perhaps nature/evolution/biology has a lot to do with this, not just societal views.
people see an aggressive male and say "oh, that's just his nature" and the opposite for agressive women, "oh, what's wrong with her?". the converse is equally true: men who are overly submissive are considered to have "issues". testosterone makes males more aggressive as a gender, they are designed to fight and compete. i think blaming everything on cultural norms and sexism doesnt give enough credence to this.
i've always wondered why no one from "everyone is 100% equal" camp takes issue with male/female segregation in sports/olympics.
People at least pretend to respect aggressive men because they don't want to get beaten up. It's like at school where people are afraid to speak ill of the bullies. On some level I think we internalize this survival instinct.
Blaming it on biology is basically a creative way of giving up on the problem, though. A submissive man will always be a man with "issues" because of "biology" and "nature".
Amazing, given all we've achieved to move beyond the biology and nature we had for tens of thousands of years, that we're still incapable of seeing an aggressive woman as 'normal'.
men and women are not the same. they certainly deserve the same treatment, but no amount of legislation or arguing will change the fact that they are biologically and chemically different, their brains are wired differently through hormones, chemistry. yes, culture can change this wiring to some degree, but it will never make the sexes equivalent and interchangeable. no one is "blaming" biology. it is not an "creative" way to treat people differently. the differences are there and have been there for tens of thousands of years and will continue to be there for thousands of years. disregarding biology is no less harmful than "blaming" it.
That's a straw man opener, for sure. No-one is arguing that men and women are the same. What I am saying is that women and men are equally capable at being great business leaders. They are equally capable of assholes while doing so. But men are far more likely to be given a free pass on behaviour like that than women are.
There's nothing evolutionary about that. Someone's perception of you is not coded into your genetic pattern. It's cultural. A hundred years ago you could have easily claimed that women shouldn't have the vote because of tens of thousands of years of biological differences. What makes that argument any different to this one?
> Someone's perception of you is not coded into your genetic pattern
I agree. Though perception is not the same thing as caring about your perception. Being perceived as assholes (and enablers of child labor, pollution, etc) doesnt stop men from striving to be CEOs of huge international conglomerates. I do believe that there is a societal issue with appointing women as CEOs of existing enterprises (rather that women being CEOs/founders). This fear may be founded in "can this woman rise to the sufficient level of asshole necessary to always make shareholder-value-enhancing decisions?". maybe it is the higher morality of women (a good quality by anyone's standards) that acts as a glass ceiling in business.
> A hundred years ago you could have easily claimed that women shouldn't have the vote because of tens of thousands of years of biological differences. What makes that argument any different to this one?
no one is preventing women from giving up raising a family to dedicate themselves to business. i doubt that the disparity between male and female CEOs can solely be accounted for by oppression or the perception that "trying isnt worth it because i'm a woman"
> Blaming it on biology is basically a creative way of giving up on the problem, though
I think you're missing the point. If we acknowledge that there are differences then we can come to terms with the fact statistically men will always be more likely to be CEOs - that doesn't mean we should stop fighting sexism or whatever other issues we have culturally producing prejudice - but it does mean that we may not need to strive for some kind of ... statistical parity.
In another comment you say:
> What I am saying is that women and men are equally capable at being great business leaders
You have no way of knowing that. That's a pure guess on your part. We know that women and men have different brains on the biological and chemical level so, all things being equal, surely it would lead to a least SOME difference statistically on which gender ends up being CEO. The question after that is of degree and does our current gender ratio predominantly represent a biological or cultural phenomena.
Since we historically have a lot of different cultures, and all seem to produce significantly more male leaders than females on, I'd say the biological argument has a lot of weight. I could be wrong!
It's almost as though you have no idea that emergent effects and networks effects exist in complex systems, and interpersonal relations have no bearing on sociology.
I suppose you also believe that viability for US presidency is largely a genetic biological trait, since so many Bushes and other White Anglo-Saxons Protestants have gravitated toward it.
people see an aggressive male and say "oh, that's just his nature" and the opposite for agressive women, "oh, what's wrong with her?". the converse is equally true: men who are overly submissive are considered to have "issues". testosterone makes males more aggressive as a gender, they are designed to fight and compete. i think blaming everything on cultural norms and sexism doesnt give enough credence to this.
i've always wondered why no one from "everyone is 100% equal" camp takes issue with male/female segregation in sports/olympics.