Society

There is no Sisterhood

One of the biggest recent grifts is getting women and “underrepresented minorities” into STEM, albeit I wonder if the recent wave of mass layoffs will have a cooling effect. Surely, a lot of their supposed “allies” have found themselves without a six-figure job that consisted of little more than having breakfast, lunch, dinner, and red wine on tap on the company’s dime. The entire girls-into-STEM movement is an outgrowth of feminist ideology, of course. As such, they use similar terminology. Essentially, this campaign is based on the old feminist cookbook except that the issue is not voting, having to work (lol), or access to higher education. Instead, now it is about widening the funnel to all those cushy six-figure jobs that have gotten a lot rarer in recent months.

A key term of the girs-into-STEM campaign is that all women form a “sisterhood” and as such, women in STEM should go out of their way to support other women. This kind of so-called positive discrimination really exists. In particular in larger organizations that either operate in the US or have taken funding from a US venture capitalist this message gets pushed relentlessly. I have seen this in action myself, with female managers promoting female engineers regardless of how incompetent they were. They also actively try to block your own career aspirations as you are a big bad meany and belong to the sex that has kept women down since the dawn of time.

All such initiatives, as inventive as they may seem to their dim-witted creators, only have a limited shelf-life, however. First, there is the problem that women do not have any sense of “sisterhood”. They backstab each other so quickly you would not believe it. In fact, women even talk an excessive amount of crap behind the back of their current best friend ever, and they also change allegiances really quickly. Female friendships are extremely short-lived. They drop their high school friends the moment they enter college, and very few of their college friendships will endure, just like it is the case with their professional relationships at work. I find that it is almost unheard of that women have long-lasting friendships. This only works in tight-knit stable communities. The elderly housewives in the village my parents are a good example. Today’s woke twenty-something career woman, in contrast, changes friends only a little slower than her romantic partners whereas men often have at least one or two friends from way back whom they have stayed in touch with over many years.

The second problem is that women will not really help each other out. During the heydays of the girls-into-STEM propaganda train, female managers got brownie points for promoting unqualified women and this is why they did it. It is nothing but an expression of short-term thinking. Right now, quite a few companies are struggling to survive, however. Margins in tech are often not particularly good, which did not matter in the growth-at-all-costs period. Now, it is much more important to run a tight ship, which men are better suited to. Of course, this does not apply to all men, but by and large, men are simply better leaders because of evolutionary pressure. In times of uncertainty it is also paramount that you can keep a cool head, which women seem a bit less able to do. Thus, you can expect women to frantically throw each other under the bus while they are looking for a man to sort things out. I thought of the last part when I did some interview practice with a company that seems to be struggling with their tech. I only spoke to women in the interview process. One of them could not shut up about their support for women and “hiring the best person”. Yet the fact that they were interviewing a toxic male like me seemed to indicate that not all was well in this gynocratic wonderland.

Projects like getting more women into STEM work great if profitability is seen as optional and money is cheap. Words are cheap, too. In the end, reality always exerts some corrective force on unstable systems. Right now, I think we have passed the turning point of about 15 years of very aggressive propaganda. One layoff at a time, this is getting rolled back now because only relatively few senior managers are willing to sacrifice their well-paid job for an ideology, and the one that do simply cannot properly reason about the consequences of their actions.

5 thoughts on “There is no Sisterhood

  1. I have made two weird observations with female managers.
    First, not only is there no „sisterhood“, female managers are actually frequently huge bitches to other females and treat them often worse than men. I think that whenever the other female is as good looking or as competent as the female manager, then the female manager sees the other one as a threat and treats her badly. The sisterhood only extends to other females who are not a threat, i.e. ugly and incompetent. Weirdly not the most competent women get promoted so most other females are a threat to the female manager. If childless (which is mostly the case), the female manager is also super jealous at young females who get a kid.
    Second, female managers often try to imitate men – They cut their hair short and try to act very tough. Of course they completely fail at this as the female manager first turns into a cold bitch and then eventually her emotions overrun her which leads to a tantrum.

    1. These observations are only “weird” because of society feeding us women-are-wonderful propaganda. My view on women changed drastically as I got older so now I simply expect them to backstab each other and have constantly shifting alliances. You mention that women who put on the tough-guy act eventually break down and throw a tantrum. This is only one outcome. The other is that they break down crying, go on medical leave for months, and look for a new job. I knew of a case like that at a former employer. The chick got a sick note due to “depression” and had problems with being constantly overworked. However, she simply could not handle the job she was given and pretended otherwise. This worked until it did not.

  2. I guess times are still too good for my company. I’m in America and we’re hiring entry level staff. I have yet to interview a single white man. Multiple gay ethnic men – yes. White women as well. Several black men (the only straight ones so far). Several of the white women were pretty, but our HR recruiter is under 30 and has a pretty face so I guess they can make it through the filter.

    Our female managers seem to prefer a team of slightly female balance but like 60/40 ratio. We had one full female team and all but one of them left for various reasons. They had less overt drama than expected, but with the turnover you have to think some problems were under the surface.

    I think women promote incompetent people for the same reason unambitious men do – don’t promote your replacement. Men seeking to move up quickly want to promote the best person because he sees his current position as a job that will need to be filled soon when he moves up. And having a capable replacement helps you get promoted by other ambitious people.

    Aside from the capable intelligent girlboss type, women aren’t all that ambitious and protect their ground more than look for opportunities to move up. Women *hate* being at the bottom of the hierarchy, but once they’re above 30-50% of the bodies around them.. the ambition tends to disappear.

    And of course the ambitious but incompetent girlboss type (most common) don’t promote based on competency at all. It’s 100% ass kissing and clique building.

  3. This thread is very sad if you think about it. Friendship and loyalty are those most beautiful and meaningful thing in our lives, and women never get to experience that. We men can, though. It is tragical for them, but hopeful for them.

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