Agreed (and apologies if I was sounding snarky - I actually enjoy reading this stuff). The article itself is very clear that the research was a bit crude, and that there are lots of variables to consider.
I do trust that there is a difference in the amount of time to deliver the drink, and there appears to be a correlation with gender after controlling for a lot of factors (including the actual drink order type).
If I were to follow-up I would gather MORE information, and then do a better job of categorizing the customer type and order type.
Since I watch alot of sports (a chick who likes sports?! :eek: ) I have seen this commercial approximately 150 times over the last 2 weeks. How my hatred for this has grown exponentially!!
Something I’ve noticed is how at the end of the commercial where the “scientist” is discussing how “that proves that Shick is the bomb” or whatever, you can see the woman who fell in the background sort of crawling and assuming a very provocative and submissive position on the floor.
Also watching alot of sports I have noticed how in the last 2 or 3 years the pro sports leagues have realized…“Wow, women watch sports too!!!” So now they are coming up with god-awful pink team jerseys or little halter top shirts . So I guess they figure only cheerleader types actually watch sports, and that all women love pink. Makes sense. :rolleyes:
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the pink stuff is connected to the breast cancer research promotions that many sports leagues are involved in. I just saw Bret Favre’s wife wearing that same jersey during the game last night, and talking about her own fight with breast cancer.
Ooo! That reminds me of something that may have been previously mentioned. Baby clothes. Boi-howdy, but gender roles sure are enforced upon both the infants and the parents even pre-birth with showers and such. My sister-in-unlawfulness had a baby last winter. We’ve been shopping here and there for clothes and presents. I applaud the stores that have “gender-neutral” sections, but they are dwarfed (in my experience) by the “Blue/boy vs Pink/girl” halves of the store. Another anecdotal observation is that there is more diversity in the “Blue/boy” section, and despite the predominance of the color blue, I’d consider a good portion of the “boy’s” clothes to be fair game for a gender-neutral purchase. This is interesting when compared to the more limited “acceptable professional attire” for adult men. It also fits with my world view on casual men’s clothing. I wear what I consider to be “gender-neutral” casual clothes every day of my life, and I buy most of them in the “Men’s” section.
I remember as a teenager making the conscious decision not to hide how smart I was to be more attractive to men (I’m almost 41 - I don’t know if this is something that still affects teenage girls). No one ever told me to my face that going through life letting people see that I was a smart woman might be more difficult than going through life as a cute woman, but I was smart enough (heh) to pick up on the subtle clues. For the record, I have never for a moment regretted my choice. I don’t think I really actually had a choice.
I think that it is entirely possible that women do get treated worse as a general rule in getting served and having questions answered, etc. - I know it still happens to me sometimes. It’s often very subtle, but it can be one of those situations where you might not be able to explain to someone why you felt snubbed, but after a lifetime of occasional gender-related snubs, you know when it happens.
Are women more sensitive to what might be perceived rather than real slights? Maybe, but that’s a chicken-and-egg thing - which came first, the slights or the sensitivity to slights?
I’m not sure what to make of the 20 second coffee thing. Discriminatory? Possibly. But it could also be the way that genders act differently in such transactions. Women are, on the whole, more social than men. A male attitude in such a situation is often “Let me get my stuff and get out of here.” Efficiency is a way of life for a lot of men. Another possibility is that women in coffee shops are just getting more attention, which takes more time. In that case women are getting increased customer service.
There’s just not enough information here, and way too much room for interpretation.
How much longer does it take, on average, for a woman to get her wallet out of her purse and remove money to pay, versus the amount of time it takes for a man to pull some cash out of his pocket to pay?
I realize this is totally anecdotal, but i tend to see more women digging through the change-compartment of the wallet, or the bottom of the purse, to find exact change than i see men doing it. Occasionally, I do see a man pull a handful of change from his pocket and pick through looking for correct change, but not as often as I see women do so in their wallet/purse.
I tend to keep my money in my pocket, and have noticed that this speeds up cash transactions for me. Whip out the cash, pay, shove the results back into the same pocket, and be on my way.
Men certainly still have to do this, so I imagine that teenage girls still do it too.
As for the coffee shop thing, of course women’s orders take longer, it’s because you keep changing your minds. Or on a more serious note, I’ve noticed that I generally get better service when I’m wearing a suit and tie (the difference can be pretty striking), so it may not be so much men vs women, but suits vs the rest, or something.
I guess the only major gripe I have as a man is the whole violence business. As another poster noted - if a woman attacks a man, the man is guilty. Men are expected to fight wars and slay dragons. Men’s incarceration rates are astronomically higher than women’s. I once sat in a courtroom and watched a woman and a man get convicted of a crime they had committed together. The woman walked out with a suspended sentence, and the man walked out in handcuffs to do 4 years. Oh yeah, there’s also the homelessness thing.
Then again, I’m not sure how much of this is social, and how much is just plain genetically coded. Sigh.
No kidding. I lived in a men’s shelter for a few years (the only men’s shelter in town). Community support was practically non-existent. The city itself made the shelter’s founder build way out on the edge of town, where the “bums” would be out of sight. All the local women’s shelters are, of course, right downtown, conveniently close to everything. The board of directors eventually decided to add a “women’s and children’s” facility, despite the fact that there were already a number of women’s shelters in town. They added the women’s facility purely for the purpose of increasing donations. It worked. And of course, the city allowed us to establish the women’s shelter in a nice old house in the middle of a quiet residential area close to downtown. The men’s shelter was built on top of the old city garbage dump.
Ah yes. I remember at a rehearsal once in a church we borrowed for the occasion there were some flyers for a shelter for homeless women. I mentioned to a female colleague (whom I’d normally have considered pretty fair-minded and intelligent) about there being no flyers for a homeless men’s shelter. “Oh well, they can manage for themselves”. :rolleyes:
This amazes me. Our church is a men’s only overnight site for the homeless twice a month (I think–it’s been awhile since I was involved in the program). It’s called PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter). We used to be a mixed site, but fights broke out between men/women (men/men; women/women; women/men) so now we’re men only. We have showers, full dinner and breakfast and a sack lunch. It operates from October to April. There is even (now) a program to get the homeless back to work, with appropriate clothing drives etc.
I remember reading a study years ago where women were expected(socially) to smile more and were treated better the more they smiled. That pissed me off even then. I don’t want to schmooze you-I just want my oil changed/coffee/book purchased etc. There are disparities on both sides–I claim no victim status for either.
I read that book Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent where she dresses up like a guy and one of her observations in trying to be like a man was being more curt, smiling less and so on and after I read that I really noticed that I do smile and act friendly when it’s not even necessary. It was a bit strange to realize it isn’t always necessary and I don’t have to do it unless I feel like it. It was just an automatic thing my whole life until I read that. Like you have to smile and act nice to order a cup of coffee.
Maybe that’s why it takes longer for a woman to get a coffee. Who knows. What a weird thing to study.
I don’t know if this can possibly be true but I read that Warner Brothers doesn’t want to do any more movies with female leads which doesn’t strike me as the type of thing a movie studio would ever say about men or about people of some particular race or anyone else but women. It seems impossible but I don’t know. I hope they aren’t going to try only making movies about dumb husbands! That would be offensive.
Women have only themselves to blame for this, since they don’t go out and support women-led movies at the box office. How many women-led movies do you see in the list of the top 317 grossing movies worldwide?
Were The Brave One and The Invasion particularly aimed at women? I think this is a ratio thing. Aside from there being fewer meaty roles for ‘older’ women (you know, hags like Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman), a dozen action heroes and male-centered movies can fail without much of a fuss because there are a dozen more behind them. And recent failures don’t cancel out past hits or awards. Why else would Nicolas Cage still have a job? As for women ‘supporting’ women’s films, I think this is partly just a matter of men’s experiences being more ‘universal’ (we’re all supposed to identify with them). What would raise more brows- a teenage girl watching Die Hard or a grown man watching Mean Girls?
And the smiling thing kills me. I have not once encouraged a sad or worried-looking businessman to ‘Smile, honey,’ but have been instructed to do so myself by plenty of them. This is one of those things that I come off as a bitch complaining about. ‘He’s just trying to cheer you up.’ ‘No, he’s implying that either I couldn’t possibly have anything paining or worrying me, or that, even if I do, I should still smile and look pretty.’ It’s along the lines of people who think women should feel complimented by cat calls.
But have you felt pressure, subtle and obvious, from many sources throughout your life, to always smile and be happy and be approachable and never, ever be mad, grouchy or bitchy (and by bitchy I mean stand up for yourself)?
ETA: I agree with you that life is better when you’re smiling, but you should be smiling from choice, not because you feel you have to.
I know the question wasn’t directed at me, but I often think that women are encouraged to act happy even when they’re not, while men are given more leeway to act pissed if they’re mad. I read an article recently that basically said that, especially at work, a woman who acted as though she was angry was more likely to be labeled as unstable or nutty while a man who acted the same was likely to be labeled as assertive. I’m not sure how scientific the study was precisely, but it resonated with me because my mom is always telling me not to frown because I might gasp get lines. She also always warned me that it’s unseemly for women to get angry. And whenever women would get pissed off in mixed company in junior high, high school and college, men would always joke that a women was PMSing regardless of why she was mad.
Reading this post made me think of an interesting seminar I went to recently about discipline for toddlers. The speaker stated that, in addition to helping kids learn to manager anger regardless of their sex, it’s important to tell them that they don’t have to be happy all the time. They don’t have to be entertained 24/7, don’t have to be smiling all the time and don’t have to particularly enjoy daily chores, which should be taught to them as work. She felt it was important to reinforce that work was just as important as play whether you’re a boy or a girl and that you don’t have to be giddy with joy when you’re doing any given task. I thought it was an interesting and important point she made, given that lots of children today seem to be taught that they must be happy and/or entertained all the time.
I watched Mean Girls in the theater, when I was 38. I got some really strange looks from the other theater goers. There weren’t many people in the theater for the showing I watched, but I was one of only maybe five males in the audience, and I was definitely the only person there older than 20. What can I say - I’d seen the trailer and thought it looked like fun.