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> “He treated you so differently!” he said. “His whole tone changed!” Depending on what was meant by "tone", this could be due to very deeply-ingrained learned sociolinguistic customs. I don't mean that justifies it, but it could be very subconscious, is not specific to "tech", and seems much less offensive than some of the other examples. To whatever extent men adopt a different tone when talking to women, it would probably take quite a lot of conscious concentration to control, and generations to eradicate (possibly never, if they can be picked up again by watching our contemporary media.) So, I guess it's something to keep an eye on and fix where you can, but not so simple as eliminating stuff like "They only let you work here ’cause you’re hot." Edit: tl/dr: If "tone" meant treating her like an idiot/non-technical, bad. If it meant different pitch of voice and body language, not good per se but not that bad either. P.S. Actually, maintaining gender-based differences might be desirable. Women probably don't want to be treated exactly like "one of the guys", right? Modifying your message and presentation based on your audience is a part of effective communication. If it's offending your audience, change that, but maybe it's not a bad starting position. |