Monday, May 27, 2002

Dave points us to a note from Nick Denton Nick Denton: "Anyone else noticed how the two whistleblowers of our time - Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Sherron Watkins of Enron - are both women?" [Scripting News] Two of Nick's three suggested reasons why a woman might find it easier than a man to become a whistleblower -- that she is likely to feel less a "member of the club," and that she probably has a stronger sense of "life and identity outside of work" -- parallel the observation we made, in the first year of graduate school, of the differential retention rate of first-year male and female graduate students.  Our third explanations, however, differ: Nick's has to do with the greater likelihood that a woman in business or government is in a middle-management position, while ours was a more cynical suggestion that women in our society are enculturated to have more sensitive "bullshit meters" than men -- that is, are more willing, in any circumstance, to say, "I'm not going to put up with this crap, thank you.  Good bye!" On further reflection, however, we're not all that convinced that the "pattern" Nick notices is a pattern at all.  Two or three decades ago, when Rowley and Watkins were beginning their careers, it would have been much less probable than it is now to find women in the kinds of position to hear and to know enough to blow a whistle on.  Now, however, we'd be willing to bet that the gender ratios are much closer to even in both professions, so that this is a matter of an event with 25% probability being instantiated. 5:40:07 PM