Matko QQTP report-2 PDF

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Matko QQTP report-2...

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Csaba Matko 1

QQTP Report:

Submitted by: Csaba Matko

Question: The article, “How Gender Bias Hurts Men“

prompted this questions:

How to avoid positive or negative stereotyping? It seems like in almost every situation someone always can find the way to say / claim discrimination. Can we really make laws that ensure that there is no discrimination in a workplace? There is always someone who can go around and outplay the laws. Is there any real solution that can end discrimination? Does stereotyping benefit one or the other gender? Where does stereotyping and discrimination possibly comes from? I think none of us born with a mindset that men or women should not be equal. Are we developing it? Is the social media that influences us? In movies they always show the typical stereotypes, since I was 6, I’ve only seen male firefighters. Does that provide a base of for false mindset? Does the article say that we have to look beyond the gender? Is it possible for people to look further than someone’s gender? Does ‘positive’ stereotyping really exist?

Quote: I find the following quotation in the article particularly interesting, compelling, provocative or controversial:

“At the end of the day, typecasting either gender can hurt both of then – and your business. The truth is that there is no such thing as a positive stereotype.”

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These two sentences summed up the whole article. It says positive stereotype does not exist. Which is partially true…only partially because if I set up an easy example: I imagine myself as a manager and I have to make a decision between two potential future employees, without truly knowing their abilities for a job that requires skills such as being emotionally supportive. I choose / hire the blonde, tall, good looking women instead of the hipster stylish men candidate. The only reason I made this decision because of my very own personal preference. This is a positive stereotype because I hired her just because how she looks like. I do not expect her to claim positive discrimination. If that is the end of the story, I would say happy end, and yes positive stereotype is a real thing so the quoted sentence is false. But there is a problem in my imaginary manager situation. Since I positively discriminated the women candidate by hiring her, I negatively discriminated the men candidate as he did not get the job because of what my personal preference is and what stereotypes I have. So, even when positive discrimination happens it comes with a negative effect, so positive does not necessarily mean good, furthermore it can end up with a lawsuit that no business wants. In the article under ‘Positive’ Stereotyping the author mentions several other articles that tried to promote positive stereotypes for greater equality in business. Few names of these articles: “Why women may be better leaders than men” , “Study; Women are better leaders”. The textbook calls this surface-level diversity, because it is a sex based stereotype, which is an observable attribute. But we also list age, race, ethnicity in this group. This can create a negative effect on team early on. I have a personal experience relating to surface-level diversity. I remember when I got my first job, on the first they when I went to the office I experienced cold and negative atmosphere at the workplace. My first thought was, “well this is not what I expected, but whatever maybe everyone is just really busy to give me a hand or introduce themselves.”. I did my job every day quietly, after few days

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finally someone started a conversation with me. Few days later she told me that no one in the office was happy about having me there, as they thought the manager only hired me because it looks good in the statistics about the employees that he has some young guys working there or maybe I am just a son of someone important so that is why I got the job. But she apologized as she saw me working from day to day and realized that I got the job because of my physical abilities, especially high level sensory abilities, which was really useful when one of the customer was complaining about the different colors of the paint, and I was the only one who actually could show the difference between the shades. But I was shocked that just because I was younger everyone else thought I did not earn the job and for like 2 weeks that created a negative working environment. I assume their problem was not really my age, but the fact that people tend to relate young age with low education level which results a low “status symbol” in the equity theory. I think age wasn’t the problem because, our textbook say that the percentage of the workforce who are older than 60 year expected to grow, so I would feel good and reasonable to hire young people. I also feel like when a company hires a fresh graduate student, that student will develop normative commitment as that specific company was the one that put trust in hiring the student at the first place and started tutoring her. The quote that I started with can be analyzed in lot of different ways, but in conclusion the theory in the textbook about increased diversity of the U.S. labor force, seem to be true and also seem to be having an overall positive effect on both economy and workplace environment, and it should not be necessarily seen as positive or negative stereotyping. TP

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Three open ended questions or talking points that could be used to stimulate a class

discussion are:

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1. Imagine that, you are a member of a successful team. Your team has a new member that you now just got selected because she is the friend of the team leader. What effects this positive stereotyping can have on the group / team? 2. When we are watching movies, most of us do not really see it that movies are purposely using stereotypes. Are movies influencing us to have stereotypes, if yes, is that a good or bad thing? 3. Imagine, what would happen if there would be no stereotypes at all? How could it be accomplished?...