"Busdriver11 … I have no desire to leave the corporate/charter aviation world for the major airlines, but if we ever cross paths while flying I’ll happily tell you to carry your own damn bag. "
Well if you ever did want to carry my bag, I would pretend that I was impressed and grateful 
If you ever decide you don’t like your job, we’re hiring like crazy over here, come on over!
》》 If there is so little sexism in the airline industry, why are there so few women pilot captains on major airlines? I pay close attention to the captains’ voices and I’d say it is 1/20 in my experience (women/ men). It is SHOCKING. And don’t tell me it is a pipeline issue; the pipeline issues have been addressed for more than 30 years.《《
The fact is that there is simply far less female pilots than male ones. You could hire every qualified female pilot out there and there’d still be a large gap. I’m a woman and I’ve dabbled in aviation and it’s true - there are so few females that are interested in flying, for some reason. I can’t explain why - I’ve wanted to fly since I was a child, never once stopped to think if it was okay since I’m a girl.
The funny thing about me is that I was inspired by men who had shaped the aerospace world despite being a female. (I’m currently majoring in aerospace engineering.) But my heroes as a child were the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts. They were the test pilots of the 50s and 60s, the engineers who built NASA, etc. All men, pretty much. I don’t think it’s necessary to make an all-female Top Gun. I am still inspired by movies like that, and documentaries of the space program. I know that the male dominance in those fields was a product of the times, but that doesn’t take away from how cool it is and doesn’t mean I can’t do that today as a woman.
for those thinking its “only academia”, I’ll repost this from several pages back. take a gander:
https://hbr.org/2013/09/women-in-the-workplace-a-research-roundup
I do not think it is a sexist term, just inappropriately applied. I would never comment on a man or woman’s appearance in a professional intro speech.
@albert69, you are the type of woman whom, if you stay interested, will end up in aviation. Whether as a pilot or an engineer, it doesn’t scare you off. I have not been able to put a finger on it why there aren’t more women like you. Your heroes as a child being astronauts are pretty different than many kids heroes being singers or movie stars.
Do we think the speaker who used vivacious was secretly thinking “I’d never promote this woman because women are inherently inferior”? Or “boy, I’d love to get my hands on her sexually - she owes me”? Can we stop confusing a poor word choice with true sexist actions?
Read post 272 again.
http://sacraparental.com/2016/05/14/everyday-misogyny-122-subtly-sexist-words-women/
So when this thread first came up I absolutely believed “vivacious” was not a sexist term. 20 pages later I get it and I wouldn’t use it.
I did some googling around and read a bunch of other views and got a better understanding.
So the above article also gave a list of words one should not use in reference writing.
They were : caring, compassionate, hard working, conscientious, diligent, dependable, dedicated, tactful, interpersonal, warm, helpful.
Instead they suggest, successful, excellent, accomplished, outstanding, skilled, knowledgeable, insightful, resourceful, confident, ambitious, independent, intellectual.
Interesting, to be sure. I don’t know if I agree with many of these but I certainly have a better understanding of why some people get upset with some of these terms.
Gotta love CC for a good discussion.
My niece works as an engineer in the field for a large corporation. I think she has pay equity, but she has a lot of overt sexism–actually, blatant sexism–to deal with. The issue isn’t limited to academia.
We can debate what makes women avoid engineering all day, but I think it goes back to what they’ve been exposed to, what they’ve been encouraged to do. We give them dolls instead of Legos. We tell them math is hard and let them say they’ll never be any good at it. We don’t show them that engineering isn’t a boys’ club.
Post 272-- “These issues are much more complex than that.”
Not really. Not in this instance. It’s a matter of “pick your battles”. This is a poor battle.
There are more complex issues. She has some valid points. For anyone who actually read the article she wrote she says that people have advised her to tone down some of the articles she has written in able to reach a wider audience. She appears to take offense to that. Why?
I think it is good advice. If your viewpoint is valid and worth hearing don’t you think you would like to reach a larger audience? No need to “water down” the message just change the tone.
Re PG #279, within my research field, the work in academia defines where the “curve of the real world” is . . . actually, where the leading edge of the curve of the real world is. But the faculty members aren’t selected for being up to date in social attitudes, just for their contributions to their fields. You seem rather hostile to academia.
One of my friends, a Marxist sociologist, is probably ahead of the “real world” when it comes to social attitudes. In fact there is a question whether the “real world” will catch up with him or not.
From the study you cited doschicos;
Do you not find that ironic? No one advances if they want part-time. Running a corporation or being a director or even being a manager is a full-time job.
The biggest budget I ever had was in excess of 20 million with P&L responsibility. But I can’t happen to stop and wonder in these studies if they factor in the drop-off rate…do those percentages reflect the women that stay committed to advancing their career? What are the percentages of entry level jobs by male and female? What is the drop-out percentage along the way to Manager, Director, VP, C-Suite etc.? If I think about the twelve women I went through undergrad with, 3 dropped out to stay at home after they married and had kids never to return to a “career” job and the remaining 9 of us continued on with our careers. Two dropped out to care for elderly parents in the last decade (both wrote a successful published books during the leave) and then dropped back in pretty seamlessly. Wonder what happened to the male version of our house and those 12 guys? I can’t help but wonder if those percentage differences can’t be attributed to attrition by women in the workforce and I’m thinking I want to dig into this abit. I wish I stayed closer in touch with my MBA class. It feels that the only way to look at percentages is to evaluate the percentages from the beginning of the career. If more women fall off, go part-time, drop in and out…there will be less of them to compete for VP and C-suite jobs.
I don’t begrudge women who decide a “career” is not for them nor would I begrudge a guy for determining his best place is raising the kids but I’m wondering if it’s accurate not to compare all educated women to all educated men…and not just evaluate the percentages at the point in career. Choices get made along the way and I am one that believes if you are qualified woman you can work to try and achieve the position you desire…you may not get there but not everyone can sit on the top and I don’t believe gender is as strong a factor as it was 2 or 3 decades ago.
“…which includes overthinking things.”. Well, isn’t that what analysts do? And with an open mind? Clearly, none of us want to see that lead to paralysis or nitpicking. But fact is, we can look at the use of words and their impact. That includes subconscious origins and effects.
I think some here who worked hard and fought smart to get ahead are forgetting we can still sit back and consider how words do represent sentiments. We don’t have to paint this as radically black and white, we can observe, process, and learn. (Another side of that nasty academia, eh?)
I think we agree the kid wasn’t being overtly or purposely aggressive. But his wording treated the dean to a gender specific ‘compliment.’
Think about the comment, “But you are young.” Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it doesn’t smart, for a woman who focused and worked her way to the role (and a complex one.) It can imply, your experience isn’t enough, isn’t as much as 60 year old Joe’s. She isn’t the boss’s daughter, promoted ahead of schedule. Why does she have to hear it? Done wrong, it diminishes.
It’s got to be tiresome, to so often have to rebut through our increased efforts, letting mindless cracks roll off our backs. I don’t see sole fault in a woman who minds. Had the sayer been a bit more in tune, she wouldn’t have had something to react to, in the first place.
And for all of us who did work smart, kudos. But the core issue is still there. Don’t kill the messenger.
@busdriver11 Okay, to be fair, I am a big fan of Carrie Underwood. =D>
》》 We give them dolls instead of Legos. We tell them math is hard and let them say they’ll never be any good at it. We don’t show them that engineering isn’t a boys’ club.《《
Forgive me if I am being cheeky. But isn’t implying that only Legos can lead to engineering enforcing a stereotype? What is wrong with dolls? What is wrong with being “girly” at 6 years old? Someone can do both. I played with dolls and trucks. I loved acting out silly love stories with clay clay some days, and other days I enjoyed trying to pick up the dump truck using a crane. Saying that dolls are the problem is like telling a girl she has to be masculine in order to be in STEM. Which is unappealing to many girls, and understandably so. Now, telling a girl she can’t do math is a problem, but recognizing that it is hard is just a fact of life for most people (except the mathematical geniuses that come in both genders.)
Dolls can lead to creativity. I built a large doll house for my younger sister as a birthday present, and not from a kit. It was made from cardboard boxes, a lot of tape, and rags for drapes and so much more. I cut windows, made mutiple stories, and other things too. While rather dopey looking to an adult, it took a lot of effort on my part to think out at that age and my sister actuslly used it for a good year at least. Dolls are not the issue. Encouraging girls to think creatively may be more of the issue.
To add to lookingforward’s #294: I linked Rosenbury’s c.v. in post #276. She is young-ish for a Dean on average, perhaps, but she has quite a lot of experience. She may be younger than some of the other candidates for the Deanship, some of whom are no doubt still on the faculty at UF.
This conversation reminds me of a fall 2015 CC thread which discussed the word “thug”. I had always thought of it as a word used to describe miscreants in general, and at first it seemed to me to be a little oversensitive to get bent out of shape when it was used in connection with student protests. After along conversation in which it was pointed out by various members of the CC community that “thug” is often used as a code word for AA youth, however, I saw why some might be sensitive to it and why I might want to be careful in my use of it. It seems to me it’s never to late to learn to see the world through someone else’s eyes, and being thoughtful about how we characterize someone can never be a bad thing.
Yay, Albert. I deal with a lot of engineering wannabes and the smart gals are every bit as competent and experienced as the guys. They tinker, they compete, they succeed. This idea all girls are crippled is some mighty steteoyping.
Which is why as “youngish” she could benefit from a peer or someone senior taking her aside and explaining to her how to appropriately address someone who she feels could use some advice about politically correct language. I cut her some slack on the “young” thing. Unless this inappropriate aggressive behavior is endemic to academia, it may help her advance her career. The behavior is not acceptable for men OR women.
I think the key element in this case is that language shifts to accommodate new situations, and people need to keep up. Here, the changed situations is that there are more and more women in leading positions in academia, business, and elsewhere, and an expectation that they be treated the same as men in similar situations. So there are some words that worked OK when this wasn’t the case, but aren’t so good today. Some of these, like “vivacious” are generally positive terms that are, however, used only for women and (in my opinion) have a flavor of condescension. Another example would be “poised.” (I think we’ve discussed the term “well-spoken” or “articulate” when applied to black people here before.) So I think the student did make a mistake, and that privately correcting it was appropriate. Writing about it in a journal in a way that identified him was unnecessary.
Note: I think some people, including some in this threat, have confused “vivacious” and “vibrant.”