Women Are 41% More Likely to Experience Toxic Workplace Culture Than Men

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-toxic-culture-gap-shows-companies-are-failing-women/

by qwerty242586 • 3 years ago

36 26 3 years ago

sloanreview.mit.edu

19h4• 3 years ago

Literally all this shows is that women are more likely to say that the workplace is toxic nothing else; they literally just analyzed a lot of glassdoor reviews and that’s their entire base for this claim.

Also for some reason I’m pretty sure that men are unlikely to backstab their former employer and instead silently move on, because they’re very likely not interested in having their future employer see them as a liability?

zaptheimpaler• 3 years ago

So in your world, men are better because we don't report toxic workplaces and instead allow them to continue chewing through more people? This kind of thinking underpins a lot of awful workplace cultures like those in some fields of medicine or finance where 80hr weeks are expected, juniors are treated like crap and each generation perpetuates the shit their bosses foisted on them.

thiht2• 3 years ago

I don’t see a judgment value in the parent comment, why do you imply they say it’s « better »?

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

I'm a man and experienced toxic workplace culture at the mercy of a female superior.

pornel• 3 years ago

A frequent aspect of sexism is not believing women when they report their own experiences.

belorn• 3 years ago

An other frequent aspect of sexism is the cultural view that men should look inwards when they have a bad experience, while women should look outwards when they have a bad experience.

ttyprintk• 3 years ago

In a bigger study by Pew, women “say a major reason for the gender wage gap is that employers treat women differently.”

grammarnazzzi2• 3 years ago

A frequent aspect of poor performers is putting their energy into building a victim identity over of their actual job responsibilities.

d23• 3 years ago

Yes, women experience sexism, bias, and toxicity in the workplace, and it's probably at a higher rate than men. Figured I'd throw a top level comment in here stating such so the ratio of that versus denialism is 1:4 instead of 0:4.

cashsterling• 3 years ago

I would love someone to clearly explain what makes a workplace culture toxic. Asking for a friend who would love to know and understand all of the things that clearly contribute to workplace toxicity so that they can avoid them.

anonreeeeplor• 3 years ago

I think women are also awful to one another. I have seen it myself. Granted. Men are terrible. Women are often far nastier and more indirect which can wreak complete havoc in a workplace or remote work environment.

I know many women who have a very weird instinct to compete against the other women in their environment which is not exactly the same as how men compete. And the WAY women compete is NASTY.

I have met a lot of women who have said they greatly prefer to work with men over women and that some women have extremely aggressive instincts towards other women.

It’s something evolutionary along the lines of: “If there are few women and many men (typical in most tech environments), you are competing not only for male attention and prestige but it is also a zero sum game based on appearance so another woman is threatening across multiple attack vectors … if she is more attractive, the men will give her more resources. If she is more talented, she will get more attention etc.

I think it reminds me of Chinese dynasty politics where an emperor who has many wives - They all understand that it is a zero sum game and the children of the woman who gets the most attention will have the most resources. Go read about how Chinese imperial concubines handled one another. It was very, very, very bad.

It is incredibly sexist to talk about. But the effect is real. Humans have hormones. They don’t go away because we have been in an office for 50 years out of the last million years.

I personally think that the chemistry between men and women can be magical for work and create super productivity. I prefer to work with and for women. It’s because if I work with men everything becomes a sort of dominance contest and I personally don’t care for it.

listless• 3 years ago

I think women are going to have to get honest with themselves about this. My wife is a nurse who works with all women and the stuff they do to each other is downright evil. They basically try and sabotage each others relationships. My wife constantly bemoans this fact.

Men are not perfect. Women aren’t either. As genders we have different ways of being awful and a good mix of both genders is likely a good way to balance this out.

red-iron-pine• 3 years ago

Nursing, esp. in subfields where people are regularly dying, is a different world.

12-hour shifts, sometimes very physically demanding, often highly stressful, and even when not stressful, often gross: cleaning up blood, puss, shit, etc. I've heard stories, both online as well as from medical folks I know, about the smells.

Small, single errors mean someone could die, and often from something as silly as writing down blood sugar levels incorrectly or with hard-to-read handwriting. CYA is SOP.

Barriers of entry are often low, and turnover + demand means that you're forced to make due with the staff you have not the staff you want -- which means Stacy the Room-Temperature-IQ Superstar now has more nursing duties than should be allowed.

After a while it's no wonder it turns toxic.

19h4• 3 years ago

I agree this probably shouldn't be here, but I took all comments from this thread and asked GPT4 to 1) break down all arguments into axioms and 2) try to resolve them. Since I feel like this is pretty fascinating and a good read, I decided to paste this here.

Here's the reply:

------

In the discussion, various arguments have been presented surrounding the claim that women are 41% more likely to experience toxic workplace culture than men. Here, we break down the arguments into axioms and attempt to resolve them.

Argument 1: The data only shows that women are more likely to report toxic workplaces.

Axiom 1A: Women are more likely to report toxic workplaces than men.

Axiom 1B: Men are less likely to report toxic workplaces, possibly because they don't want to be perceived as a liability.

Argument 2: People typically report toxic workplaces when they are indeed toxic.

Axiom 2A: If a workplace is reported as toxic, it is likely actually toxic.

Argument 3: Men might react differently to toxic workplaces.

Axiom 3A: Men may take direct action against a former employer rather than report them on Glassdoor.

Argument 4: Women can also create toxic work environments.

Axiom 4A: Women can engage in aggressive and indirect behavior towards each other.

Axiom 4B: Evolutionary instincts and competition for resources, attention, and prestige might drive this behavior.

Argument 5: Cultural expectations shape how men and women respond to negative experiences.

Axiom 5A: Men are culturally expected to internalize negative experiences.

Axiom 5B: Women are culturally expected to attribute negative experiences to external factors.

To resolve these arguments, one could consider the following points:

1. Acknowledge that the data may reflect both actual toxic workplace experiences and differences in reporting rates between men and women. This would account for Axioms 1A, 1B, and 2A.

2. Recognize that both men and women can contribute to toxic work environments, as illustrated by Axioms 4A and 4B, but also acknowledge that they may respond differently to these experiences (Axioms 3A, 5A, and 5B).

3. Encourage open dialogue about toxic workplace culture, focusing on the experiences of both men and women, while considering the various factors that might influence their behavior and responses.

4. Promote research that investigates the different factors that contribute to toxic workplace culture, including individual, social, and cultural factors, as well as potential biases in the reporting of toxic workplaces.

By addressing these points, it is possible to gain a more comprehensive understanding of toxic workplace culture and the various factors that contribute to the differences in reported experiences between men and women.

------

As a fun exercise I made it generate a graphviz digraph from it: https://dreampuf.github.io/GraphvizOnline/#digraph%20Toxic_W... (prompt: Write a graphviz digraph based on your previous response.)

BurnGpuBurn• 3 years ago

Somehow I already get bored by all the "here, I asked GPT about this" comments on HN. I don't really care what the computer thinks mate. Much more interested in what you think.

Though, thanks for acknowleding the use of AI here, one can never be sure nowadays :-)

19h4• 3 years ago

You're absolutely right, but I felt like the axiom-approach by x-complexity was fascinating for breaking down the discussion, and I was positively surprised by how GPT4 approached it.

nostromo123• 3 years ago

"I agree this probably shouldn't be here..."

And yet, here it is ;) This whole "asked GPT, here's what it said" spiel is getting old already.

Women Are 41% More Likely to Experience Toxic Workplace Culture Than Men

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