THE BRAZEN CAREERIST- The gaps: What holds back working women
I have often written that there is no more glass ceiling, there is no more salary gap between men and women, and there is no reason to keep bitching about sexual harassment because it's merely a legal issue, not a men-are-evil issue.
Okay. So if the gender gaps are not around these feminist favorites, then are there any gender gaps we should be concentrating on? Yes, there are three:
1. The startup gap
In the VC world, you need to spend tons of time away from kids doing a startup. For women to be away from their kids for so long, they need to be compensated more than men. Other industries have done it in order to benefit from women's brains. The VC world should follow suit.
2. The orgasm gap
People who have orgasms do better at work: they earn more, they hang out with higher powered people, they are better at public speaking, and they walk with a more confident gait, which, of course, inspires confidence.
3. The fun gap
As soon as men and women start aging, the men are happier. Maybe they have had more training on how to have fun. But life is too difficult for any of us to wait to have fun. So we should all start learning to have some levity early on, and this is the damage of the fun gap.
You can see the gap at the bar. Alcohol makes us have a more broad imagination and do a wider range of things. So why is it more acceptable for professional men than professional women to go out with friends and get drunk? Why is it okay for men to get drunk in order to have an easier time hooking up, but it's not okay for women? This is such a serious problem that New York magazine calls the gap the last frontier of feminism.
It's clear that women are spending more time following the rules than men, and people who have more fun actually do better in life: their fun snowballs, and the more we enjoy the more we get of what we enjoy.
It starts in kindergarten, where the girls sit in their chairs and pay attention in class, and they socialize in the lunchroom. The boys, on the other hand, have spent the first five years of their lives turning everything into a gun or sword and cannot be contained in a classroom atmosphere.
Yes, these are generalizations, but as the mom of two young boys, I have never heard any parent disagree with these generalizations, (and it's official that boys are six months behind girls developmentally by kindergarten). I did not buy guns for my sons. I didn't have to. They can use anything. And I remember as a fourth grader thinking, (from the back of the classroom, where all the strong performing girls sit because they don't need help from the teacher), "Wow, the boys sure are doing poorly in school."
The problem is that the boys are having all the fun. Women are doing better than men in school, but school is not what makes kids successful at work. What actually prepares you for life is athletics, aiming high, breaking rules, playing video games.
Girls should do those things more. Then, as they grow up, they should spend their time figuring out how to get more orgasms.
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Penelope Trunk has started several companies and worked for many more.
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4 comments
This is one of the silliest articles I have ever read. First, it's saying thigns that aren't true. Outside of fields like economics and IT, women are still getting paid less than men. Yes, there are very successful wopmen who make bucks, but the trend still exists.
Secondly, if play makes men successful as work, it might explain why so many of our good ol boy Wall Street firms are failiung. Men get to be the CEO becuase they play with their networking buddies, leaving the serious down to business ladies out.
The result? The biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression.
Maybe the school doesn't teach women how to play at work. It does teach them how to actually do their job.
OK, I admit it, I have terrible typing skills in a hurry. I wish this had an editing button. Oh well, you should get my point. Or maybe I was just playing in school learning how to do well at work, instead of praticing better typing skills.
This is really an absurd article.
As a middle-aged woman who has been quite successful in the world of corporate business, but with what I'm sure the author would consider a relatively limited sex life (all that travel plus the marriage and kids can limit the opportunities for orgasm), and never having spent time even trying to hook up in bars, I would suggest that young women can do better than their male counterparts without giving up on their essential selves or trying to turn into frat boys.
Is it April 1? Is this a joke?
Sexual harassment is just a legal issue, not the result of the same mentality that the author describes in the rest of the article, e.g., it's ok to get drunk and pick up women in search of orgasms, whether it's in bars or the office?