Actually, we're not really worth it.

[Triffiddealer]

Listening to Women's Hour today (yes, get full marks for feminist bingo), I was intrigued by the chat regarding women in IT - which then evolved to women applying for jobs in general. Basic conclusions:

If women do not feel they meet 90% of job spec, they won't apply for the job - many men will apply if they only meet 40 - 50%

If you advertise a job at 50K per year, women don't apply. If you lower the salary, they will.

Now, I appreciate this was based on the views of the participants of Women's Hour and not a statistically valid survey - but the comments resonate with me.

Assuming this is the case (women are less confident in their abilities and less able to demand the appropriate salary than men), what do we actually do about it?

Interesting. Whenever I am looking for jobs, I always look on salary - for an amount that I am comfortable earning/expect to earn. So it resonates with me. I can't even imagine applying for a job earning £50K, I don't feel worth it and I have no idea how other people think they are, though I don't mind them feeling it IYSWIM.

Do we want to change it? Are these salaries 'appropriate'?

This report came out recently.

www.i-l-m.com/downloads/resources/centres/communications-and-marketing/ILM_Ambition_and_Gender_report_0211.pdf

Summarised here

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18127469

Says the same thing about women not applying for jobs they do not feel qualified for whereas men will.

The salaries are there Joan. That is the world. By saying "I don't deserve that much" we are ranking ourselves as less than others (in this case men).

Not applying for a job will never change anything.

I am talking as one who often thinks - 'oh I don't have the skills to do that' or 'I would never be worth that much'. The fact that less qualified men don't think that or worry about if they are worth it hadn't occurred to be before (which makes me sound a bit dim, I think)

I read somewhere (I think it was on here ages ago actually...) that one of the reasons women tend to be paid less than men is that when applying for a job when women are told the salary they are to be paid, they accept it, where as men are more likely to haggle and say no, I'm worth more than that.

I think this was a bit of a woman blaming reason but interesting to look at why this behaviour occurs, if it's true? I know I'd be terrified to haggle a salary up in case they thought it was cheeky and decided not to offer me the job! And on a related point, when I was applying for (minimum wage retail) jobs last year, DP was shocked when I said an interview had only lasted 15 minutes and was convinced I hadn't got the job, because I should have asked them questions, should have asked for a tour of the building etc (as he apparently has done in every interview he's ever had) and again, it would never occur to me to do this and I don't think I'd have the nerve in case they thought me, well, I suppose, cheeky or arrogant.

I wonder if this is a "way different genders are viewed" thing as well? Because women tend to get negative reactions if we are too confident or forward whereas these are seen as positive attributes in a man, and he would likely to be found lacking if he was not confident or forward enough. I kind of want to try it out next time I apply for a job!

Do we have any academics who can do a study of interview behaviours?

Ah I see, so that study is basically the study I was after - apart from the crucial part of how an employer or potential employer would react when faced with someone following the opposite gender role.

Thanks Enim. I'll read that tomorrow.

I have been reading a book by Steve Peters (a psychiatrist) called the Chimp Paradox and his take is that women have evolved to be less secure than men and that this self-doubt is something he has seen consistently in his professional career with women, regardless of their intelligence or talent. His view is that we need to accept and deal with the evolutionary fact that many women lack confidence, and overcome it, by not letting it dictate our lives.

I recognise this lack of confidence in my own life (but am not entirely convinced it isn't culturally/socially built). However, I still don't know how I overcome it - or make sure my daughter doesn't fall victim to it.

'women have evolved to be less secure than men'

Well, I'll have to read that, because my first reaction is to say WHAT COMPLETE BULLSHIT but I am not secure enough to stand by that unsupported opinion

I suppose I feel that the problem is that men are too secure, not that women are too insecure.

Triff, it's true that women need to be on a level playing field with men, or men with women, economically - but please chuck that evolutionary sociobiology shite in the bin.

"I wonder if this is a "way different genders are viewed" thing as well? Because women tend to get negative reactions if we are too confident or forward whereas these are seen as positive attributes in a man, and he would likely to be found lacking if he was not confident or forward enough."

Think you've probably got something there, I mean if you look at things like what language is used to describe women in high paid jobs, or how (sorry) female candidates on the Apprentice are described. The women are often derided for being too pushy etc, when the men are congratulated for the same behaviour.

joan, yours is an entirely supported opinion that evolutionary biologists are full of bullshit and peddle the most appallingly poor science to support the most appalling cultural views.

For 'more insecure' could we read 'feel less entitled'? There's an important difference, even if the end result looks very much the same.

Linerunner - I am usually the first one to shout BULLSHIT at evolutionary-armchair-would-be-philosophers...but, I honestly don't know many men with the complexes, self-doubt and worries that my (often hugely talented and intelligent) female friends have.

I was talking to a ski instructor a few years ago and he told me that with most of the women he taught, he felt his job was to bring their confidence up to their ability and with the men it was to bring their ability up to their confidence.

I know this is all anecdotal and I know that the cause could be social as well as biological, but either way, we have a problem.

I also understand your concerns about the 'Chimp Paradox' but please don't confuse it with other excuses for armchair sexism Darwinism, as even though it takes an 'evolutionary' perspective, it makes absolutely no excuses for it. What I liked about it, is that it states that we are human, have values and morals, and we are in charge.

Darwinism isn't the problem, triffs, it's the people making a buck out of stuff like 'Chimp Paradox'.

Have you read it Linerunner?

'Chimp Paradox' isn't a title that naturally attracts me, but I'll give it a go.

Anyway you asked what are we going to do about the issue. Any ideas? I'm quite assertive, myself. I wasn't when I was younger; which was a quite horrible time tbh.

I was looking at a few job applications recently - a friend asked me to look at them. There were external assessments of the candidates, and then individual questionaires.

It was quite scary really. Even the women with phenomenal qualifications rated themselves as "good" at best. The men bigged themselves up at every opportunity.

There were four people (two men and two women) who I reckoned could do the job really, really well. If a computer had been picking, using a combination of all the information given, the two men would have come out well on top.

I talked to the people doing the assessment afterwards and asked would it be better to grade them on their self-assessment vs others of the same sex, but apparently that would be sexist and unfair (even though the two women I looked at would probably have been in the 99th percentile of women, they came up as only about the 85th percentile overall, because of the disparity of their answers).

What I couldn't work out was whether the men's apparent conviction that they were good at everything (and they were good, and qualified, but so were the women) would give them an advantage in the workplace over the women who were independently evaluated as just as good, but who talked themselves down.

It was an interesting experience, looking at all the bumph.

I think my scepticism is partly informed Triffid by not understanding why there would be any evolutionary benefit in men being overconfident (I am renaming the problem here in a culturally loaded way in the interests of at least having a balance of distortions). I can see the point in a primary carer being highly aware of potential threats, but I can't see any evolutionary point in any adult of a species being less aware of potential threats/overconfident in their ability to deal with them - IMo this trait would disappear fairly fast from an evolutionary perspective.

This would suggest to me that levels of 'insecurity', IF they vary significantly according to a group (which I don't necessarily accept), are culturally determined.

I agree - a horrible title and it's not a 'scientific' tome - it's more a self-help book for people struggling with lives, but it did give me cause to re-think quite a few behaviours and actually has helped me a lot. The only evolutionary science book I like is Anne Campbell's 'A mind of her own'. She's the only reason I stopped spitting every time someone said 'evolutionary psychology'.

As for solutions, I wish I had some. Assertiveness is something I have acquired to some extent as I've got older, but I think it's fairly clear that women are way below men on confidence - do we tackle that as a gender? Or as a society?

Obviously, it's a big picture thing too - when TOWIE and glamour models are the epitome of female success, it doesn't bode well.

But I still think that overconfidence is more of a problem than lack of it. I accept totally that this is a cultural attitude of its own, but it is one of the reasons I don't actually spend much time with men if I can manage it. I would rather than men were applying for jobs they actually felt they could do, rather than women were suddenly bullshitting their way into higher salaries. Having so many jobs that are effectively performances, judged on your 'confidence', rather than requiring actual proven competence at anything, is a cultural issue again IMO.

Mary Men will always big themselves up. I worked on the trading floor and some of the crap they came out with was priceless. No one calls them up on it. I learnt from the boys to ask for pay increases on a periodic basis (every 6 months). No one said no to me within the department but I had a hard time with HR. While I was paid less than the others on my team I earnt more than those with the same experience level as myself.

I will also say that HR was a nightmare when it came to salary neigotiations. I saw them say yes to men far more than women. Women who asked were seen as arrogant, pushy and overtly assertive if we asked for the same. The men never had this issue.

I remember an old boss who justified the salary inequality with the mantra, 'Men have mortgages.'

It's got fuck all to do with evolution, and everything to do with culture, agency, contingency, context, prejudice, upbringing, culture, expectations and tradition. Which are very recent, evolutionarily speaking.

p.s. got to sleep.

OK Joan, I see what you're saying. This measurement of 'norm' and what we accept is really interesting. Society measures men as the norm, and I have been guilty of accepting that - we (women) are not as confident as men - therefore we have the problem. However, the skiing instructors I talked about earlier (all experienced older men with years of skiing behind them) saw the men with their over-confidence as a problem and a danger - not the insecure, safety-conscious women.

But in the real world, the confident ones get the jobs/pay rises/positions of power. If we don't resolve this, it will always be men in those positions.

p.s got to sleep too. Hope to wake up to pages full of solutions!

The skiing instructors may have seen the overconfidence as a problem, but as service workers they had to aim, or say they were aiming, to improve male skills to meet male confidence, rather than reduce confidence to meet the skills - which to me, should be the more achievable job.

To reduce male confidence is to be called 'emasculating' still - despite the fact that few men would now call themselves Freudians.