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From: edhall@rand-unix.arpa (Ed Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Preponderance of women as tech-support people
Message-ID: <5727@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 6 Sep 88 23:35:22 GMT
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In article <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> roy@phri (Roy Smith) writes:
>	2) Most computer types are men.  Therefore, if you make most of the
>tech support people women, you get mostly man->women interactions.  Men are
>less likely to rant and rave at a women than at another man, so by making
>the tech support folks women you cut down on having to deal with angry
>customers.
> . . . .
>       Personally, I think 2 is probably the right answer.

Actually, I'd suspect:
        5) Women are traditionally more service-oriented, more
communicative, more patient, and more willing to put up with crap.  Male
customers may or may not be just as willing to rant and rave at a woman,
but a woman is generally thought to be less likely to rant and rave
back.  This is stereotype, to be sure, but also part of the cultural
training women receive.  So in the real world, sadly, an employer will
likely find that hiring women works, on the average...

No flames, please--I know that both women and men are stuggling for
equality and to reduce male dominance/female submissiveness, and that
cultural conditioning of sex roles is slowly changing.  But there is a
*lot* farther to go...

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@rand.org


[My sister lives in Salt Lake City, and has had a lot of trouble getting
a good job there.  One of the problems is that Mormon men do not like
working for a woman, so women make bad supervisors, so women aren't
hired into positions of authority.  It seems to me that you have a
similar problem in computing--if people are prejudiced and don't like
talking to a man in a support position, then companies which hire men
and put them in those positions will have more unhappy customers.  Of
course, many people (Eric Berne included) thought that customers would
hate male flight attendants...TR]