Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!fester@math.berkeley.edu
From: fester@math.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: On negotiation
Summary: How do you negotiate a fair situation ?
Keywords: negotiation, unfairness, technical work
Message-ID: <13054@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Aug 88 19:59:34 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Math Dept., UC Berkeley
Lines: 54
Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu



I've been thinking some about how, when I was working and given only
writing assignments despite having interviewed and been hired for a
technical position, I might have managed to alter the situation.  Given
the mail I've recieved lately, I know this is a common problem for
women in the computer industry.  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So this is my question for the men reading this newsgroup.  I'm posing
it here because we clearly have a thoughtful readership, and the first
time I posed it (a year ago, in soc.women,) the few responses I got
essentially said I had no option but the one I finally exercised, quitting.

I don't want to believe that.  I don't want to believe it because there
are too many women to whom this happens, not everyone has the option to
leave, and most important, leaving does nothing to alter the situation
at the given workplace.

So, here it is:  How does one negotiate getting out of this kind of 
situation without alienating the other people involved ?  Is it even
possible ?  The problem is that women have traditionally been accused
of not being "team players".  I guess this is a good topic to bring up
now because it has some relation to Trish's topic of the organizational
structure.  A team player is one who doesn't put the company's interests
first, categorically.  But if a woman is consistently the one getting the
shit work, is it fair to berate her for being unhappy and vocal about 
it ?  (That last was a rhetorical question :-).

I'm asking my question quite seriously, however.  Can a male manager
hear a woman saying that the allocation of tasks is unfair and *really*
hear her as an individual, and *really* listen to what she has to say ?
To some extent I feel that men don't hear things coming from women the
same way they hear them coming from men.  No surprise, there is so much
cultural support for this:  aggressive women are hostile, or bitchy,
aggressive men are assertive, and so forth.

So let me try one more time to phrase the question:  Is there an approach,
and if so, what is it, by which a woman can negotiate an unfair situation
with a man and do so successfully, successfully meaning that not only is
the situation changed, but changed without rancor, without turning the
manager (and whoever else) against her, without subsequently creating a
bad work environment.

In my experience, being polite and considerate got me nowhere.  But I 
am sure that being sufficiently aggressive to have something DONE would
have required CONSTANT whining and would have resulted in the above.


Lea Fester
fester@math.berkeley.edu

"Do we still have time, we might still get by
Every time I think about it, I want to cry
The bomb and the devil, and the little kids keep coming
No way to breathe easy, no time to be young."