Quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
A woman that succeed in a male dominated area, has to be twice as good as her male counterpart to even get status quo.
That takes courage.
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Id like to address this a bit. Now there are all kinds of business environments and many are unique, what I can talk about from experience is Women in Unix System Administration. I have in the past been tasked with interviewing and picking the best candidates.
What I observed during those two years was the following. Women were every bit as aggressive as men seeking the job (not twice as aggressive as you imply) they were as knowlegable (not twice as knowledgeable) and the last thing that struck me as sad but true, women were less than half as likely to aggressivly negotiate salary. In my position I was to negotiate for the company, ie. I offer a low ball salary expecting a counter offer. My personal count showed that all but one woman either accepted the low ball salary (then later complained about it) or just didn't take the job. This told me that the women I was interviewing while technicly as qualified as the men, just did not yet have the....business skill to make the best deal for themself. This caused women in our Tech staff to have lower over all salaries than the men, not through some mystical "glass ceiling" but due to their own lack of understanding of the "game". That understanding comes with experience.
I do not know if this same lack of negotiation skill or nerve holds true in other buiseness but I know I saw it first hand. Unless you have a union working for you and setting wages FOR you, then YOU are responsible negotiating your own positions in the professional world.
(by the way, each position has a low end figure and a high end figure so I would always offer the lowest figure for the position and negotiate from there)
Men have to face the same worries and insecrities in life as women, we all make our own way as best we can and we all have to fear failure. Prejudice and racism and sexism, in a tough competitive professional envrionement may exist but for the most part quality people are so hard to find, if you are going to be successful as management you DO NOT care about anything except who is going to do the best job.
My boss, her manager and her director are all women [img]smile.gif[/img]
[ 05-27-2002, 01:39 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]