone like victims. It means they aren't necessarily maximizing the value of their human resources. I don't think there's a single optimum strategy for running business meetings, but we should certainly better understand the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches.
women simply aren't socialized to be socially aggressive.
There are biological factors at work here too - the hormonal balance in a man versus a woman (testosterone, etc) leads to widely divergent levels of observed aggressiveness in almost all contexts (social, physical, etc).
I doubt there's an easy fix here. My take is that there's a larger aspect not addressed in the article: women simply aren't socialized to be socially aggressive. The same way women often won't negotiate salary and then we wring our hands over women's salaries. How about of instead changing everything to suite these women, we encourage them to be more socially aggressive? Its not like these things are pleasant or easy for men either. I feel like if I didn't learn how to act this way, I wouldn't be competitive at my job. The same way I see loads of shy male techies who never speak up and don't contribute much and don't end up promoted or appreciated. I think its a skill that can be learned and things like "oh I'm INTJ, oh I'm a woman, etc" are excuses. Why aren't some people motivated to learn the proper social skills? As a previous shy person, I know that this is just a learn-able skill.
I don't think we need to make meetings longer and "nicer" and if we did, it would just lead to resentment and fleeing of talent to company B where that talent can thrive without a lot of politically correct baggage holding them back. Now company A is a bunch of quiet milquetoast types unable to engage in argumentation and eventually not be competitive against a more aggressive company.
Lastly, a lot of the more quiet people I've worked with are so because they just don't have a lot of good ideas. They're bureaucrats and desk jockeys or are ultrafocused on their little niche of the world and add the same things over and over regardless of context. Yeah, the TPS reports might be slow to load, but this isn't the time or place for it, yet the TPS manager has literally nothing else to add. Maybe those without much to add should be quiet.
The Harrison Bergeron-ing of all things really isn't the way to go. I really wish more people understood that.