Different genders, different worlds

By Joanne McGrath Cohoon, Associate Professor, University of Virginia.

Gender inequality persists. Both data and personal reports from transgendered people make this reality clear. For example, transgendered men received more workplace respect and more opportunities to speak than they had as women. Their observations illustrate how subtly and profoundly gender affects our lives, even the lives of exceptional people.

Culturally, gendered expectations of others and ourselves interact with race and class to shape our language, our interrelations, and our beliefs about what we might achieve and where we belong. Organizations in our immediate environment also affect us at each stage of our lives —schools; businesses; churches, temples, mosques; etc. Each has its own set of policies, practices, and local cultures that differentiate more or less between men and women. So, if Steve Jobs had been a woman, he would have lived in a different world than the world he knew as a man.

«Jobs lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light»

Steve Jobs, the man, lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Investors saw potential for his success, because Jobs fit their expectations for technical business genius. Employees tolerated his eccentricities because they saw him as a successful leader. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light.

Stephanie Jobs, the woman, could have behaved in the same ways, but her behavior would have been interpreted differently. By violating expected behavior for women, she would have incurred harsh judgments about her likability, even if people thought her competent. And being thought competent would require performance several times better than Steve would have needed.

Stephanie would have had less opportunity than Steve to develop skills that contribute to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She might have been explicitly discouraged from taking elective STEM courses. Had she taken the courses anyway, she would have experienced isolation, stereotype threat, and less encouragement than her male classmates. Investors would likely have failed to see beyond her femininity to recognize her vision and ability to carry it out. Employees might have labeled her a crazy bitch and refused to contribute their passion in fulfillment of her dreams.

«Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame»

Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame. An astonishing achievement would have been even more spectacular, unless of course, the world changed at the same time Steve’s gender changed. 

It is difficult to know whether we are moving toward a world where Steve and Stephanie have equal chance of success. Obviously, women are advancing in education and economic independence in many countries. Yet, even in those countries where women seem to have the most parity with men, occupational gender segregation persists: women, more than men, are in fields with fewer economic rewards, less autonomy, and lower job satisfaction.

The European Women’s Lobby on the Role of Recognition

By Signe Kristine Nørgaard, guest writer for The European Women’s Lobby (EWL).

Could a woman do Steve’s job? Yes, of course. But the status and fame she would acquire are unlikely to bring her anywhere close to the adulation accorded to Steve Jobs, as Siri Hustvedt pointed out in her contribution to this blog. Whether we talk about pioneers at the frontiers of innovation or culture-bearing institutions, we witness the same tendency: when women enter a new (or old) male dominated field, the mysticism evaporates along with much of the status and pay. Consider how prestige and status have escaped historically masculine bastions such as education, the arts, politics and medicine proportionally to the degree of ‘feminisation’, the causality of which has been discussed superbly by Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman.^[1]

What excludes women from IT is not the hype and mysticism, but the gendered exclusivity which they symbolise. Inclusion on the other hand means breaking the gendered spell and a subsequent drop in prestige. Of course it is not all that black and white. This could not be further from a biological or essentialist argument. IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain. It matters little if we are talking about IT or other prestigious sectors dominated by men or rather, masculine values and attributes. The IT sector is symptomatic of the issues worth investigating here. No more, no less.

«IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain»

Having provided certain insights into the past and current situation, the pressing question is what we can do to change it. As has been brought up several times on this blog, taking to task gendered stereotypes and role models is an important step towards increasing women’s stake in the sector. And we must go beyond that. Comprehensively overthrowing gendered stereotypes requires that we confront the gendered value system itself. From this perspective, asking what it would take for a woman to do Steve’s job and win his glory is not good enough. Can we even imagine the same hype, prestige and monetary value attributed to, say, an outstanding woman working in the care sector? We might not yet be able to envision this scenario, but the point is we need to develop that ability!

IT or care economy. We know that the first sector does not exceed the latter in economic or societal importance. But we also know that the societal valuation of the contributions of these sectors by no means reflects this reality. This discrepancy can be linked to the age-old political discussion about production vs. reproduction on the one hand and on the other it is a pressing socio-economic problem. Above all it is a gender issue. The gender segregation in the IT and care sectors is not a law of nature, nor are the distorted valuations of these sectors’ respective contributions or associated gender pay gaps. Therefore the most tangible benchmark for progress is the level of gendered pay and pension gaps and of gender segregation in the labour markets. But the solution must be found taking a more ethereal road through our minds. So long as society (women and men) subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige.

«So long as society subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige»

This is not a battle between the sexes, but merely a matter of how recognition operates. Recognition, like respect, is not something one can claim, but something one must be given; the double meaning of recognition being key here: the way men successfully achieve recognition (acknowledgement) from each other is to a great extent dependent on their societally-rooted culture for mutual recognition in the sense that they ‘recognise’ (know, see and understand) each other. A woman achieving a position equivalent to Steve Jobs’ depends on affecting profound social change, but also on women’s ability to strengthen mutual recognition on their own terms by affirming what we already know: the deep awareness of the indispensable role of our contributions whether they are productive or reproductive. All the proof we need is already there. We need to operationalise this evidence and start formalising the means (institutional, capitalist, symbolic, communicative etc.) to give ourselves the recognition we know we deserve.

Footnote:
1. Her profound investigation of gendered culture, symbols and values is synthesized in the work Genus – det stabilas föranderliga former (the mutable shapes of stability). She develops a 'gendered power system' which refers to historically embedded, set of gendered values and symbols, which permeate our daily language and norms. Due to this inherited symbolic system "the masculine" is automatically attributed greater value than the "feminine". What is understood as 'masculine' and 'feminine' can change radically, but the gendered power system remains stable because power, value, prestige and status accrues to the ever 'masculine'. According to this logic attributes with feminine connotations can later on be adopted as 'masculine' attributes and so switch from low to high status, only now they are no longer 'feminine'.

A problem of personal potential and innovation

By Gerald Hüther, Professor of Neurobiology, University of Göttingen (Germany). 

© Josef Fischnaller.

Of course, men are different from women. For a woman, for instance, it is rather difficult to disclaim the motherhood of a child. In this sense, Steve Jobs had a daughter, Lisa, but he didn't accept her fatherhood for many years nor did take responsibility until she was grown up.

«Everyone makes unique experiences, and each epoch offers unique chances for certain ideas and projects»

However, and concerning the leading question of this blog, I would consider one single aspect of general validity: Each person is unique, with special talents and gifts. What differs between people are the chances and opportunities for an individual to unfold his or her potentials. Everyone makes unique experiences, and each epoch offers unique chances for certain ideas and projects. And this is true for both males and females. So, even a brother of Steve Jobs, even a twin-brother, may not have made his career; neither a sister or even a twin-sister. 

But I don't think this is a gender-specific problem. It’s a problem of an optimal fit between a person's potential and an open time window for innovative developments.

Imagining Sarah Jobs: An Exploration of Gender Roles and Technology

By Carolyn Danckaert, co-founder, A Mighty Girl.

If Steve Jobs had been born female, for instance as Sarah Jobs, his experience would have been very different right from the start. As Sarah, it’s quite likely that her parents would have discouraged risk-taking behaviors from a very early age. One study found that mothers of 11-month old babies thought girl babies would be less capable of crawling down a carpeted slope than boy babies when, in reality, the girl babies were actually more daring than their male counterparts.¹ These types of perceptions encourage parents to intervene more quickly when their daughters are engaged in “risky” behaviors leading, over time, to girls’ decreasing confidence in their own abilities and willingness to take risks.

As Sarah grew, she would have discovered a significant difference in the types of toys offered to her versus boys. A 2009 study from the psychology journal Sex Roles found that 31% of toys marketed towards girls were focused on a girl’s appearance whereas 46% of those marketed towards boy were focused on activities.² As a result, Sarah would have begun to internalize a message that girls are passive and defined by their looks while boys are defined by their actions.

«Starting from Sarah's inculcation for risk aversion as a baby to the lack of female technology mentors at her university, the odds would have been heavily stacked against her»

Once Sarah went to college, it would have been highly unlikely that she would have chosen to major in computer science. While women in the US now receive 57% of bachelor’s degrees, less than 14% of computer science degrees are awarded to women.³ This disparity continues into the workforce where, according to a US Department of Commerce report, women hold half of the jobs in the US but less than a quarter of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) positions. Of course, this would not bode well for Sarah’s future earnings as women with STEM jobs earn 33% more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs. In this same report, the authors cite a few of the possible factors behind this discrepancy between women and men in STEM fields as being attributable to: “a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields.”

Given that all of these facts and figures are focused on the current reality for girls and women, it’s logical to assume that these types of disparities would be all the more extreme when Steve Jobs was a child fifty years ago. So then, to answer the central question, if Steve has been born Sarah would she have emerged as the great technology innovator and business leader that Steve became? Starting from her inculcation for risk aversion as a baby to the lack of female technology mentors at her university, the odds would have been heavily stacked against her.

«Countless girls and women do not fully realize their potential as technology innovators and that loss is not just their own but society’s as well»

Of course, exceptional people beat the odds all the time and Sarah Jobs may have been one of those exceptional individuals. Even so, countless girls and women do not fully realize their potential as technology innovators and that loss is not just their own but society’s as well. Encouraging and enabling more women to follow Steve Jobs’ path will require widespread changes ranging from decreasing the gender stereotyping that girls encounter from a very young age to creating more mentorship programs for female high school and college students. There’s no doubt that the opportunities for girls and women today are far beyond what they were in Steve Jobs’ youth but, for the sake of all the current and future Sarah Jobs, we’re got a long way yet to go.

Risks and costs of innovation: thinking outside the box

By Mary Evans, Centennial Professor, Gender Institute, London School of Economics

The question around which this (and other) blog is organised is that of the difference it might have made if Steve Jobs had been a woman. Now this question invites the usual comparisons between the lives of Shakespeare, Einstein and lots of other famous (and infamous) men and their sisters, the conclusion being that the males of the species had a much easier time in making their names in the public world… not least because they were expected to. Men live, as Kathleen Lynch has so rightly and clearly pointed out, ‘care-less’ lives.

«When responsibility for providing material support for others is denied, men carry a burden of personal failure, but life is difficult for both
men and women»

But at the same time as we know this we also know that millions of men shoulder expectations of care that are no less onerous than those of women: the responsibility for providing material support for others. When this responsibility is denied (for example in great swathes of Europe at the present time and for much else of the world for a lot of the time) men carry a burden of personal failure. But this comment need not take us to the equalising conclusion (life is difficult for both men and women) let alone to competitive assumptions about who has the most difficult time. What we should address is who profits from particular needs in a particular place at a particular time.

«The communications industry in which Jobs succeeded had no particular interest in his explicit gender, but it did have a financial interest in innovation»

In this way we come to address not the individual cases of success but the underlying circumstances which create opportunities for success. The multi-billion dollar communications industry in which Jobs so clearly succeeded had no particular interest in the explicit gender of Jobs (or Brown or Jones or Smith) but it did have a financial interest in innovation. Thus we need to ask questions about the ways in which the risks and the costs of innovation are gendered: the questions are about who we expect (and indeed allow) to think outside the box. I think that if we can begin to consider these questions then we get beyond the binaries of worse for women/better for men and reflect on the gendered constructions through which we challenge, take risks and innovate.