dispatches from the new world of work

Gender! Gender! Why Do We Always Overlook Gender?

Time has an essay this week [04.16.07] titled "The Age of U-Turns: Flip-flops get a bad name, but often the best course is to reverse course," by Bruce Grierson, where he writes about his book U-Turn. The author contrasts Western and Eastern thinking. Westerners ignore ambiguity: "To Western thinking, the world is linear; you can chop it up and analyze it." Eastern thinking is illustrated by a comment made by a Chinese student: "The difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it's a line."

The author praises the Eastern approach—which is at least worthy of examination and consideration. I applaud that, remembering my days at McKinsey when I sometimes was tarred with the ultimate brush of opprobrium: "You think in circles, Tom." Though it didn't help my standing with my betters, it was exactly what I thought of myself. Partly because my PhD mentors at Stanford were the likes of Gene Webb, Karl Weick, and Jim March, who tried to take the idea of organization beyond bloodless org charts and sterile strategy documents.

But that's not really my point here. Instead I am bridling at the fact that Grierson's flavor of linear "Western thinking" is really about ... MALE Western thinking." (Try to find a female philosopher in the Age of Greece! Fat chance!) FEMALE thinking, based on relationships rather than competitive spearthrowing in the bush, has always tended to the "circular." Research, among other things, shows that women see ten sides to an issue—where men see but one.

There's lots to say here, but my point is a simple one: Why must the "sample," in a book like Grierson's, always be male-centric?

Tom Peters posted this on 04/11/07.

Comments

Welcome to our world, Tom.
Why? Because "it has always been so". This culture - and I mean World culture, not just USA - has always had a male dominance. So the cycle continues... bible stories, clinical drug trials, No Child Left Behind tests, employment psych testing, etc. Always from a "male brain" perspective. What is a woman to do? Act from their true natures, or act like a man? I prefer my true Self, thanks very much, and if that leaves me stuck in worker-bee mode then so be it. I'll strive to be Excellent and Remarkable wherever I am.

On a side note... you've made it back to the suffrage movement, Tom. Look at ancient history. Texts written and edited by men, governments dominated by men. Women were property, and if they didn't like it you could beat it into them. We have either come a long way, baby... or maybe not.

Posted by Gayle at April 11, 2007 12:35 PM

Jinkies! Reading back over my comment, I think I've got too many posts floating around in my head... indifference, ancient Greece, suffragettes...! This has been a great week here at Tom's blog. Thanks for all the great thought-provokers, they make for much ENTHUSIASM!

Posted by Gayle at April 11, 2007 12:50 PM

Stupid women tend to think there's only one side to a problem, too; smart men also tend to notice there are multiple sides to problems. It's not about gender; it's not about East versus West; it's about not being isolationist, being multicultural, and thereby seeing various viewpoints for any given situation.

Most Eastern civilizations were constantly forced to account for the differences within themselves. China, India, and Russia (in that order) have incredibly diverse populations: arguably moreso than the United States, which doesn't have the population density to support the same level of diversity (occurring due to automatic social fracturing when there are too many people to keep track of for social grooming).

I can't back up anything I'm saying, but I do think it should be pointed out: it has nothing to do with gender. Nothing.

Posted by Michael Chui at April 11, 2007 11:53 PM

Thanks for weighin in on my piece in this week's Time. Your point about gender is well-taken. U-turns, as I define them -- radical, 180-degree course corrections -- are made by people who need to make them. And so, if men outweigh women in my sample, it's because they tend to be the ones who have to swing fully around to feel the Eastern sun on their face. Women are often at least partway there already. (Hence, whatever correction they make isn't a u-turn.)

I couldn't address the gender issue in the space of my Time piece, but I do in the book:

from page 129-130:

"There is a school of psychology that holds that men, as they mature, become less libertarian and more communitarian. Less concerned with the right to be left alone [["the morality of noninterference," as Carol Gilligan called it]] and more concerned with the responsibility to help others -- to perceive suffering and alleviate it. Less wedded to a rigid code of moral conduct and more flexible and situational in their moral judgments, as morality becomes less a rule book and more a story. Men become, in other words, more like women."

Ideally.

Thanks again,
Bruce

Posted by bruce grierson at April 13, 2007 2:52 PM

I wish I could remember who said this, but it captures nicely the systemic approach to thinking that is natural to women: "The difference between men and women is that men are interested in data, whereas women are interested in the relationships between the data."

But Western-centric thinking isn't necessarily male - it's just the style of patterning and programming that generations have been educated in: our primary thinking approach is to seek knowledge (know-how) by breaking things apart - to analyse. We forget a richer understanding can be gained by also looking outside the container - to synthesise the environment around us to gain understanding of context and to answer the 'why'.

Our language gives us clues, a la McLuhan: we have "deep knoweldge" about something. Think of this in context of being down a well; one's perspective is very limited.

This is why I think the concept of design thinking is quite compelling cf. http://dschool.stanford.edu. Walt Disney once said that context is worth 50 IQ points. These days with congnitive inflation, it probably worth double that.

Simon
Cape Town

Posted by Simon de Haast at April 17, 2007 7:35 AM

Could somebody please explain to me what is so damn special about "circular" thinking or "seeing 10 versions of everythingâ€? If this is how women are wasting their time, no wonder they are always in second place. These are crap skills, bordering on worthless. Men rule the world because when we see the hill, we take the damn hill. If you have a problem with that, fine, but get used to living in the valley.

Posted by Dave at April 19, 2007 8:57 PM

Could somebody please explain to me what is so damn special about "circular" thinking or "seeing 10 versions of everythingâ€?
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Hmm.
A tad defensive there, aren't we? Seriously, I don't think anybody is trying to say that the "traditional male skills" aren't valuable (except maybe Michael- who equates linear thinking with being stupid). All Tom is saying is that there are other ways of approaching problems and that they also have merit. Please understand that the frustration that you seem to be feeling towards people who donâ€™t value your approach to things is the same frustration that people with other approaches probably feel towards you.

So smile, don't be so cranky! :)

Posted by John Gregor at April 20, 2007 6:50 PM

I have a feeling that if men tend to think linearly, it's not so much for biological reasons as because, being politically in charge, they (well, we) can afford to. For similar reasons, the kind of one-sidedness you're talking about has been at various times considered "white" thinking or "American." Michael Chul's point above makes a lot of sense to me.

Posted by Lenoxus at April 30, 2007 8:13 PM

People think in circles because of animistic background or presuppotisions. I am from a animist root. But the worrld and reaty is incompelet in a circle. We have a begining and a future. Tomorrow will not be the same as today.
Geneder is not a issue in the west, the east have drown the wife with cloths so they can't breath anymore. We should be equal, men serve your wife.

Posted by Renall at October 17, 2007 2:06 AM

Hey Tom the east is the worse than the west, Dalai Lama is a anti- female. Women in the east are seen as less than animals. Bruce Grierson just had his head bruced, may be he will realized it when he!!!! wakes up from his dream. I do wounder what Bruce will do in his u-turn may be he will start again with a, which is the beginig of the vowels. or o if he makes a sharp u turn.

Posted by renall at October 17, 2007 7:56 AM