[fondue]

Something similar happened to my wife.

The President of their company would breeze by the lab. In an effort to keep employee salaries down he would casually mention how everyone in the lab was easily replaceable. I have no idea how one would casually mention this but he somehow managed to work it into the conversation. Needless to say everyone there in the lab got the impression that they weren't wanted. I think in the span of twelve months everyone woman there quit and moved on to better jobs. When my wife moved on she found a job with double the salary and a company that really appreciates her.

[pkteison]

What does "you are all easily replaceable" have to do with gender? It sounds like the president is just a bean counting jerk, no gender involved.

[jamesbritt]

Such stories give the impression that you can say the exact same thing to both men and women, but women will by and large interpret it (or at least act on it) in a way quite different from men. I find that hard to believe.

For myself (a guy), if I worked someplace where I was often reminded how replaceable I was I;d be looking for a new job all the time. Likewise, if I was often told I was being "too emotional" I'd wonder if a) it was possibly true, and b) consider that perhaps I need to work someplace where my personality is a better fit.

In general, if you want to make anyone quit, keep telling them they are easily replaceable, or frequently lob baseless subjective criticisms at them.

[true_religion]

Why is that hard to beleive?

Society in general treats boys and girls differently from the day they are born. Why should it be expected that this divergence in nurture ought to produce similar results?

I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference worth exploring through science.

[jamesbritt]

I think that in contemporary society, men and women are different---not due to simple biology but due to upbringing---and while this difference isn't what's reflected in so-called 'common sense' psychology, it is a valid difference worth exploring through science.

This raises a problem. Should employers speak to both men and women the same way, or should they take sex into account when speaking to people and phrase things differently?

[true_religion]

I can't say definitively, but here's my two cents about the practice of social interaction....

Changing the way you speak to someone based on a single coarse criteria is a poor way to go about social interaction.

You have an entire person in front of you and can guage how to say something based on your past knowledge of their personality, context, the way they're dressed, their current body language, anything else you've gleaned about them.

If all you know about them is that they are male or female, then you'd best just adopt a neutral posture until more information streams in.

Right now the only thing you can guess at with any real degree of accuracy knowing someones gender is which gender they prefer romantically.

[roguecoder]

And how far their genital nerve-cluster protrudes! ;-) (Though that's still overlapping bell curves, of course, and totally irrelevant to any work conversation that does not involve participating in pornography...)

[jtheory]

Well. They should adjust per employee, based on their history of interaction with the employee.

In-group variation (when everyone is split up into only two groups...) is pretty enormous.

I've never liked the "Men are from Mars" approach, though it could be a stepping-stone to "many people think quite differently from me". That's a rough way to go, though (thinking a lesson learned about interacting smoothly with a "woman" or, say, a "hispanic person" will apply to everyone else in that group).

[philwelch]

If you were somehow laboring under an ideology that told you that certain criticisms, like "too emotional", were in fact artifacts of oppression against some identity-politics-slice-of-humanity you belong to, you would probably discount those criticisms and hence never really know if or when you were too emotional. If you were indeed too emotional and people called you out on it, you could just dismiss the criticism as oppression rather than addressing it as serious criticism.

[cowardoftheday]

He was purposefully creating an anecdote to illustrate what's wrong with the OP's conclusion.