British Firm: Talking Sports at Work Unfairly Excludes Women

According to Chartered Management Institute director Ann Francke, chatting about sports at work is a form of exclusionary sexism that can result in harm to female employees. In an interview with the BBC this week, Francke said it was up to business managers to crack down on sports banter so they could foster an environment where “laddish” behavior is not tolerated in the workplace.

“A lot of women, in particular, feel left out,” she said. “They don’t follow those sports and they don’t like either being forced to talk about them or not being included. I have nothing against sports enthusiasts or cricket fans – that’s great. But the issue is many people aren’t cricket fans.”

Francke said that allowing sports banter to go unchecked could easily lead to even more “guy talk” that might make women feel uncomfortable.

“It’s a gateway to more laddish behaviour and – if it just goes unchecked – it’s a signal of a more laddish culture,” she said. “It’s very easy for it to escalate from VAR talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend.”

The fact that this is stupid is so obvious that it doesn’t even bear examination. We’re going to police watercooler talk now, because everything is sexist? Ridiculous. Not to mention, there’s a thread of sexism in the warning itself; since when are women assumed to disdain sports?

In fact, we were reminded of a much better article from a few years ago. On LinkedIn, Duke University’s Sanyin Siang advised that women who were able to talk fluently about sports at work had a much better chance of moving up the corporate ladder.

“In her leadership advisory work, Sanyin said that she has detected an unmistakable pattern among female CEOs. ‘They all have great sports awareness.’ This may sound frivolous at best or male chauvinist at worst. But it’s remarkable how often sports come into play in ‘drive-by’ conversations outside of meetings and formal professional situations,” the article reported.

Now see, this is called Taking the World as it Comes. A person like Sanyin isn’t so delusional to believe that you can help women by tearing down THE PATRIARCHY. Instead, she recognizes how corporate work culture is, and she gives women some salient advice: If you want to fit in, make an effort to fit in.

But today’s leftists don’t want to hear that kind of advice. They don’t want to hear that you have to “lean in.” They want to be told that the world is against them, whether they are black, female, transgender, gay, or some combination therein. And until things change structurally, they don’t stand a chance.

This is a horribly defeatist, depressing, false picture of the world, but it is unfortunately very attractive to losers.