We Can't Always Get What We Want

Joe has a good comment on my post about gendered management yesterday:

If there were a comprehensive, rigorous study that examined performance outcomes of teams led by people of different genders and "proved" that, across industries and workplaces, managers of one gender or the other produced substantially different performance results, would that justify differences in hiring, recruitment or management assignments? What if the result were that men were significantly better managers? The facinating question for me is what would be the EEO implications.

It's a good point, because it demonstrates that performance is really only part of a package that most of us tend to want in the workplace. Obviously, we want things to function well, but we also want a workplace that's somewhat reflective of us, too. And it's uncomfortable to consider that those things might not be compatible (I'm not saying they definitely are not, there certainly isn't enough evidence on that score to make a determination).