Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    The amount of hate and viciousness in those statistics simply boggles
    my sensitivity. I'm deeply saddened that anyone would be so
    transparently unfair as to even consider gathering such figures. I
    don't see how we can be expected to take such emotional statistics
    seriously.
    
    (: >,)
    

    re. 0
    
    Does the article define "minorities"?
    
    Alice T.

    re .2
    
    No.  I think that there's some standard gov't definition of who is a
    "minority" but neither the CBS report or the article spelled out who is
    included.

    Not to mention, Ray, the obvious man-hating involved in creating this 
    note.  Statistics can be made to show anything.  Clearly, someone's
    biases are at work in presenting those figures in this way.  I think we
    should disregard such a flawed study, (only *one* study, anyway?), and
    continue to work together to create peace and harmony and good for all.
    Because pointing fingers and laying blame just depletes our energies
    and takes our focus off our goals and onto hate and negativity which
    hurts everyone.
    
    Now get back to work, ladies.
    
    Sandy
    

    Sandy,
    
    You're beginning to sound like my mother ... smile, speak softly, wait
    patiently ...
    
    It's very hard under such a constant onslaught of treacle to maintain
    my inner vision of a competent and valued individual.  It gets the
    agenda all sticky-icky.
    
    Anyway, I just needed to tell you that.  I hope you won't be mad at me.
    
      Annie

    Annie

    You do know that Sandy has her tongue firmly planted in her cheek?

    Bonnie

The article in our local paper made Martin sound much more agressive.
As in, now there is documentation and no one can deny the "glass ceiling"
and we have a three phase program.

At any rate, I think one of the survey issues that was missed was the
arena of executive postions that are held by women and minorities.  It
would have been interesting to know, for example, if most of the women
were executives in "traditionally female" areas such as Personnel and
Training.  Think it would add to the info.

Barb

    Bonnie,
    
    I know the freckles fool a lot of people, but you do know that I didn't
    arrive in the big city yesterday ... ?
    
    Annie [ ;^) , just to be sure]
    
    

    figured as much! 
    
    :-) X 100
    
    Bonnie

    The so-called Glass Ceiling is another feminist myth.  If there really
    is such a problem, time and experience will obviate it.
    
    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
    qualified management candidates at any level??
    
    This is just another feminist hot-button which gets y'all salivating,
    and it just ain't true.
    

    re. 10, para 2
    
    Yes.  Not on purpose, but yes.  Sometimes there is an inability to see,
    rather than a willful blindness.
    
    That's why the phenomenon is being brought into the light. So that
    business can step back, re-assess old assumptions, and perhaps reap the
    rewards of a broader pool of qualified and bright people --- all in the
    spirit of enlightened self-interest.
    
      Annie
    
    

    For a myth, Business Week came up with a awful lot of documentation.
    
    Bonnie

    OOOOH, reaaaalllyyyy??
    
    So, if we just smile pretty and act nice all the bad things will 
    quietly go away on their own?
    
    Whatever was a silly girl like me thinking.
    
    Somehow, the fact that I get more comments on my looks than on
    my *extremely* impressive qualifications as a financial professional,
    tells me that perhaps something is wrong.  I want professional 
    visibility, not *physical* visibility.  The fact that there are
    comments at all is *seriously* wrong...I don't see anyone commenting on
    my male peers' bodies or hairstyle.
    
    >>does anyone out there really believe that American business.....
    
    bahahahahahahaha!(snort...*must* recover my composure!  this guffawing
    is simply not ladylike!)  This assumes that they realize that they are 
    rejecting he best qualified management candidates.  Half the battle is
    getting them to listen long enough to realize that's what they're
    doing!!!
    
    Cheryl

>    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
>    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
>    qualified management candidates at any level??
    
    Yes. I've been around enough management to know that much. Golden
    parachutes, schmoozing, personal comfort level, non-electronic-networks, 
    and dazed panic all play a part. We aren't talking civil service exams
    at that level.
    
    I'm familiar with your notes from DIGITAL. Do you really believe that
    the best possible managers are always the ones in charge?
    
    Ray
    
    P.S. The phrase "profit at any cost" reminds me of the old joke which
    ends "Volume, son. Volume." 

    Well, either the author of .10 never encountered a potential boss
    who refused to hire anyone smarter than himself (or otherwise threaten
    his job), or has never been intelligent enough that he had to face
    that situation, or he has faced it but forgot about it until now --
    or thought the guy was the *only* potential boss in the whoooole
    world who was that short-sighted.
    
    What's DEC stock at today?
    
    						Ann B.
    
    P.S.  For a change, my least likely scenario is listed second, rather
    than last.

    re 973.15 (the p.s.)
    
    'spose that's ONE way of sticking your tongue out at me.

    is everything is the world a personal attack against you, Herb?

    no
    

    re.10 Unfortunately, that level of objectivity seldom happens in real
    life. 

>    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
>    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
>    qualified management candidates at any level??

Damned right it will!

Ya see, as with any OTHER job, qualifications are only part of the issue.
There doesn't even have to be overt discrimination.  You see, whenever
someone is in a position to hire or promote someone else, one of the
overall questions s/he asks hirself is: "Can I picture this person doing
this job and doing it well?"

Now: if I were to say the words "Corporate Vice President" to you, what
would be the FIRST image to pop into your mind?

Chances are nearly all of us would picture an able-bodied, fortysomething 
white male, perhaps greying a bit at the temples...

For most of our lives, THIS has been the archetype of the corporate
executive.  Therefore, it's EXTRA work for most of us to picture some
OTHER kind of person (female, different race, handicapped) in that same
role.  In fact, it doesn't even OCCUR to many folks to picture anything
BUT a white male in an executive position.  This is especially true among
the older folks who were brought up when women stayed in the kitchen and
"funny-colored" folks stayed on the opposite side of the tracks where
they "belonged"....

This, I think, is one key piece of affirmative action that's been missing:
RE-TRAINING workers AND executives to be able to VISUALIZE any kind of person
holding any kind of job.

Unfortunately, this is right-brain activity... the sort of thing Corporate
America is notoriously bad at.  Bureaucrats can only understand numbers...
(one bean, two beans, three beans....)

--jim

    oh ::Lennard, you rail on and on in the Box and in Digital about all
    kinds of practices that make no business sense whatsoever.  So why
    should this be any different?  that's like saying that not integrating
    the armed forces made no military sense at all, as it drastically
    reduced the pool of potential soldiers.  OF COURSE it makes not sense
    -- but that has nothing to do with whether or not it was a real
    practice!
    
    take off your blinders, when you're telling us to take ours off.
    
    Sara

    re: .10
    
    Complicity with injustice is far more frequent a crime that actual
    deliberate injustice.
    
    I seriously doubt that there's a little room somewhere of white male
    business men who counsciously decide "aha! we're gonna impoverish
    WOMEN, and BLACKS, and HISPANICS and HOMOSEXUALS! ahahahaha!!"
    
    So what?
    
    Subcounscious decision processes have the same result often as
    deliberate ones.  Complicity with injustice perpetuates it and that is
    EXACTLY what our society does. Just because you don't see it doesn't
    mean it isn't there.  It just means your glasses need to get the
    rose-colored mist washed out of them
    
    Daniel

    Dive for cover... incoming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>Note 973.10          The Gov't Discovers the Glass Ceiling!             10 of 24
>COOKIE::LENNARD "Rush Limbaugh, I Luv Ya Guy"        10 lines  15-AUG-1991 11:35
>                           -< I don't believe it!! >-
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    The so-called Glass Ceiling is another feminist myth.  If there really
    						     ^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>    is such a problem, time and experience will obviate it.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
>    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
>    qualified management candidates at any level??
>    
>    This is just another feminist hot-button which gets y'all salivating,
>    and it just ain't true.
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
    and from .23, after describing several otherway-discriminatory
    practices, which also did not make any BUSINESS sense, this:
    
>   I still maintain that its mainly a matter of time, and that the glass
>        ceiling is mostly ice.  It'll melt yet.    
    
    Really, either decide it doesn't exist except as a favorite feminist
    myth, or decide it DOES exist, but please make up your mind.

    
    
    It is a net.  Some get through, and some don't.  I'm sure there are
    white males out there who were most qualified and all lined up for a VP
    position, but they didn't get it because they didn't go to the right
    parties or they didn't know the right people.
    
    N
    

    re .23  - If there is a "residual GOBN"????  You've got to be
    kidding!!!  And, it's far from ineffective and/or harmless!
    
    How do you think the top jobs get filled in this company and others? 
    People -- in this case, aka men -- hire people they KNOW.  Less
    perceived risk that way and, perhaps more importantly,  favors owed and
    favors granted.  If anything, given all that's happening in the company
    today, the GOBN is more active than ever.
    
    Why is that whenever women and other people of difference complain
    about being excluded -- or someone does a study that shows we're
    excluded -- some men immediately feel it necessary to diminish the
    signifigance by complaining that they've been discriminated against
    too?  Why in the face of statisitcal evidence do some men a) insist
    that it just ain't so and b) trot out anecdotal evidence that serves
    only to distract from the real issue?
    
    Polly  

re: .10
    
>    The so-called Glass Ceiling is another feminist myth.  If there really
>    is such a problem, time and experience will obviate it.
    
    ooh,  you're so archaic and cute.
    can I take you home and have you bronzed?
    
>    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
>    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
>    qualified management candidates at any level??
    
    why, yes!  women "make them uncomfortable", for some reason
    
>    This is just another feminist hot-button which gets y'all salivating,
>    and it just ain't true.
    
    in YER REALITY, DUDE!
    
    
    -Jody

    
    how dare someone not do the pc thing and validate people in the
    proper enjoyment of their victimhood...
    
    

    
    	RE: .29  rah
    
    	> how dare someone not do the pc thing and validate people in the
        > proper enjoyment of their victimhood...
    
    	Interesting description of  denial...
    
    	But then, you did follow the rule of "How to be Cool by Claiming
    	to be Politically Incorrect":
    
    		1. Declare something you don't like as PC
    
    		2. Declare the opposite as "Cool" by virtue of being PI.
    

    re: .29  
    
    
    dry up.

I think the "Right" has done some absolutely brilliant work over the past 
few years.  There is nothing so powerful as taking the "wind out of our 
sails" by two primary methods.  The first has been captured as well as can 
be said by Suzanne:

             <<< IKE22::$3$DIA5:[NOTESFILES]WOMANNOTES-V3.NOTE;1 >>>
                        -< Topics of Interest to Women >-
================================================================================
Note 973.30          The Gov't Discovers the Glass Ceiling!             30 of 31
CSC32::CONLON "She sells C shells by the C store."   15 lines  16-AUG-1991 01:00
                   -< I should write a book on this... :-) >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    	RE: .29  rah
    
    	> how dare someone not do the pc thing and validate people in the
        > proper enjoyment of their victimhood...
    
    	Interesting description of  denial...
    
    	But then, you did follow the rule of "How to be Cool by Claiming
    	to be Politically Incorrect":
    
    		1. Declare something you don't like as PC
    
    		2. Declare the opposite as "Cool" by virtue of being PI.
    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second is the clever new toy: it just doesn't exist.  The President is 
exceptionally brilliant at this one - I mean, why deal with a problem that 
doesn't really exist, simply something fabricated by the "liberals."

    
             <<< IKE22::$3$DIA5:[NOTESFILES]WOMANNOTES-V3.NOTE;1 >>>
                        -< Topics of Interest to Women >-
================================================================================
Note 973.10          The Gov't Discovers the Glass Ceiling!             10 of 31
COOKIE::LENNARD "Rush Limbaugh, I Luv Ya Guy"        10 lines  15-AUG-1991 11:35
                           -< I don't believe it!! >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The so-called Glass Ceiling is another feminist myth.  If there really
    is such a problem, time and experience will obviate it.
    
    Does anyone out there really believe that American business, with its
    manical attention to profit at any cost, is going to reject the best
    qualified management candidates at any level??
    
    This is just another feminist hot-button which gets y'all salivating,
    and it just ain't true.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, give the guys a break...They are simply being apt students of the 
current sociopolitical arena (collateral damage not intended).

Barb    

    
    
    	One didn't need to have an in depth report done to see the glass
    ceiling.  All you needed to do was glance through last year's special
    edition of Business Week.  It profiled the CEO's of the top 100
    companies in america, (digital included) doing about 1/2 a page article
    with picture on each one.  
    
    	Without digging too deep in the cranium, I concluded that 97% of
    the top executives in the country were white males.  Easy enough to 
    figure as I went through each page and counted anyone who was *not*
    white and/or male.  I found three: one black male, one oriental male
    and one white female.  The math is easy, 100 minus 3 leaves 97.  If 
    this is indeed a representation of the corporations then it doesn't 
    look as if it will change very soon.
    
    	Sad, really.  But not unexpected.
    
    
    Debbi

    
    
    Am I the only one who sees just a little injustice in flipping through
    pages, counting faces by color?  and by sex?  Tell me, how would you
    divide up these people by religion, given just a picture?
    
    Nick
    

    	RE: .34  Nick
    
    	Injustice to whom?  To the faces being counted?
    
    	Even if a person didn't consciously set out to get the exact numbers
    	of white males holding these CEO positions, the message would still
    	come through (by looking at face after face after face after face
    	after face - to the tune of 97 out of 100 - who were both white and
    	male.)
    
    	Does it make you uncomfortable that non-white-males have a visual
    	aid to make *this* injustice more noticeable?

Come now, Nick, you hardly have to know how to count....

I think I am getting very, very weary....I grew up in an age of social 
consciousness and I can't believe where "awareness" is leading.

Many women have spent a great deal of time in CR, outreach, and general
teaching and, for the most part, now most people can recognize discrimination.
So what do we do with it?  Use it to say, how can you look at pictures and
see gender and color (gosh, 3 of a 100 doesn't stick out on its own)?  Look
at one little microcosm of business - one's own group - and say that there
is no pay inequity, wow another myth!  Call the glass ceiling a feminist
myth - hey, no problem, I'm sure it's bigotted of us to notice that we never
seem to get anywhere, I'm sure many of us can't believe our eyes either (at
least we'd rather not believe our eyes).

So, women, I'm afraid we're guilty again....All this myth-making is taking a
toll on our society.

Barb

p.s. Could someone PLEASE switch to a slightly more pleasant myth before you
     shut out the lights?