My First Hand Experience With Sexism

&gt; “Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a profitable company on low margins.” - CEO of a Women’s Product Retailer<p>Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don&#x27;t want your rep to blow up in the customer&#x27;s face.<p>That said, did you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit? SOURCE: <a href="http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&amp;artikel=5804631" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sverigesradio.se&#x2F;sida&#x2F;artikel.aspx?programid=2054&amp;art...</a><p>&gt; You should know this about me. I don’t do well around alpha males.<p>Yeah, so the blogger can&#x27;t deal with CEOs and other authority figures. Wouldn&#x27;t hire him&#x2F;her either.

He says he doesn&#x27;t like &quot;alpha males&quot; because he believes that code for &quot;type of person is an inexcusable justification for being an asshole&quot;. Then he goes through with the rest of the interview and realizes &quot;How could I just sit there and not say anything?&quot;.<p>An alpha male[1] would have stopped the interview right there. Expressed his displeasure that the CEO could even think such a thing, particularly since he was running a company with products for women, and further speculated on how appalled he is that the CEO would then utter such non-sense[2]. Get up and walk the heck away.<p>Defend your damn convictions, when the need defending. Not is some whiny blog post afterwards.<p>1) or an alpha female, although they wouldn&#x27;t have got an interview and no one is that stupid to say those things if they did to them (right?!?)<p>2) my Dad&#x27;s favorite saying when his sons did something foolish as youths was &quot;I am amazed and appalled. Amazed you though up such a thing and appalled you did it.&quot;

You did the right thing, IMO. Silence is tacitly condoning the status quo. Be the change you want to see, and when you&#x27;re in a relative position of power (like being able to turn down a job), do something.

I&#x27;m actually less surprised by the sexism than by the strange ranting behavior from a President during an interview. Even if the rant was about something less controversial, it&#x27;s just bizarre. If that&#x27;s normal behavior from the guy, I wonder how they ever recruit talent.

I say name some names. If this really happened at a company that sells products to women, I say it&#x27;s time for a boycott.

Live the way you want the world to look, and then it has begun to look that way.

I&#x27;d have cut the interview short to show them that this is unacceptable. They know what they&#x27;ve done and that it&#x27;s wrong. After the fact, there really isn&#x27;t much that one can do. Move on and try to find a place where the CEO isn&#x27;t an asshole. As for it being a test, I doubt anyone is that stupid. He knew what he was saying.

Am I sexist for assuming that the author was a woman right up until the point where he says &quot;Surprisingly most of my women friends and my wife&quot; ?

I&#x27;m sure this article will spark a serious, reasoned, and very civil discussion on sexism, which will include verifiable citations for all claims and absolutely no hearsay or strawmen.

Author ought to have mentioned the name of the company--otherwise, it&#x27;s just more vapid hearsay. If we don&#x27;t know <i>who</i> was supposed to have done this, what does it matter?<p>Morever, this quote got under my skin:<p><i>&quot;Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape. To me, this was equivalent to videoing an assault or rape, doing nothing to stop it and later claiming you didn’t have a part in it.&quot;</i><p>That sort of comparison cheapens the suffering of those people; it&#x27;s hyperbole of the worst sort.

&gt; &quot;Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape.&quot;<p>You interacted with a bad person or two and suddenly you&#x27;re able to empathize with victims of assault and rape? What? Exactly how minimal is your understanding of those issues to equate them accordingly?

1. You should have confronted the CEO.<p>2. Since you did not do that, you should have at least posted the names involved.<p>As it is, I don&#x27;t see the point of your post.

This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that:<p>&gt;&quot;Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. &quot;<p>&gt;&quot;Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape.&quot;<p>Fucking really?<p>I&#x27;ve been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless conferences and meetups. Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment similar to what he is talking about. This is both infront of women and behind their backs.<p>The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated &quot;coding for girls&quot; meetups.

Jerks exist in the world. Frankly I don&#x27;t see the big deal. It&#x27;s clearly not a company he (or many other people) would like to work for. That happens a lot. Interviewing is a two sided process - the company has to like the candidate, and the candidate has to like the company. So it&#x27;s a case of the candidate not liking the company. Surprisingly, even among men, not every man likes every other man.<p>While I don&#x27;t agree with the CEOs statement, I think people should be allowed to hire whoever they want. If somebody doesn&#x27;t want to hire women, so be it. There are companies that don&#x27;t want to hire men, too.

OK, bear with me for a moment, but why would a CEO who is so openly and blatantly sexist have accepted a women interviewee in the first place? I am inclined to thing that either he was either testing her, or this is fiction.

Do you think that speaking out to the CEO would have changed his mind? I think that if the author really wanted any chance at changing the CEO&#x27;s mind about women - he should have accepted the job and planted some seeds of thought here and there directly or indirectly to the CEO.<p>Do you think that proceeding, he would be condoning sexism in some way? Perhaps in his own mind, but one person walking away from a job interview can hardly be considered a boycott.<p>If you are one person, your best bet to change something is to engage, not walk away.

&gt;<i>I then turned inward. I thought of the women in my life, my wife of almost 18yrs and my little 4.5 year old daughters. What would they think of their father for not saying anything and letting this jerk spew his sexist beliefs?</i><p>I am confused. Is she calling herself her child&#x27;s father? Is she in a Female-Female marriage?