I remeber you mentioning that test and said you would post more later about why it was sexist and never did because I was rather curious and interested.
Well, the obvious sexism in the test was that any time bullying or exclusionary camraderie was portrayed in the scenarios, the aggressors were men. Any time the scenario centred around passive aggressive or catty behaviour, it was a woman.
The more subtle sexism was the fact that they are asking what are the "best" and "worst" things to do in this scenario. While the "worst" options are pretty universal to men and women, the "best" options oftentimes would depend on whether you are a man or a woman. A confident man who is new in a job may be able to stand up to a group of other men heckling his presentation during his first week and say "I'm entitled to some respect at work, so lay off", but do you know what happens when a woman says something like that? In many cases, she may as well quit and save herself the stress leave. Conversely, a lot of answers also had the option to discuss it with the boss. Could you imagine what would happen to a man if he went to the boss and said "I'm having a hard time fitting in. Could you help me?"
Maybe I'm totally offbase, but we live in a world with a double standard, and anybody who thinks otherwise is deluded. The test really should reflect that.
The second is trickier. Should the options be gender-dependent? If so, wouldn't that just reinforce stereotypical behaviour patterns? I don't know what the right answer is... maybe there's an underlying assumption in this kind of test that needs rethinking, although I can't express it offhand.
Well, I want to know how they accounted for it in the testing. It's a gender-blind test... so my question becomes "Does it favour men or women?" or have they just made it so 100% is damn near impossible based on a single person's socialization?
Well... I would say 77% is a decent mark, and I tended to answer 1) as gender neutral as possible, followed by 2) from the male perspective (under the assumption that they must have polled Executive class people to get their input, and most of them are still men).
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The more subtle sexism was the fact that they are asking what are the "best" and "worst" things to do in this scenario. While the "worst" options are pretty universal to men and women, the "best" options oftentimes would depend on whether you are a man or a woman. A confident man who is new in a job may be able to stand up to a group of other men heckling his presentation during his first week and say "I'm entitled to some respect at work, so lay off", but do you know what happens when a woman says something like that? In many cases, she may as well quit and save herself the stress leave. Conversely, a lot of answers also had the option to discuss it with the boss. Could you imagine what would happen to a man if he went to the boss and said "I'm having a hard time fitting in. Could you help me?"
Maybe I'm totally offbase, but we live in a world with a double standard, and anybody who thinks otherwise is deluded. The test really should reflect that.
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The second is trickier. Should the options be gender-dependent? If so, wouldn't that just reinforce stereotypical behaviour patterns? I don't know what the right answer is... maybe there's an underlying assumption in this kind of test that needs rethinking, although I can't express it offhand.
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Congratulations; why (as s_f asks above) was it sexist?
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