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Your Director of Engineering was making the same kinds of assumptions
that provided an environment of prejudice against women in the
workplace, especially the technical workplace, for years. Assuming
that, because she liked dancing, she'd obviously spend too much time
partying is like assuming that, because a woman has a uterus, she's
going to take too much time off to have babies, or that she'll leave the
company to stay home with the children. It's a small step from that
assumption to racist assumptions too. The fact that ONE woman partied
hard is not an indication that ALL women who like dancing will come into
work late.
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Elna:
I'm all for women's lib, am absolutely and proudly a feminist, but firmly
and adamantly protest that the original "go dancing" remark was NOT a
sexist comment. At the very least, it was not presented to this group as such.
Good God, girl, you're giving legitimate gripes a bad name. Think before
you go off on the warpath -- it seems to me that men will remember this
type of trigger happy response much longer than they will asking a woman
TW to copy materials or type up memos. Which one is more of a problem?
