_My Own Words_ remarks (may become a liveblog)

I am reading this for book group, and I was excited to read it.

But, you know, I always have Issues!

RBG referring to (then) Dean (of Harvard Law School) Kagan recounting the progress of women in law in November 2005 lecture before the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (this is at 15% of the way into the kindle version of the book, and is part of a lecture given by RBG.

“Women also rated themselves lower on ability to “think quickly on their feet, argue orally, write briefs, and persuade others.”28 “What’s left,” Dean Kagan pondered.”

This occurs in a context of showing that bias remains and indications of it and a bunch of other stuff, which is all laid out super clearly and I have no beef with that part of the rhetorical structure.

There _is_ however a really obvious answer to Dean Kagan’s (presumably expected not to be answered, or answered as, “Nothing”): compliance work. It is super easy to see how this turns out in practice: tons of women both in law and in accounting / finance / etc. wind up doing compliance work. And this is why. I had been assuming women wound up becoming CFOs and doing legal compliance and similar work whether their had a degree in law or a degree in accounting / finance, because _people hate those jobs_. When people hate a job, men will resist less the arrival of women, and so women’s first incursion into a highly protected preserve of highly compensated male work is often via the scut work.

But wow, if this is actually happening because women are thinking, well, I am not great at this other stuff, but the compliance thing I know I can do, that would _also_ explain things.

Jokes probably on the men tho. I mean, people complain (not me!) about all the rules we have to follow now. Ha ha ha ha let women have the fun gigs arguing cases, and you would maybe not be dealing with as much extremely diligent, brilliantly executed compliance work.

On the painful pointlessness of planning and negotiation with a pandemic

I have been a little frustrated with the lack of certain kinds of news coverage about the pandemic. I feel like if there were better news coverage, there would be better policy and better understanding and compliance with policy. This is asking a lot, given All the Things!

Anyway.

Here are a couple of examples of what happens when people misunderstand why things are not allowed.

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/10/15/cruise-lines-met-with-pence-but-they-could-be-looking-to-biden-for-guidance

The cruise industry pushed insanely hard to get the no-sail order to not be extended / to lapse. They sort of succeeded, and Redfield took a huge reputation hit as a result. And despite all that effort, the cruise industry still canceled November. Because it turns out, negotiating with the government is sorta pointless when the real issue is what is the virus gonna do.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxwe4/why-are-employers-still-acting-like-offices-will-reopen-soon

I have wondered a bit about why anyone who can get their office workers functioning remotely at all would even want to reopen offices. (I get that there are machines that require operators if everyone cannot come in and touch the machine and I get that there are classified / secure systems that cannot or have not yet been deployed to remote workers homes.) And a lot of big tech seems to be thinking along similar lines. And yet, other companies keep stringing along employees. I do not get why, but it seems to come down to misunderstanding what the opposition is — thinking it is people who can be bullied, and failing to realize it is a virus.