The point of disagreement between us seems to be some unspoken assumption about the scenario, about what adaptation and accommodation mean, or some such. It's worth trying to get that in the open IMO. Though if you could quit the the name-calling and projecting motives onto me, that would be cool.

So what, according to you, would be the proper way to handle the African intern (let's call him Adam)?

At one point my stepmother was interviewing for a new job and the interviewer stopped her and said, "Hey, wait a minute. You're interviewing *me!*"

To which she replied, without missing a beat, "Don't worry, you're doing fine."

The expectation that a majority of people should change their behavior to accommodate a few is just as absurd as forcing the few to change their behavior. That's my point which apparently you couldn't see due to your white helm obstructing your vision.

Actually, what you seem to be saying is that those two propositions are not equally absurd -- that forcing the few to change their behavior is perfectly fine, and asking the majority to budge an inch is preposterous. Which is very convenient for you, since you happen to belong to that majority group. If I'm misunderstanding your position, please clarify.

This makes me realize another good retort: "Are you (the hiring manager) passionate about management?"

Are you always looking to drive the project to success? Do you know how to enable your team to meet expectations in a normal, 40-hour work week? Are you committed to professional development for your team members so they can chart their own courses for their careers? Do you consider offering average salary and benefits "not good enough?"

Or you really just asking for more from your people than you are willing to deliver yourself?

So what you are saying is let the minority of people be them selves while requiring the majority of people to change who they are to accommodate the minority.

Not exactly. Everyone is different from the group in some way. Everyone needs to adapt to fit in. Yet everyone is entitled to be himself. There are limits to how much we can ask people to change their behavior, but either 0% or 100% are unacceptable.

What I really think is that white males have to adapt to the workplace, too. Race and gender are far from the only factors that influence people's communication styles, work habits, mannerisms, and expectations. For some, the experience of having to conform is uncomfortable, and they resent it, and get aggressive and demand instead the world conform to them. Like you're doing. Where did you get so self-entitled?

For a person that seems to want gender equality you seem to be using a lot of gender stereotypes.

That's the risk one takes when answering a question like "what is the difference between women and men." I said I'm not an expert and only telling you what I remember experts saying. There is a subtle point, though, on which I want to insist: to say there is no difference between population A and population B is the same as saying population B must conform 100% to the expectations of population A. Leaving gender aside for a moment, I think we can agree that someone from a rural upbringing can be expected to be a little different from someone with an urbringing, or someone from the West Coast is probably a little different from someone from the East Coast. Americans who go to work in the UK often struggle to fit in due to cultural differences. I don't think it's insulting or denigrating or sterotyping to try to enumerate what those differences are.

The issue of women in STEM is just a sub-category of the broader issue of diversity in the workplace. It would be great if everyone could be themselves and not have their career suffer for it. I think you and I are coming from the same place on that point. All I'm trying to say is that everyone has to conform a little bit in order to succeed, and the greater the differences between an individual the norm of the group, the harder it is to conform.

That pressure is called life, in other fields women don't have problems competing and STEM fields are no different.

STEM is a little different in that the gender imbalance is stronger -- and that's only true in certain areas of STEM. Biology and neuroscience have more women than engineering.

The difference between you and I is that I think women are more then capable of succeeding with out everyone else stopping what they are doing to help a person that is more then capable of succeeding on their own.

I'm not saying that women need help, actually. I'm saying everyone needs to be judged objectively on performance, and there are unconscious biases that get in the way of that. The more homogeneous the workforce, the more persistent those biases are.

I once had the pleasure of working with a male intern from a certain country in sub-Saharan Africa. Great guy, smart, hard-working, fast learner, funny, and *extremely* polite. For one reason or another, he was very different in his mannerisms from the other males on the team. He was very passive, very deferential. If you gave him any criticism, including constructive criticism, he would avert his eyes and apologize. In order to advance in my workplace, he was sooner or later going to have to learn how to argue with his boss. When I knew him, he seemed a long way off from that point. But the expectation in my workplace was you have to stand up for yourself, and it was clear that in his background and upbringing, he'd not been taught how to do that.

If the attitude of my team had been, "fuck it, he has to act like everybody else because that's how we do it," I think he would have had a lousy internship. But instead what people did was recognize his differences and meet him halfway. Instead of expecting him to butt into a conversation, people would pause and ask him directly, "what do you think?" When he gave a presentation, people didn't interrupt, they held questions till the end. Over the few months he appeared to become more confident, at least more used to our styles of communication, and he fit in better.

That's an extreme example, but it's what I'm talking about. Let people be themselves and be willing to change our behavior a little to help them fit in.

Google needs to spend more time buying^h^h^h^h^h^h talking to legislators.

Be careful what you wish for.

You seem to think that all men are the same, that being a sociopath comes naturally to them, that working long hours and getting stressed is fun for them, that they don't want time with their families?

I can't imagine where you got that idea. It's kind of the opposite of what I think, actually. I guess you don't actually care what I meant, and would rather argue against some imaginary position you assign to me because it's easier to attack. Go play that game by yourself.

How exactly do men think?

The research I've read indicates men are more overtly competitive, more direct in their speech and especially in how they give instructions and feedback, and are less sensitive to nonverbal cues than women. Men are inclined to see women as indecisive because they exhibit male dominance behaviors more weakly. But I'm not a psychologist, so unqualified to give a full answer. I believe the differences are cultural, not physiological, but that doesn't make them less real.

What is this pressure that forces women to think like men in the STEM fields?

Basically, the pressure to compete against male peers for job openings, promotion, and funding.

My point is not about whether women are "degraded," but how easily they fit in. Difficulty fitting in is bad for someone's job satisfaction, career growth, and professional network. Do you agree that women have a hard time fitting in to the IT workplace, or at least that if they did, that would be a problem?

Idk what you bring to the table with your argument other than the victim card.

That's because we're not communicating very successfully, yet. I chose to respond to your comment not because I want to argue with you in particular, but because I hear similar remarks quite often. I think your tone was nastier than it had to be, but ultimately the argument that women don't deserve special treatment is solid, at some level. It proceeds from a sense of fairness, and fairness is what this discussion of women in STEM is all about. So the discussion is, "what does fairness to women in STEM look like?" If we can figure that out, then we can maybe make adjustments in how we prepare women for STEM careers, or something.

The names you call me don't make me wrong. And you didn't respond to the question -- how would your career be affected if your work environment were more like your home environment?

I am a woman, therefore I deserve special treatment. All men have it easy because they are men.

Have you stopped to consider how your workplace and career would be different if all your instructors, colleagues, and entire management chain were women? And, every time you pointed out that you should not be expected to think and behave exactly like them, they mocked and derided you for "demanding special treatment?"

and most of the cars have summer tires...

Umm, I doubt that. Every car I've ever owned, going back to 1990, has had all-season tires. The car I bought in North Carolina came with all-season tires. I am sure some companies still make specialized snow tires, but regular people in regular places (outside the mountains and south of Alaska) generally don't change their tires every winter like my parents used to. They don't have to.

However, even with all-season tires, I would have a tough time driving through 2-3 inches of slush and snow. The reason we Northerners think it's easy to drive in the snow is that the Highway Department makes sure there is never more than a quarter inch of the stuff on the actual road surface.

That's the first time I have heard a right-winger try to claim the word "liberal" for himself instead of using it as an epithet.

The articles are reposted from both the right and left points of view, and readers can at least get an occasional bit of perspective from "the other side".

The comments help with that, too. Especially when the commenters are willing to engage with people who disagree. That happens here more often than most places I've seen.