November 30th, 2007
November 29th, 2007
Sexual Harassment and You
California now requires sexual harassment training for all supervisors– among other provisions, this means two hours at least every two years. I just finished my two hours and many of the topics covered were issues I covered during the hiring practices portion of my Masters program. However, aside from topics like supervisor duties and liabilities, protected characteristics and what constitutes illegal discrimination, preventing a hostile work environment and how to handle complaints, the training covers some very interesting case studies. As we jokingly said, if it was sexual harassment training, it would be sexual harassment.
I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by sharing some of these case study examples since they are real world examples of sexual harassment litigation, so here’s a little sampling so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about:
One word: priapism. If you don’t know what this word means, you should learn, especially if you’re a guy, and then check out the 2006 case Arrieta-Colon v. Wal-Mart. Props to Arrieta-Colon in winning the case, but talk about awkward.
That may be sexual harassment, but more importantly, it’s sexual assault. There were one or two examples where one co-worker (usually male) continually made unwanted romantic/sexual advances towards a co-worker (usually female)– advances that weren’t just repeated requests for a date or inappropriate comments, but extended to groping, touching, and more. (Specifically, check out the 2006 case Howard v. Winter as one example.) While admittedly there are serious sexual harassment issues, what about the sexual assault? This type of behavior is illegal not only in terms of creating a hostile work environment, but also because it’s a crime. I don’t know about you, but sexual assault trumps sexual harassment.
Spanking. And lots of it. WTF? There were multiple examples of spanking somehow being introduced into the workplace as a sometimes valid, sometimes invalid form of punishment. Check out the 2002 case Yerry v. Pizza Hut of Southeast Kansas. If someone seriously suggested to me to physically hit or be hit, much less spank or be spanked, as a way to punish someone in the workplace, I think my head would explode. And yet, somehow people involved in such cases went along with this treatment. It’s amazing what people don’t understand about their rights, will put up with to keep their jobs or do to avoid confrontation.
And with that, a little video to lighten the mood:
November 29th, 2007
November 28th, 2007
Mauricio Ricardo
Following along with the theme of sex and art, here’s a video of Brazilian cartoonist Mauricio Ricardo drawing people and animals, but starting with naked naughty bits:
Maybe this is how you get a palace with a phallus.
November 28th, 2007
Art Exhibit Sign: Join or Die
Art Exhibit Sign
Originally uploaded by sindy
This is about as much as I can show you of the art exhibit we dropped by during lunch yesterday. A series of oil paintings of an Asian-American woman having sex with various American presidents (and we’re talking like George Washington, not Bill Clinton). As one of my coworkers said, “She can paint, for sure.”
View “Join or Die,” by Justine Lai. and read her statement about the paintings. Also, read the Stanford Daily article about the exhibit.
UPDATED 8.29.2009: from reading her statement, I discovered that the woman in the paintings is actually herself!
November 27th, 2007
links for 2007-11-28
-
(tags: health)
November 23rd, 2007
November 23rd, 2007
Schmap!! and Barcelona, part 2
As I mentioned earlier, two of my photos from my Barcelona trip this past summer were short-listed to be included in the fourth edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide. I just found out that they have been selected for final inclusion! Check them out:
I had a great time there, so I’m glad that my photos can be used to direct and guide others to this great city. Check out the photos, the guide, and if you can do it, the city itself, live and in-person.
November 23rd, 2007
Living in a coed interacial world, part 1: Negotiating
After passing on my chance to be on Montel last week, in an curious act of good timing, I’ve been reading a lot of articles on the web about studies that are looking at some very interesting phenomena when it comes to race, gender, ethnicity, and social class.* I’ve been posting them on my Linkroll, but I really wanted to highlight a few. So here’s the first in a series of posts:
Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling – washingtonpost.com
This article is from back in July, but it’s a very interesting read about some studies that have been looking at how much women negotiate (such as for salary or promotions) versus men and how women and men who neogitate are perceived by others. In the first set of studies, Professor of Economics Linda C. Babcock from Carnegie Melon (one of my alma maters) looked at, in both experimental and real world settings, how often women negotiated versus men– the not very surprising answer (at least to me) was than men negotiate significantly more than women do, even in experiments where subjects were explicitly told they could negotiate for higher compensation for their participation. In another set of studies, Babcock teamed up with Hannah Riley Bowles from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to look at how men and women who negotiated were perceived by others. These studies found that the women were often considered “less nice,” less desirable to work with, and, in general, penalized if they chose to negotiate; men were less likely to be penalized, if at all. This was the case for both men and women observers (*sigh* the sisterhood has failed us again).
Traditional explanations for this disparity include long-held ideas that men are naturally more aggressive and that, whether its nature or nurture, women are less assertive. However, the second study sheds light on other motivators for the gender disparity. It shows that women’s tendency to NOT negotiate is a direct response to negative feedback in the social environment– there are real social risks for negotiating and women take them into serious consideration when choosing whether to negotiate. I, or any other woman, might say, “How important is this raise or promotion?” Women must assess the risk being taken simply by asking (never mind the probability of actually getting the raise or promotion). In fact, regardless of how successful a negotiation is, women know that they will ultimately pay a price for choosing to negotiate at all.
In the end, these studies give us a new way, a stepping stone to determine what’s behind and ultimately find a solution to close the salary gap, remove the double-standard for acceptable behavior, and, hopefully achieve greater equality overall.
Read the full article for more details on how the studies were conducted and their results.
* Note: social class is often ignored in many of these types of studies because we make the unfortunate assumption, consciously or not, that all members of certain racial/ethnic groups automatically belong to certain social classes. On one hand, given our nation’s history, social class still tends to correlate highly with racial/ethnic background, tempting to take the high correlation as reason enough to roll up social class with race/ethnicity. Not only is that racist and prejudiced at heart, but it is poor scientific work by unfairly trying to simplify the resulting complexities that result when all these variables– race, ethnicity, gender, and social class– come together.
Connect
Email sindy@sindylee.com
Subscribe - RSS
Facebook - sindyjlee
LinkedIn - sindylee
Twitter - sindyjlee
del.icio.us - sindylee
Flickr - sindy
YouTube - sindyjlee
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
sindylee.com is powered by WordPress | WP Theme by Bob, customized by Sindy J. Lee.
Icons by Komodo Media.