Let the Pigs Fly: What We Say and How We Say It When We Talk About Gender

Abstract

“What if gender mattered less? Pigs might actually fly before that happens,” said Dr. Mikki Hebl at the Shaken & Stirred event at the 2017 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference (I-O Shaken & Stirred, 2017). If gender mattered less, “SIOP itself would see differences. Women comprised only six out of the 21 SIOP fellows this year, and five of the 25 major award recipients yesterday . . . were women.” With that, she dropped the microphone and walked off the stage. This video has been viewed on YouTube more than twice as many times as most of the other Shaken & Stirred videos that are available, and it is this boldness that is needed in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology if we expect to see changes.

“You just earned 10 points!”: Gaming and grinding in academia

“…In the world of videogames, grinding is an ambiguous activity. For some gamers, grinding is legitimate because it compensates hard work with in-game rewards (Hernandez, 2013). For others, grinding runs contrary to the spirit of the game insofar as it incentivizes mindless, monotonous behavior (Bycer, 2018).…”

“…On a basic level, gamification applies game mechanics-including points, badges, and leaderboards (or PBLs)-to a work-related task without fundamentally changing the nature of the task itself (Klock et al, 2020;Seaborn and Fels, 2015). For example, the Swedish tech firm Insert Coin promises to create "instant engagement and motivation" with a plug-and-play gamification system that allows employees to collect points, level up, complete missions, get rewards, and compete with others while performing their normal daily activities (Insert Coin, 2022). Broadly speaking, the aim of workplace gamification is to arouse the same sense of involvement and accomplishment that we might feel when playing games, whether digital or analog (Dymek and Zackariasson, 2017).…”