From: Allison Ready
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 11:19 AM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

I have some interesting observations this year from my performance review. . . . A few years ago, I was an aggressive, confrontational, stressed-out guy engineer. My areas for development were always mostly focused on technical stuff. Then I began my transition from male to female and became way more relaxed. My supervisors that first year said I was much more pleasant to work with, less confrontational, and more willing to accept others’ opinions and ideas. Now this is my first full year as a female employee, and my performance review has mostly focused on personality stuff: the need to make small talk, be more thick-skinned, not take things so personally, not be so intimidating. It blows my mind because I am light years more personable than I was in a guy’s role. So I am wondering if this is common for females. Do people focus more on how you behave, how much you smile? It may just be a reflection of my shift into a management role, so I certainly am not bent out of shape, just curious. But the irony is that I do have a pretty thick skin: after what I went through [making my transition from male to female], I think I am all thick skin and nothing else.

From: Martha Lewis
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 12:28 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

That is such an interesting situation, Allison, you having been both sexes and now seeing such a difference in feedback! I believe that people’s perceptions really play a role in how they view us. And I feel being female or male DEFINITELY impacts on-the-job feedback! I am sure if you confronted your supervisors with these concerns, they wouldn’t know what the heck you were talking about because it is so subconscious. My own performance feedback in the past has been about the kinds of personal stuff that wouldn’t have even come up if I had been a man, so I can vouch for your dilemma. It really is strange isn’t it?

From: Elizabeth Martin
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 12:37 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

I agree. I think this is a really interesting observation, although I also think that as we transition from individual technical staff to managers, the feedback changes along with the change in expectations/job description to be more how one interacts as opposed to how we are judged just for our technically driven output. But I used to manage a group of people that were all men. I received feedback that I was being “overly aggressive,” and I always thought that feedback was very genderbiased: in my opinion, the men in my group were more aggressive and outspoken than I was, and I often found it very difficult to get a word in edgewise (very uncommon, if you know me at all). Anyway, I have to say that from my experiences, I do think there is a big difference in how men and women interact with each other and how we perceive other genders. The biggest compliment I ever got was when a co-worker was really frustrated with me and said, “You don’t act like my mother!” In context, he meant that I wasn’t acting like the other “women” he had known and worked with/spent a lot of time with. We joke about it sometimes now, but at the time, it did lead to some open discussion on gender perception. I agree with Allison. Being stuck in my paradigm, I would love to hear more from someone who has lived both sides of the gender fence.

From: Amelia Smith
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 12:52 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

This is a VERY interesting discussion. Thanks for bringing it up, Allison. As a female who has played both technical and manager roles, I’ve also found that I received way more personality-based feedback as a manager than an individual technician. What I’ve found eye-opening as a manager is that when I managed a group of men outside of MacKenzie, I was very well-received. Inside MacKenzie I managed a group made up of all women, and it turned out to be REALLY difficult. I received TONS of feedback about relating to the team, criticizing me for micromanaging and the need to be less confrontational and so forth. It really surprised me, since I didn’t get that kind of feedback when I was managing more senior men. I’m back in an individual technical position now, so I get more technical development feedback. I’ve also found that feedback obviously varies a lot from manager to manager and department to department.

From: Michael Polansky
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 2:53 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

Hi everyone, first, heartfelt thanks to everyone for their thoughtful, articulate, and VERY enlightening inputs on this issue. If we have any female-to-male people on this list who have completed their gender transition (or are in transition and are now identifying as men), it would be very interesting to hear their perspectives on this. These issues should be part of the training for all managers starting next year.

From: Max Cerrilos
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:35 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

I can relate to all that has been said. As a female-to-male, before I transitioned, the descriptors I heard were “too aggressive” and “difficult to work with.” Now that I have been living and working as male for the last couple of years, the descriptors have changed from “aggressive” to “assertive” (in a positive way) and from “difficult to work with” to “taking charge” and “having a proactive manner.” A lot of perceptions do seem to be tied to a person’s gender. Occasionally one male who’s trying to “dominate” another male in the work place will label a male he can’t dominate as “difficult to work with,” or “inflexible,” but for the most part those types of power plays I haven’t seen very often.

From: Sarah Warner
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 4:09 PM
To: MacKenzie LGBT Listserv
Subject: Gender Benders

I’ve been following this discussion with interest also. Michael asked if there are ways we could incorporate some of the feedback here into job review training. We have already worked to include in review training some messages that touch on avoiding unconscious bias and how it can play out in focusing on behaviors rather than results. Unfortunately, unconscious is just that, unconscious. So maybe managers don’t see themselves as guilty of these differences re: how they evaluate based on gender. We train, but they still can’t see how they are doing this. I would also hate to assume that the people who posted are indicative of any kind of norm in MacKenzie job reviews. We have done some studies in specific business groups to see if there were any major differences in the qualitative feedback given men vs.women, and in those groups we did not see any conclusive data to say this was so. However, the anecdotal data continues to come up in many forums, with both men and women commenting on how their “style” is viewed in the context of job reviews feedback. I’m more than willing to entertain and forward on your suggestions about how these practices could be improved. The problem is, there are no sure ways to eliminate subjective evaluations completely. Nor to know whether feedback is a result of unconscious bias or a valid estimation of the employee’s behavior. It may come down to the simple question of what definitions a person is using for a term like “assertive” or “team player.” But as I said, if you can think of something more we can do, let me know. In the meantime, I will figure out some way to summarize these comments and feedback and share them with our diversity team. Just these brief reflections on people’s perceptions and judgments make more transparent how differently women and men are often judged, even when the behavior they exhibit is exactly the same. The experiences of the transgender employees are particularly telling because they have lived both genders and can name the “subconscious” assumptions that are made about each. The good news is the level of acceptance that transgender and transsexual men and women, lesbians and gays all experienced from their colleagues at MacKenzie. The bad news is that gender stereotypes are still flourishing like weeds in this otherwise “progressive” organizational culture.