Ladies First? Gender Disparity in the Classroom and the Workplace

  For better or for worse, gender roles play a very important role in how girls and boys fare in school and how they fare later, as men and women in the modern workplace.

As author Nan Mooney told me, "These cultural expectations are deeply entrenched, and they've been around for a long time." Mooney examined some of these expectations of women in her book, I Can't Believe She Did That! Why Women Betray Other Women at Work.

There can even be some benefit to them, as gender roles make people "feel more comfortable," Mooney said.

What's more, there may be some biological truth to them. Evolutionary biologists say male and female brains may have been shaped by their sex-based tasks, giving men and women different strengths.

In any case, these cultural expectations--perhaps as much as brain and learning differences--could be why girls today are doing better in school than boys.

Schools are, for the most part, set up so that obedient kids who follow instructions and get the right answers do better than the kids who want to do things their way, on their schedule.

Why girls thrive at school
This isn't the fault of the teachers; they're not only trying to manage dozens of students with different abilities, interests, and even language skills, but they're also saddled with regulations that say how well students must do on tests.

I've sat in plenty of school classrooms and been quite impressed with how teachers manage, despite the challenges they face. It's no wonder sugar-and-spice personalities do well in the classroom, especially now that schools have made steps to rectify the diminished female confidence that journalist Peggy Orenstein noted in her 1996 book, SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap.

But this sugar-and-spice environment is not a very realistic training ground for success in the working world, where right answers are far more ambiguous, and where success, in the United States anyway, often relies on entrepreneurialism*--which requires rebellion and risk-taking.

This isn't an exclusively male arena. Plenty of women run businesses. But even female CEOs tend to earn less than their male counterparts, which suggests they might be paying for bucking the cultural expectation.

Class clowns vs. teachers' pets
We're still learning about how male and female brains differ (and of course, how individual brains, regardless of sex, differ).

But I think we could solve a lot of problems simply by understanding and respecting differences, and working hard not to offer disproportionate rewards, even if obedience helps schools run more calmly, and risk-taking helps businesses earn more money. Both types of personalities exist, and both are necessary.

It would be great, for example, if schools could find a way to reward the entrepreneurial spirit that I suspect is behind a lot of troublemaking at school.

I don't think it's a coincidence that two of the most influential businessmen of our age--Bill Gates and Steve Jobs--didn't finish college. Gates left to start a certain software company. But Jobs left partly because he couldn't see the point in spending all of that tuition money. (If you haven't read the speech he gave Stanford's class of 2005, you're missing out.) Jobs obviously did fine without school, as did Gates.

But how many people are underachieving today because they couldn't overcome their supposed failures at school?

If teachers found a way to hook up kids with their passions, and let them explore those fully--instead of spending all that time, money, and energy on maintaining classroom order or preparing kids for standardized tests--then those kids would be primed and ready for the working world.

It might require some huge structural changes for schools. But wouldn't that be better than alienating more spirited kids from school? And shouldn't the more obedient types of students get early exposure to managing the ambiguities of the working world?

Likewise, if workplaces put more value on the people who dutifully kept things running in support of the risk-takers, I suspect we'd see a lot more equity in male-female salaries.

To me, it doesn't matter if these dutiful, supportive people are men or women. But even when I was working as a manager in a big corporation, it bothered me that administrative assistants--who were profoundly necessary for all company operations--made less per year than some salespeople got in their annual bonuses. I couldn't help but notice that these "assistants" were most often women. It makes our tendency to view organizers like them as second-class even worse.

If we can remember to respect individuals for wherever they happen to fall on the spectrum, and recognize that there is a value to both types of behavior and reward them equally with grades, opportunity, and money, then I think we will have come a long way in helping people lead the best lives they can, no matter what their sex.

In the end, no matter how much we learn about the differences between the sexes, I think living equally full, rewarding, and valued lives is the big picture.

And that's what really deserves our focus.

[译文]女士优先？----在班级及工作场所的性别差异
或好或坏，在学校里和工作场所，性别差异起着很重要的作用。
作者Nan Mooney 告诉我们：“这是一种根深蒂固的文化理念，它是长期存在的”。Mooney在她的书中写到她调查过一些关于女性的这种期盼，我不相信这种些，女人怎么会做背叛女人的工作呢？
Mooney 说:“当异性使人感到舒适时，那甚至是一种好处。”
还有，生物进化学家说人们的智力和体力是基于他们的性别之上的。这也许是性别生物学的真理。
在某种意义上，这种文化理念在许多学习能力和智力也一样，这就是为什么现在的女生会比男生学习更好的原故。
Peggy Orenstein记者在1996年发表的报道中这样记载：“学校在很大程度上设以日程表，以便让孩子们服从和遵守他们的规定，正确的指导他们去改善做事的方式。
为什么女孩在学校会比较优秀，这不是老师的过错，他们不仅要设法应对不同能力/兴趣/甚至语言的几十名学生，并且，他们必须按照规章对学生进行相应的测试。这就怪不得平易近人与风趣个性会被班级的接受了。特别是现在学校以采取措施来提高女性的自信心，消除性别歧视。”
但平易近人和风趣幽默的个性在现实际工作中是非现实和理想主义的，正确的指导更是模棱两可的，并且，美国无论如何，经常是要依靠企业主义--要求竞争上岗。
这不仅仅是属于男性的竞争场所，很大一部分女性下海经商。但与男性相比，大多数女性挣的钱相对来说要少一些。这是负责任的文化理念。
差等生VS三好学生
我们仍然讨论关于性别与智力的话题（当然，个别情况除外）
但是我认为，我们只是简单的了解和解决了许多关于差异的问题，即使积极配合学校的管理或者争取帮助企业赚更多的钱，并且不计较不平等报酬的努力工作，也摆脱不了这种不平等利益。它们同样是必须存在的。
它会是正确的，例如，如果学校鼓励企事业主义精神，我想，会有很多人在学校里胡做非为。
我不认为这是一种巧合---我们这个年龄阶段赫赫有名的两位大商人---比尔·格茨和史蒂夫。没有完成大学学业就开始迈向某家微软公司的大门。
因为工作离开学校，没有在意所付出的学费。(如果你没有看过史丹福的演讲，那就太可惜了)，工作的确要比在学校里好很多。
现在很多人缀学是因为他们学习很差。
如果老师能找到一个良好的沟通方式，让他们自觉的刻苦学习，而不是把那么多时间、金钱、精力浪费在维护课堂秩序和定制标准化考试上，那么孩子会成为对社会有用之才。
这样在教学结构上可能要作很大的变化。但这会不会比让孩子自觉的学习更遥远？而且会不会使叛逆的孩子早的走向社会参加工作？
同样的，如果把工作能够按劳分配，我觉得，男女之间的利益将会更加平等。
对我来说，如果我是一家大公司的老板，公司职员有男有女。秘书的工作是管理公司的一切事务，年薪却不如一个业务员。我改变不了，但注意到大部分秘书都是妇的，这是受我们的客户下流的影响。
如果我们能记住遇到过挫折的人们，并给于他们平等的机会和金钱，那么我认为，我们可以帮助他们在生活中做的更好。不管他们是什么性别。
总之，无论我们了解了多少姓别之间的差异，我认为丰富多彩的生活和宝贵的生命才是最重要的东西。这才是我们真正应该注意的重点。