Monday, July 13, 2009

Corporate Chivalry

For the moment anyway, corporate chivalry lives on the Web.

Chivalry refers to the system of beliefs and practices originating with knights in the middle ages. Gallantry toward women was one of its core principals. And that has given chivalry a bad odor in modern times.

Today I discovered that Switchboard.com has started adding people's approximate ages to search results, providing a 5-year age range in addition to a person's address and phone number. Having satisfied myself that the ranges were accurate by searching for several people whose ages I know, I cast my net more widely.

At this point it became clear to me that ages are available from Switchboard.com for men only. None of the women I searched for had their ages listed. All of the men I looked for came with ages.

In these enlightened days, I do not expect this vestige of medieval times, this chivalry, to last long. Ladies, prepared to be revealed! Or, will Switchboard choose to reverse its discrimination and stop disclosing gentlemen's ages too?

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