Nope. No extra barriers, playing field even, no systemic problems to see here…
‘Of course she would have to avoid stereotypical female behavior, and so she could never cry. She would work long hours and hide her pregnancies and her preschooler’s art. One of my co-workers even hid being married. When confronted, she practically swore never to reproduce, and she never did.
I did not mention my first maternity leave, from which I returned to find a curly-haired stranger sitting at my desk, his feet propped on a cardboard box with my client account list packed inside. I had to re-earn the contents of that box, starting that morning. I also didn’t mention the “moo” sounds that traders made when I headed to the nurse’s office with a breast pump, or the colleague who on a dare drank a shot of the breast milk I had stored in the office fridge. I thought of the guy known for dropping Band-Aids on women’s desks when the trading floor was cold because he didn’t “want to be distracted,” and the many times I had heard a women share an idea at a meeting, only to see later that same idea credited to a man.
But I didn’t bring up any of that. Women like me were “team players,” and I was often complimented on my thick skin. Like members of a dysfunctional family, we kept our secrets to ourselves.
Instead, I kept the conversation light. I shared a funny story about my first day on Wall Street, when I opened up a pizza box to find condoms instead of pepperoni slices. Unwrapped. I was “the new girl,” and the guys just wanted to see me blush. I did blush, and I lived.
“It’s not that bad anymore,” I said with a laugh.
She was horrified. “How could you stand that?”
“Stand what?” I thought to myself. I remembered one guy telling me that we should hire only “women who have brothers.” I asked if she had any brothers. The pizza incident was nothing compared with everything else she was about to experience. I truly thought we were offering her the job of a lifetime if only she could let the bad stuff slide.
At that time, women on Wall Street were earning 55 to 62 cents to every dollar a man in the same position earned. Afterward, Bear Stearns imploded in the mortgage market, and while I stayed close to the markets and the people who worked for them, I left. Children gave me perspective about the price of money. The women labeled stellar successes were giving up more than I was willing to part with. With the benefit of some perspective, I began to think more deeply about what I and my female colleagues had experienced.”
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
17 comments
February 20, 2016 at 6:43 am
roughseasinthemed
The full article is well worth the read. This is what got up my nose:
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February 20, 2016 at 7:28 am
captainyourface
“I truly thought we were offering her the job of a lifetime if only she could let the bad stuff slide.”
That’s the story of women’s lives, right there, if only we could let the bad stuff slide. We’d, what, be happy? Everything would be fine? It’s our fault for being so sensitive?
Sigh. So many sad feelings.
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February 20, 2016 at 7:52 am
The Arbourist
@RSitM
Yet, the dudes bang on about the wage gap being a mythical construct. Isn’t it completely obvious by now that we have wage equality, and can just move on now?
;/
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February 20, 2016 at 8:47 am
roughseasinthemed
@arb
Absolutely. Feminism is an anachronism. Defunct. I suggest you move on to find another oppressed group.
Women are cool. They have equal rights in law (sort of, just sign the in-house agreement on Wall St), they have total bodily autonomy, rights to contraception, abortion, no fear of sexual assualt, rape or murder, they are equally treated – throughout the world – with regards to health care, education and jobs. Fin. No need for feminism.
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February 20, 2016 at 8:50 am
The Arbourist
@RSitM
Well, that was easy. In next week’s episode we’ll be tackling poverty…
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February 20, 2016 at 8:51 am
roughseasinthemed
That’s easy :) doesn’t affect women does it?
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February 20, 2016 at 10:54 am
VR Kaine
Anyone here even been in a Boiler Room, or on Wall Street? Or for that matter, in a straight commission sales job? Doubt it. Go to any of those places looking for fairness and equality, dear Justice Warriors, and you’ll not only be disappointed, you’ll be balling your eyes out and quitting on the very first day – whether male or female. Going to stick it out? Then suck it up. Wall Street at the level you’re talking about isn’t the place for wanting families – male or female – and it isn’t the place where you ask how much vacation pay you get in your first year.
Great example of this from cinema:
The people you talk about here – and celebrate – would be looking for their “Safe Room” at the first f-word in this example, and once again running home to blog about how someone should be made to provide them with the sort of life they feel they deserve.
“You want vacation time? Go teach third grade public school.” Very well said. You want your “rights” respected? Your feelings acknowledged? Then Wall Street won’t be for you and it has nothing to do with gender.
Ever see a Navy Seals training? Same sort of deal. As with any battleground, on Wall Street you are in a self-centered, dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest ruthless battleground in the most primitive form until you outperform almost everybody in the room – and you want to try and compare it to what, a nursery? Zappos?
Wall Street represents the best of the best salespeople, and the best salespeople are the most aggressive, the most hungry, and the most willing to sacrifice and do what others won’t do to get the job done and win. Same profile as pro athletes, same profile as soldiers.
Sure, you can mention gap in pay but that post conveniently leaves out the gap in sacrifice as well as the gap in performance in that environment. Walk in there even hinting that you’re only going to be there from 9-5 because you have yoga at 6pm? Or your plans are to start and raise a family? Sure as shit your pay and upward mobility are going to be limited because there’s people right behind you who are willing to do more and perform more to succeed..
It also fails to mention how men treat each other in these environments. You want to think it’s just rude and crude and unfair towards women? Try again. Try being an under-performing man in that environment and you’ll get far worse. Even fall asleep on a road trip and watch what happens if you’re a guy – you’ll get your eyebrows shaved or head shaved (seen it happen) and you won’t be able to cry “foul” to anyone, either.
I’m not disagreeing with the bigger societal problems that get highlighted in such an environment, but to try and use this environment – one of the most brutal of battlefields as some sort of “see, this just shows how bad we have it everywhere” type of loser whinefest is borderline pathetic. It would be like some man saying how “Spa Lady” proves there such heavy-handed discrimination towards men in the world. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Hence, a major pity fail.
Nice try though! :)
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February 20, 2016 at 10:55 am
Emma
Yes, we live in a post-feminist world now, isn’t it obvious?
And if you want to see oppression, why don’t you move to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia? That’ll give you something to whine about.
The above Talking Point brought to you by TAFCA (The Anti-Feminist Council of America).
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February 20, 2016 at 10:58 am
VR Kaine
Damn – video isn’t showing? Trying link again. It’s the Ben Affleck scene from “Boiler Room”, which is also one of the best leadership speeches ever in business, next the “Game of Inches” speech by Al Pacino in “Any Given Sunday”. True classics, and words to live by! :)
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February 20, 2016 at 11:02 am
Emma
Well, if only women realized what’s good for them, and got married early and stayed married, instead of seeking rebellion and frivorce, their material situation would be much better.
Yep, brought to you by the indefatigable TAFCA.
Gaaah!
And sigh.
My time spent interacting with MRA-n-ilk may have scarred my mind forever, I’m afraid.
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February 20, 2016 at 11:03 am
The Arbourist
@Vern
You were doing so well.
Anyhow, showing system discrimination is never a waste of time.
And if the process is indeed that ruthless, its time for a change, because the process sucks.
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February 20, 2016 at 11:10 am
roughseasinthemed
@VR I worked from 7am till after midnight. I didn’t do yoga at 6pm.
And oh god, WATM.
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February 20, 2016 at 11:35 am
Emma
VR, are you sarcastic? That video is American Psychopathy 101. It is leadership only in the sense of inculcating the young psychopaths and psychopath-wannabes into the tools and methods of psychopathic life where money = power, and power is all that matters. Not that it takes much effort in the US (but not only).
Roughseas, what’s WATM?
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February 20, 2016 at 11:51 am
The Arbourist
@Emma
WATM(!) is the cry of he oppressed male.
It usually occurs on articles that delineate a the structural advantages men have in society. Because admitting that they have it better than women is tantamount to being called a wimp, or a sissy.
Because acknowledging the male privilege that got them to where they are today would chip away, like the dastardly Nidhogg, at the fragile male ego tree (Yggdrasil) that insists that nothing but *their* hard-work and perseverance got them to where they are today.
The call of What About The Men is discordant, yet soniferous, as it often attracts like minded men to also comment on their unique brand of diaphanous oppression they suffer in society.
All of this occurs, much to the chagrin of people who actually inhabit the oppressed classes.
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February 20, 2016 at 11:58 am
VR Kaine
Haha! Yes I was, wasn’t I?! Sorry to let you down, Arb, but you know how I get my back up on libs trying to pretend that they understand the business world. :)
“Showing system discrimination is never a waste of time.” That sounds fine on the surface, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous here in that you’re showing a very fringe element and trying to act like it’s representative of the entire system and degree of its problem when it isn’t. What goes on on Wall Street is far more to the extreme.
I worked in a bank and industry where women outnumbered men at least 4:1. My first day, one manager (female) welcomed me. The other manager (also female), who was sitting in a group of five women, rolled her eyes and said under her breath, “Oh God, just what we need here – another ‘penis'” to which a group of them all giggled and wouldn’t even say hi. The first manager just shrugged and said, “OK, well, let me show you around.”
That was just the start of it. The other manager’s sexism was there the entire time I worked there. I was one of three males in a staff of 25. The numbers were pretty much the same anywhere else in retail banking, and stories like mine were all across the country, but I couldn’t say that was representative of society, could I?
And the degree of discrimination or sexism was hardly comparable to what I’ve found on Wall Street, or in highly competitive sales environments. No matter what, it’s going to be way worse on a Wall Street trading floor than, say, in some retail branch here in Edmonton.
And by the way, did I complain about how poorly treated I was? No. While that other manager was taking her vacation I was stealing her clients. While she was playing sexist, I was a team player. When she’d whine that she was discriminated against by the three men in the branch who wouldn’t invite her out for beers after work, none of us fired back by reminding her of one of her many sexist or discriminating behaviors.
Instead I outperformed her on almost every metric, and in the end she got transferred to some crap branch and I got her job. And her biggest complaint was about the banking industry? “Such a man’s world.”
Happy ending? Nope.
The other manager knew that I beat out her friend and didn’t like it, so she started handing my work to another of her friends. She started telling the higher-ups behind my back that I was complaining all the time when I wasn’t. Then she started making my work conditions suck. I complain, and what happened? I got cut soon after because while I could play the numbers game, she was better at the politics game and I got clobbered by it. She won, and I admire that!
Probably the same in education – it isn’t just about teaching, right? C’est la vie.
This is the thing, though – you think it’s time for a change in the business world, because you and all those who get beaten by it and lose all the time think it sucks, too. Well you aren’t even in it, and with all due respect I don’t think you could hack it (don’t worry, I couldn’t hack teaching) so again with all due respect I don’t think you have any real place in demanding that it change any more than I do trying to say what’s “fair” and what should change for teachers. Just like the person in battle is better off already having their ass kicked and being yelled at a few times, the person in business is better off that way, too – and not just for them, either. You need it for a country and society as well.
You need those types of neanderthals on your front lines whether in business or in war, otherwise there won’t be any money to pay for all those social programs, for one. You need that aggressiveness up at the front making money, but we need people like you at the back to make sure we don’t totally screw it all up and spend it all on big houses, yachts, cocaine, and hookers in a single day. :)
Make those boiler environments all “nicer”, and the cretans are just going to go elsewhere and do the same, Arb. Better to keep them all in one spot where you can see ’em. Make it too soft, and they’ll just bully their way into somewhere else.
Last I’ll say on it is that the business world IS ruthless, and it’s totally unfair, and in many ways it ABSOLUTELY does suck but it’s also an absolute BLAST and exciting place to be in. Win or lose, what matters is the lessons you learn and what you do with those lessons to win the next time. This is that leadership thing again – it’s only that kind of environment that can create leaders. It sharpens your skills in a way that puts you more in charge of your own future and success, because it moves you up to the top of the food chain where assholes don’t get to dictate their terms to you any longer. Think people tell Suzanne West here in Alberta what to do? She’ll talk openly about the sexism in Alberta Oil and Gas, but instead of turtling and crying foul, she learns and beats them at their own game. She totally kicks ass and now has a bunch of men following her orders and her rules, which is fantastic.
Pretty cool, but again not for everybody.
Anyways – sorry to get your hopes up there, Arb, that I might actually be starting to guzzle your kind of kool aid on a day-to-day basis and change my spots. :) Rest assured, though, I’ll certainly join you for a glass of that kool aid from time to time. The only way to be more educated and understanding of my own opinions is to be more educated and understanding of those opposite to them, right? :)
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February 20, 2016 at 12:08 pm
Emma
Ah, yes — What About Teh Menz! The plaintive cry that graces every convo with MRA-n-ilk — how could I not realize it…
One of many good aspects of living under communist socialism was a distinct lack of the self-aggrandizing myths like that of male superiority, or man-civilization builder all by himself awesome, or the self-made man and such.
We had others, though, that we also ugly and/or laughable, like the primacy of the collective over individual needs, for example, that had to be reinforced by any means possible sometimes.
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February 20, 2016 at 12:35 pm
Emma
(…) it moves you up to the top of the food chain where assholes don’t get to dictate their terms to you any longer
Being at the top of the psychopathic pyramid has its obvious privileges, yes.
It does not change the fact that you are still and as always a psychopath. (A distinction that, admittedly, does not matter to psychopaths, who shrug it off, either with pride — “Yeah, I’m a blood-sucking mofo and have the wealth and power to show for it” — or some vaguely uncomfortable rationalization — “So what, everybody’s doing it or worse, too” — the vague discomfort of which is quickly dispelled by the sense of unshakable self-worth, confirmed by his successes.)
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