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cleaning is women's work at e-m?
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bbinkovitz



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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:11 am    Post subject: cleaning is women's work at e-m? Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

just a little gripe –

there was a leak in a cooler in the hallway by the merch table and genevive and i, with the help of a few other women, spent about half an hour drying the floor. once it was mostly dry, a few men stopped to help for a few minutes. but i'd just like to point out (and genevive feels the same way too) that the time we spent drying the floor was time we did not spend talking about music, sequencing, doing visuals for people, or anything else. we women are not the designated cleanup crew; i just happened to be passing by and stopped to help. in the meantime, a dozen or two men walked by, stopped in front of us to chat, asked us what the spill was from and didn't offer to help. apparently they found it normal and natural that the women would clean while the men discussed music, travel, etc.

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm not sure it's a gender thing...
It happens many times when young children at my school poo-ed and pee-ed in their pants my female colleagues ask me if I can clean it up, mostly because I don't mind. I'm also the specialist on vomit...
Even, due to financial restrictions, the childrens toilets are cleaned by me because the smell is much to hard to survive...

Ehh, maybe it is a gender thing, but the trouble with a wet floor wasn't that hard to handle Wink (No, just kidding)

I think it's a social thing. Some people feel they are responsible, others don't. My female colleagues know I feel myself responsible, so why should they?

Wout

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bbinkovitz



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PostPosted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think there's no way it's not a gender thing. I think the gender atmosphere is different here than where you are (Netherlands, right?). In my limited experience with northern Europe, gender equality is a bit more progressive. It varies from place to place, even within the US.

I truly think that if men saw men cleaning, they would be more likely to stop to help. I think men, at least the ones who grow up in "middle America", have a sort of tunnel vision that they're not even aware of sometimes. I don't think the men who walked by without helping would have done so had they stopped to think about it. I don't think they made a conscious decision to be rude. I think they just didn't even notice that there was a problem because in their subconscious conditioning, women are the natural janitors.

I wanted to bring this event to everyone's attention, not because I think the guys at EM08 are jerks (they're not!!!) but because I think they truly didn't realize there was a problem that they should do something about.

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Wout Blommers



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PostPosted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 11:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It's true, I can't judge about a situation in the USA.
Most of my male friends know how to clean, cook, washing clothing and what else. That's because they are used to do so during their education, during which period they mostly had their own small household.
I also have a friend who never changed a dipper of his own children, He waited until the end of the day when his wife would return home from work. And that's the situation in the higher educated social group. Don't let me describe the other ones Wink

Still I think it's a matter of responsibility and not gender bound behavior. It's like reaching for waste paper on the floor and throw it away in the bin without thinking: "It's not mine..." It's your world. Like hanging a new roll toilet paper after using the last piece of it.

Anyway, I just write these things because in my job file there was a remark I feel to much responsibility towards my working situation. I take these kind of things out of the hands of other people: let them do it themselves... This remark was made by a woman...

So, and these isn't my point, but the one of my principle: why did you feel yourself oblige to clean up the floor? I think you felt yourself responsible. But it is a personal feeling, highly individual. You can't ask other people to feel the same responsibility you do, at least, that's the way I think about these things now.

I won't let a child sit in it's own shit.
Without thinking why others do...

Wout
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bbinkovitz



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PostPosted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 5:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Call it what you will, but this responsiveness to situations seems to be divided along gender lines. It's probably different for different situations, as well. If a man sees a woman struggling with heavy boxes, I would conjecture that he's more likely to notice and offer help than if he sees a woman struggling to contain a mess (a hypothesis borne out by my experiences at EM).

But let's leave conjecture about potential responses to potential situations – in this actual situation, the actual response of actual people was to let the women deal with it.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
... If a man sees a woman struggling with heavy boxes, I would conjecture that he's more likely to notice and offer help than if he sees a woman struggling to contain a mess (a hypothesis borne out by my experiences at EM).
To me this sounds more like a 'sexual' thing: to show how strong a man is...
Quote:
But let's leave conjecture about potential responses to potential situations – in this actual situation, the actual response of actual people was to let the women deal with it.
Did you in any way 'ask' those guys to help?

BTW I'm not opposing you, just trying to get a good view about the situation and the hypothesis.

Wout
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
I truly think that if men saw men cleaning, they would be more likely to stop to help. I think men, at least the ones who grow up in "middle America", have a sort of tunnel vision that they're not even aware of sometimes. I don't think the men who walked by without helping would have done so had they stopped to think about it. I don't think they made a conscious decision to be rude. I think they just didn't even notice that there was a problem because in their subconscious conditioning, women are the natural janitors.


I think there's a lot of truth to this. I would like to say I'm fully enlightened about such things, but had I been there, I probably would have done the same and not even noticed.

Well... let me back up a bit. It could be a gender blind spot, or it could be the thought, "Somebody is already taking care of this, so I don't have to"... so I'm curious, how many men walked by the spill without doing anything, before you and Genevieve et al. started on it? To me, that may be a bigger blind spot... "That spill isn't my problem" or "I didn't see any spill," vs. "That looks messy, let me start cleaning it up."

I'm afraid in that regard, I'm pretty lazy... I'd be likely to overlook it or to think, I didn't do it, it's not my problem. It's a weakness on my part, I'll be honest.

Then the gender angle becomes, why did women see it in the first place while men either didn't see it, or didn't care?

James

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The men who were asked to help, did help after the were asked. I don't know how long the spill was there before I came along, but Genevive was already working hard to try to clean it up and not having much success when I came along. Guys were standing around and talking to each other while she ran back and forth getting towels and trying to figure out which cooler was leaking. She also put up a "wet floor" sign. So it was kind of hard to miss.

Anyway, my point is not to blame any men for this, but to point out forces which may be at work which may not be obvious to everyone. The same men who didn't help us clean were very quick to offer help when they saw us moving equipment, or trying to test sound levels.

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PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm curious - did other women stop by and move on after seeing the mess?
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I can't remember now. I think the only other females who walked by were Hong (who was busy) and a young girl.
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Last edited by bbinkovitz on Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 8:15 pm    Post subject: Re: cleaning is women's work at e-m? Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
just a little gripe –
...apparently they found it normal and natural that the women would clean while the men discussed music, travel, etc.


Either that, or they assumed you had it under control. Some things don't require an army of helpers and sometimes too many people is no help. But then, I wasn't there, so...

Gary

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:20 am    Post subject: Re: cleaning is women's work at e-m? Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
just a little gripe.


I think it's justified to assume it's social role/hierarchy gender thing. It does seem to me that most men assume that cleaning is women's work, likely because it is devalued just as women are. (As demonstrated by pay differentials for the same work.) IMO and I gotta scrub floors tomorrow LOL Laughing

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I find the "Oh I wasn't there but I'm sure it wasn't sexism" arguments frustrating.

How about this: I felt like it was, and I was there. Genevive felt like it was, and she was there. Perhaps Genevive and I misunderstood the situation. It's very possible. But there was this situation, and it made us feel this way. So there's a problem somewhere.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
How about this: I felt like it was, and I was there. Genevive felt like it was, and she was there. Perhaps Genevive and I misunderstood the situation. It's very possible. But there was this situation, and it made us feel this way. So there's a problem somewhere.


If Id' had been you I would have looked up at the appropriate time and said "Why don't one of you x {x: gentlemen, bucks, drones, jockheads, slugs} pretend you're not sexists and give us a hand?" just to see if the truth would out. But I'm a baaaaad boy and would rather have it out than hold it in.

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bbinkovitz



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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bachus wrote:

If Id' had been you I would have looked up at the appropriate time and said "Why don't one of you x {x: gentlemen, bucks, drones, jockheads, slugs} pretend you're not sexists and give us a hand?" just to see if the truth would out. But I'm a baaaaad boy and would rather have it out than hold it in.


Haha that's an excellent idea. I'll keep that in mind.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Well the last time I worked in an office we had a little kitchen area, coffee machine, microwave, sink, dishwasher, plates and cups you get the idea.

As the company was going down the pan (silicon graphics) they decided to save money by getting rid of the cleaning people that looked after this and just let the staff deal with it.

So we have about 25 people in this particular office, around 15 men and 10 women.

Now I hate untidy kitchens and what everyone would do was just leave dirty cups and plates in the sink, or on the work-top rather than putting them in the dishwasher, mostly because they were too lazy to empty the dishwasher.

So at three times a day I would empty the dishwasher, put the dirty stuff in and turn it on again.

As far as I could see the Women where just as bad as the Men when it came to this simple task.

Also the really funny thing is that it cost Silicon Graphics a hell of a lot more for me to do it that the original cleaners, bean counters eh!

Andy
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BobTheDog wrote:
Well the last time I worked in an office we had a little kitchen area, coffee machine, microwave, sink, dishwasher, plates and cups you get the idea.

As the company was going down the pan (silicon graphics) they decided to save money by getting rid of the cleaning people that looked after this and just let the staff deal with it.

So we have about 25 people in this particular office, around 15 men and 10 women.

Now I hate untidy kitchens and what everyone would do was just leave dirty cups and plates in the sink, or on the work-top rather than putting them in the dishwasher, mostly because they were too lazy to empty the dishwasher.

So at three times a day I would empty the dishwasher, put the dirty stuff in and turn it on again.

As far as I could see the Women where just as bad as the Men when it came to this simple task.

Also the really funny thing is that it cost Silicon Graphics a hell of a lot more for me to do it that the original cleaners, bean counters eh!

Andy


I think that's a different situation though, because I think men are much more likely to stop when they see a mess that no one is taking care of, than when they see a mess that women are taking care of.

Also, and I don't mean this to sound accusatory or argumentative I'm actually curious, what is the purpose of posting counter-stories about different situations? If it's to prove that men are capable of cleaning, being responsible, etc. then yes I know that is possible.

I don't want anyone to think the original post has any attitude like "men are so messy and they never clean" or any stereotype like that. It's more complicated than that, it has to do the fact that a mess becomes invisible to men once a woman is working on cleaning it up (obviously not true in every case ever, but something that I think is a reasonable approximation of the general trend, and something I think was going on in the situation at e-m 08).

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

BobTheDog wrote:
(silicon graphics)


Ooooo Silicon Graphics! I worship your little doggie feet! I've done a tiny amount of Maya plugin programing which requires a bit of study of Maya's implementation. It is the most brilliant and beautiful design/code I've ever seen and I encountered it right after my first studies of graph theory. Maya's guts blew me away.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
... it has to do the fact that a mess becomes invisible to men once a woman is working on cleaning it up (obviously not true in every case ever, but something that I think is a reasonable approximation of the general trend, and something I think was going on in the situation at e-m 0Cool.


I grew up when men and women had very distinct roles and a man taking on a women's prescribed 'work' role was thought to be queer, perhaps even to be a 'queer'. Fortunately some of us grew up knowing that all this is a crock of sh*t.

Any man tainted with those cultural traditions would have some negative feelings about joining in with women while the women acted out that tradition. I'm sure one's age has a lot to do with the relevance of this.

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:

I don't want anyone to think the original post has any attitude like "men are so messy and they never clean" or any stereotype like that. It's more complicated than that, it has to do the fact that a mess becomes invisible to men once a woman is working on cleaning it up (obviously not true in every case ever, but something that I think is a reasonable approximation of the general trend, and something I think was going on in the situation at e-m 0Cool.


I was just saying the mess was invisible to both men and women as I was doing the cleaning, therefore women can be just as bad as men in this respect.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 12:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bachus wrote:
BobTheDog wrote:
(silicon graphics)


Ooooo Silicon Graphics! I worship your little doggie feet! I've done a tiny amount of Maya plugin programing which requires a bit of study of Maya's implementation. It is the most brilliant and beautiful design/code I've ever seen and I encountered it right after my first studies of graph theory. Maya's guts blew me away.


I have an old Octane 2 in the loft running Maya, the Tezros ran it very well. Shame it all when tits up really. Just had a look at the Autodesk site, they still sell it for $5000.

I worked on the HPC side of things but I always enjoyed playing with Maya.

Andy
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 8:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm joining this a bit late... but I think that you have to judge the behavior of individual people separately. cause and correlation are not the same thing!
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bbinkovitz wrote:
If a man sees a woman struggling with heavy boxes, I would conjecture that he's more likely to notice and offer help

I think this would be more so a case of anyone seeing that the job at hand is a job that someone may not be able to complete by themselves. e.g the man sees the woman stuggling, he would feel the need to help because she is struggling, a man sees a man struggling, he would help because the other man is 'struggling'


bbinkovitz wrote:
than if he sees a woman struggling to contain a mess (a hypothesis borne out by my experiences at EM).


like i said above the first situation you t akled about was where someone was in need of actualy help to get the job done. In this scenario, anybody could do this job, its just the more people the quicker, i think if 1 person was to see someone doing this job, there actions would be no diffrent be it a man or woman.

Now in saying all that, they guys may of been exactly as you describe as the sexist type were 'women clean', because there is most deffinatly people like that. and i dont work where you work so i dont know what its liek there. My views are completely from a view of that particular situation placed with everyday people.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

(removed post -- didn't realize this is an old thread that was bumped)
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