Sexism or Positive Discrimination - Which is worse?

[lins_arosa]

 This is a cross-post from the blog where I now seem to post most of my ramblings (Twitter doesn't count):

I was sort of amused by the furore yesterday morning over Andy Gray and Richard Key’s comments on women in football. Mostly because their comments just rehashed all the usual stuff men are supposed to think about women and football (really, is

Comments

[fishrgreat]

I suppose the difference there is the knowledge that they would applaud anyone in the office like that, verses knowing that they are only doing that because you are a girl and therefore should be crap of parking - more about intent that content. And so because that's so hard to read, a whole minefield appears...

[lins_arosa]

Very true. I also think there's a whole host of difference if you know the people involved (I guess that helps with intent, doesn't it?).

Another minefield I think is that what one person would find acceptable, another wouldn't. There was an interesting discussion on another website (sidepodcast.com) about whether F1 was sexist, and there were some interesting differences of opinion.

[fishrgreat]

Humour in the workplace I find to be one thing that people find it hard to hit the right level sometimes - not offending, not too sexists/racists/anything else-ist can just be hard when, much of the time, you only really interact at a very narrow level. But you are right - time and familiarity remove many of those issues.