Why Hire Women?

You knew this was coming, because I have said that it was coming. The #MeToo movement will make life more difficult for women in the workplace. It feels like a revolutionary action to overthrow the patriarchy, and it is certainly destroying the careers of more than a few men, especially in the media and entertainment, but living your life within a grand historical drama is always a bad idea. This time, the ultimate victims will be women.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

Obviously, businessmen cannot speak out about the issue. But, what they are telling each other deserves a hearing, even if the author of the current piece speaks anonymously.

He mentions first that in a climate where accusations count as incontrovertible truths, our grand American tradition of justice has been largely discarded. Remember when Benjamin Franklin said that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted. Well, you can forget about that, along with due process.

Anonymous quotes Emily Linden, a columnist for Teen Vogue, who declares that she does not care if some innocent man’s reputation is ruined as long as she can avenge herself against the patriarchy and can foment revolution. Naturally, Linden, a fanatic masquerading as a serious writer, has forgotten about due process and does not care either about what happens to the innocent man’s wife and children. Nice way to show us how sensitive you are, Em.

Anonymous offers his analysis from within the business world:

There are however two big problems with the whole situation:

1.      Accusations alone kill careers and businesses just through the media attention and absence from any investigation or evidence

2.    The narrative of the whole debate is that every claim must be believed — regardless how ridiculous the claim itself is and that any questioning of this or that people want an investigation is automatically anti female.

    These two social justice paradigms have made it impossible to defend anybody against accusations — regardless how suspicious or shallow the claims were — and it still continues so we can assume this will stay for way longer than just the next week.

He is not alone in pointing out that in the ambient mania the meaning of sexual harassment has been bloated almost beyond recognition:

Another problem is that the meaning of sexual harassment was widened to include what most of us would consider normal behavior among adults. This includes but is not limited to: getting invited for a drink, making somebody a compliment or standing in the same room.

This paints almost any interaction at a workplace in a sexualized context which in turn makes it almost impossible to be comfortable with each other. This has a major chilling effect on teamwork, arbitration and general communication.

Worse yet, women are shouting that they are weak and ineffectual, that they are so sensitive that they are rendered ill by someone who makes them feel “uncomfortable.” So much for the myth of strong, empowered women.

Now as a business owner myself and somebody who is in voluntary leadership positions I can tell you one thing: 

It´s impossible to accomplish anything if you are not willing to make someone “uncomfortable”! Especially if you take on a mentor role!

And also:

When James Damore was asked for feedback from his supervisor and internally circulated his google memo, it got leaked, he got fired and women stayed at home the next Day because “for emotional reasons”

A ten page summary of data and analysis from Damore was enough to “emotional distress” the women at the company.

I’m not arguing here about the validity of the memo — we can talk about that on a separate occasion — my point here is that a ten-page document with written words that suggested possible gender differences cost multiple sick days!

Anonymous tries to put it in context:

What the media doesn’t see are … very important facts:

• Most businesses still care more about profit than gender distribution
• Most businesses don’t share the blatant disregard for men
• Most businesses are still created, maintained and lead by men — so you can’t put men out of the equation

Now, male executives will react to the #MeToo movement by hiring fewer women and by practicing gender segregation. Anonymous quotes some of his male executive friends:

“We will probably not hire women if they have to work together with men” (paraphrased)

 “We have to consider gender segregation at the workplace as a next step so we hire women only for positions where we can make a team out of them and where we have to hire a spot in the male-dominated parts we hire additional men” (paraphrased)

One of my colleagues from a US Tech company gave me even a (for me) more horrific answer when I asked him about this notion: 

“we are considering to drop our female staffers in the non-support teams, this way we can eliminate the risk and from the outside, it looks like we just have a 90/10 split which is low but not unreasonable for a tech company” (paraphrased)

Many men are saying that hiring women is simply not worth the risk:

Even an unproven or false allegation can cost a company a significant sum of money!

For some businesses it could even mean bankruptcy because clients could drop them, they can’t bear the expensive legal fees or the media outrage kills their reputation.

  

And I don’t know anyone who is willing to take that kind of risk.

And then there are other unspeakable risk factors in hiring women. As he says, no one will say this out loud, because such speech is strictly forbidden:

Adding to that the risk of possible pregnancy, that some call for sick leave when they have their period and the whole depiction of women in the mainstream media — and you have the perfect mix for “high risk, high cost, low reward” (actual quote)

“Officially, we will of course never ‘promote’ this — if somebody asks about stuff like that we will just say the teams can work better this way… but we don’t risk our core team that makes money just to fulfill a quota — Google & Co can do that and cripple themselves in legal affairs” (paraphrased).

Anonymous concludes:

Well, it hurts me to say but maybe we shouldn’t if this is how women behave in today’s world! It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire somebody that can potentially cost you more time and money to the addition that you have to create special rules for all other employees.