How to respond when senior coworkers are sexist jerks

This week the feminist blogosphere has been buzzing about a Slate advice columnist's response to the following letter from a woman working in a law firm for the summer:

I am a female law student who is employed for the summer (and potentially for the school year) at a small firm that I'm really enjoying. The law office shares a floor of an office building with a bigger law firm, and my cubicle is "on the border." All of the attorneys at both firms are male, but at the other firm, the men are far from politically correct. I have two issues: First, one of the attorneys, "Jerry," often makes comments to me about my appearance. These range from annoying but harmless ("Nice tan") to creepy ("I like that skirt," in a lecherous tone). I have tried to ignore him or subtly indicate his comments aren't welcome, but neither approach has worked. I'm tempted to speak to one of my firm's partners, but I fear it would make me look like a little girl running to a man to fight my battles. I'm also considering documenting all his comments until I have enough for a sexual harassment suit so I can make his firm pay for the legal education I used to nail it. Second, I overhear a lot of conversations I find highly offensive. The men are fond of using homosexuality-based insults, calling one another or opponents "fag" and "homo." The work environment is becoming so unpleasant that I wonder how long I can stand it. What should I do?

The response is basically to (a) confront Jerry directly, (b) chill out about the homophobic bigots next door, and (c) not to be so eager to sue, it won't win her a lot of points. Jezebel has a good summary of responses to this column, including why this advice is not really so great, especially since it lacks the broader context of entrenched sexism in some law firms.

But what DO you do when coworkers, especially those above you on the office hierarchy, say bigoted or offensive things? It's a tough dilemma for many in the workplace, as calling out unacceptable behavior can decrease your own political / social capital. I find this particularly challenging, since I want to live my values and advance progressive causes, but find myself uncomfortable saying anything that makes waves. One Jezebel commenter had some advice that I particularly liked:

Here's what I did in a similar situation: I went to the partner that I felt would be the most receptive. I started the discussion with how much I liked my job and the firm, and how I hoped to work there for many years to come. I talked about being a team player and wanting the best for the firm (bosses eat that shit up). Then, I mentioned overhearing some of the male attorneys saying inappropriate things in front of the clerks and secretaries, and how bad it would be for all of us if these women sued the firm. Because I was looking out for the firm. -SheelaNaGig

So, being strategic with how you deliver the message can help. I haven't read the whole thing, but this free manual from The Southern Poverty Law center on responding to everyday bigotry has a lot of good ideas. It even gives sample conversations, which I think is really helpful (nothing like a script to make you feel more confident!) Do you have any strategies for confronting workplace sexism / racism / homophobia?

Guest Post: Toeing the Line Between Friendly and Flirtatious

VikingKitten is a friend of Femonomics, and has agreed to submit some summer guest posts for us. She is an aspiring lawyer, recovered Diet Coke addict, Texan, and cat-lover. Let's make her welcome!

During a recent diversity-themed luncheon and discussion at my company, we began to touch on the issue of being hit on at work. My coworker mentioned that she often faces unwanted or inappropriate comments from male colleagues and clients, and that she was unsure of how to respond to them. The advice she received from my colleagues was nearly unanimous: they advised my coworker to take particular care in everything from choosing her wardrobe to altering handshake techniques in an effort to avoid giving off the wrong impression.

My subsequent Google-ing of the issue turned up this recent Corporette post, dealing with the issue of being hit on in a professional setting. Interestingly, the author of the Corporette post concludes in part by suggesting that women who want to avoid sending out inadvertent “I’m flirting” signals be particularly mindful of their body language when associating with others in a professional setting. Thus, both my coworkers and Corporette seemingly agree that it is important for female professionals to be overly cautious about their actions towards the opposite sex.

And in fact, it is certainly realistic that men may pick up unintentional flirting signals from women: Psychological studies have shown that males have more difficulty than females in distinguishing between “friendly behavior” and “sexually interested behavior,” and that men often misinterpret friendly behavior of women as flirtation. Thus, at least in interactions between men and women, signals can often be confused.

However, this recognition this leads to a difficult question: should it be the responsibility of women to be overly mindful of their actions in order to avoid unintentionally sending the wrong signals to men, as my colleagues implied? Or should men instead be held accountable for their unwanted and inappropriate remarks? While professional women fear client loss, job loss, or retaliation from employers if they report (or harshly respond to) unwanted and inappropriate advances, men may not even be aware they have said something that is in fact unwanted unless women do respond. Is there a middle ground here?

Readers, what do you think is an appropriate way to deal with being hit on in a professional setting?

What Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism have in common

A couple weeks ago, news broke that the Catholic church had ruled ordaining a woman an offense punishable by immediate excommunication, putting it in the same category as sexual abuse.  I think it's clear to most that the Catholic church has a woman problem.

But, I think it's equally evident that Orthodox Judaism has a woman problem, and one that doesn't get nearly as much ink, perhaps because Orthodox Judaism is so much smaller of a movement than radical Islam and Catholicism.  Moreover, despite those rumors of a "Jewish establishment," unlike Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism has no single governing body that dictates its tenants.  That doesn't mean some factions of Judaism are any less virulently anti-woman than the worst of the Catholic church.  In fact, echoes of the very same "ordaining a woman is the gravest crime anyone could possibly commit" attitude were evident in a recent NYMag piece on an Orthodox rabbi doing just that, ordaining a woman, Sara Hurwitz (right),  who had completed all of the requirements for becoming an official spiritual leader and religious teacher.

Rabbi Hershel Schachter, a revered scholar at YU widely known as the foremost authority on Halacha in the United States, raised eyebrows at the RCA [Rabbinical Council of America] convention when he reportedly put the ordination of women in the category of yehareg ve’al ya’avor, a tenet that literally suggests one should opt for death before violating the law, used by rabbis when referring to acts that are absolutely impermissible. “He believes that it is a slippery slope that will lead to the breakdown of traditional Judaism,” explains Marc B. Shapiro, an expert on Orthodoxy.

This is only one individual, but this sentiment seems so clearly ludicrous, it deserves highlighting.  As with the Catholic church's declaration, I have to ask, how can a victimless crime be worthy of such grave punishment?  How can treating a woman as an equal be so blasphemous that one should die before doing it?  The Jewish Star has more on the specifics of the RCA's objections to Hurwitz's ordination:

Elle magazine has some pretty creepy guy friends...

"When I walk the streets on a sunny summer day and the women are out, wearing spaghetti-strap tops and short skirts, their legs bare, the internal monologue starts. The voice in my head, by the way, sounds like Barry White's. Oh yeah. Oh, you like that, right? You mean you want it in there? Oh, yeah."

This was the point in Elle's most recent ElleReaderMen feature where I started to feel a little bit creeped. Typically I enjoy reading through this fairly intellectual fashion magazine, though I tend to disagree with a lot of the editorial content. This particular author is an anonymous man who is informing us on "the sexual fantasy life of men." He expands the experiences and feelings of him and three friends to all of men, but I'm pretty unconvinced. I can imagine a plurality of teenage boys perhaps being so obsessive and objectifying, but that seems pretty unfair as well. A few more samples, to give you a sense of Anonymous's piece:

"...I realized it's not entirely about seeing exposed flesh, however; it's about clothes - shorts, miniskirts - that seem so easily pulled aside for quick access. It's the feeling that I - a perfect stranger - could have this beautiful woman topless in a fraction of a second...and be kissing her bare breast, a sensation hat would feel so good she would be powerless to resist..." [emphasis mine]

The Daily Show meets feminists; feminists meet the internet

It all started when the Daily Show hired Olivia Munn, someone who was established as a TV host, but not necessarily a comedian.  With all the great female comedians out there, Jezebel writer Irin Carmon couldn't help but wonder, did the Daily Show have a woman problem?  Although her investigation started with Munn, it didn't end there:

Given its politics and the near-universal adoration with which it's met, the current iteration of The Daily Show is held to a different standard by the viewing public. But behind the scenes, numerous former female staffers tell us that working there was often a frustrating and alienating experience.
"What I was told when I was hired is that they have a very hard time finding and keeping women, and that I was lucky to get a one year contract," says Lauren Weedman, a comedian and writer who worked on the show as an on-air correspondent from 2001-2002.
...Stacey Grenrock Woods was on Stewart's show from 1999-2003, longer than any other correspondent besides Bee. (She later chronicled the experience in her book, I, California.) She told me, "Did I feel like there was a boy's club there? Yeah, sure. Did I want to be part of it? Not necessarily. So it kind of goes both ways."

Unfortunately, the piece of it that was about Munn led Emily Gould to wonder if frustration with The Daily Show was really about jealousy over (the very pretty) Munn's success, and if Jezebel was feeding on women's insecurities by throwing Munn to the wolves.  Gould's piece is somewhat thought-provoking.  She discusses the way feminist blogs encouraging "outrage" can really just be another form of the snark and self-loathing fed by traditional women's magazines.  But, I wish Munn had been left out of the whole thing, since the issue with the Daily Show isn't really about Munn, it's about whether there can be a progressive news source that nonetheless has a "boys club" attitude backstage.  And the issue that Gould brings up with feminist blogs isn't really about Munn either.  But the missed-connections back-and-forth didn't stop there.

Is treating Republican women badly a feminist prerogative?

In a recent piece on Meghan McCain, Jezebel writer Irin unleashes a good deal of snark against the self-proclaimed sex-positive Republican.  I don't think McCain is perfect by any means, and I disagree with a good deal of her policy positions, but I personally think the emergence of a smart, articulate, reasonable young woman in the Republican party is a good thing.  I'd rather have the Republican Party lean more toward McCain's views, who is pro-gay rights, pro-contraception, but anti-choice, than to those pioneered by Karl Rove and carried forward by Sarah Palin.

Irin takes issue with McCain's defense of Republican women Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman,  women who have been treated absurdly by the main-stream media, as I described earlier.  McCain links recent media scrutiny to their Republicanness instead of their femaleness.  If the cause is the former, Irin thinks it's warranted, since these women are standing on the shoulders of a women's rights movement that they did nothing to support.  And then she mentions this:

A more spirited yet reasoned analysis can be found in Joan Indiana Rigdon's Forbes.com column on why, exactly, one might be skeptical of these women and their claims to both represent progress for women and the end of any need for such progress.
She describes how Tennessee Rep. Janis Baird Sontany said at a recent breakfast that when it comes to Republican women, "You have to lift their skirts to find out if they are women. You sure can't find out by how they vote." That elicited a response from Michelle Malkin not unlike Meghan McCain's: "When liberals can't handle GOP women, they infantilize, sexualize, demonize and dehumanize them." [emphasis added]

You know what, Michelle Malkin is right.  And it really pains me to say that.  I wouldn't say "liberals do this," as she did, but I would certainly say it's a behavior I've seen applied to Republican women more than once.  Sontany's comment is completely sexist, not to mention it reeks of transphobia.  I understand the idea, expressed elsewhere in Rigdon's column, that female politicians on either side of the aisle use a passageway paved by feminists, so should be willing to pay a "toll" to maintain that passageway.  Nonetheless, if they choose to support different political viewpoints, my principles of feminism dictate I should support their right to speak these views as equals, free from gendered ad hominem attacks.  If we attack their womanness, using ugly rape metaphors, how can we ever expect to stand on the platform we're mad they're not building?  I choose a different path: to criticize their positions while fighting for their right to express them.

That means you can vote Republican (at the poll or in Congress), and I'll still defend your right to be treated with respect.  Not deference, mind you, but basic human respect.

Femonomics reads the internet: surprise Senate candidate, wedding weight loss, gay blood ban, and hotness discrimination

So, someone unexpected won the South Carolina Democratic Senate primary, and now everyone is upset, because he probably doesn't have a good shot at beating his Republican opponent and doesn't seem very qualified to be a Senator.  Nonetheless, I'm not so on board with the media and political powers that be running around and calling him mentally impaired just because he's not camera-ready.  Instead of taking credit for their major screw up and apparent unfamiliarity with polling and electoral management, the Democratic Party is calling for this man to step down and casting aspersions about his mental fitness.  He won fair and square and their guy didn't.  So why don't they start pulling him aside for media coaching and setting up a real campaign machine?  And why doesn't the media stop their embarrassing attack on him, and start asking the Democratic Party why they had no idea this fellow had a good chance of winning?  I don't whether to call the media's treatment of this man ableist, or racist, or just plain anti-humanist, but it's making me a little sick.  I'm with this Gawker commenter:

This guy, whether willingly or not, has exposed the pathetic joke that our electoral process is. Maybe he is a soft spoken guy, maybe he is shy, maybe he was not expecting to win and get all this media coverage, maybe he is some average guy that cannot get a job and said, "[F***] it, I'll give this a try," or maybe he does have some problem. I do not know. But the interesting thing in all this, is how the media has been asking him crap questions like:

-Do you have any money?
-Do you do things the way we expect you to, in order to win?
-Do you think you will win?
-Do you have a website with red, white, and blue colors for us to stare at?
-Are you cuckoo? Please answer simply and in 5 seconds because America cannot understand. Also, we will be right back after a word from our sponsors.

And not a single question like:

-What are the issues you hope to take on while in the Senate?
-What is it about those issues that motivated you to run?

The way I see it, you ask stupid questions, you'll get stupid answers.

Jezebel jumps on the "act like a man!" in the workplace bandwagon

The NYTimes has a new piece on guidelines for women seeking raises.  The article, in general, avoids most of the old sexist tropes and manages to come up with some actual good advice, including that women might be perceived differently when using the exact same negotiating tactics as men.  The article also suggests that an additional barrier women may face is that their reference group for how much they "should" be making is their peer group, mostly other women, who experience same wage gap they themselves are trying to subvert.  My takeaway was "might not be a bad idea to ballpark those numbers with a few men in the same industry, too."  Jezebel's takeaway was "Want a raise?  Talk to a dude!"

While your female colleagues can certainly help and should be consulted (particularly the ones who are natural negotiators themselves), your male ones will probably bring to your negotiation issue the same sense of entitlement that they brought to their own. (Generalizing wildly here, of course.)

....Put yourself in your boss's position, and in the company's position, and if you think you deserve a raise, pick up the phone and call the most successful male friend you have. Chances are, he'll jump at the chance to be a little part of your success.

Lindsay, who wrote the article, is careful to say that she's speaking in generalizations, and that female friends can be helpful, too, but the body of the article focuses on her experience getting a male friend to rewrite a contract for a new job to be more hard-nosed and foolproof.  From the anecdote to the article's title, the message is that men are more competent businesspeople than women, a notion I find both untrue and highly damaging.  After all, if women can't even handle our own salary negotiations, how can we be expected to negotiate on the behalf of our companies?

Jezebel has also implied that the gender wage gap could be partly explained by the fact that women aren't as good at talking about money explicitly as men.  It's fine to phrase these concerns as: "don't be afraid to ask for what you're worth"; "don't hesitate to talk about money explicitly"; and even "don't only consult female friends and colleagues."  But to somehow imply that women are simply less well equipped to deal with matters of salary and self promotion than men is absurd!  Moreover, it's blaming the victim.  The problem we're fighting with the gender wage gap is the component of it that comes from women being treated differently than men despite their equal skill and preparation.  Discussing ad nauseum women's (in my opinion, imaginary) shortcomings in managing their affairs simply provides an excuse for those who don't see gender inequality as a problem.  "It's not discrimination--women are just different," they'll say.

So enough of this sexist nonsense.  The next time you need to negotiate for your salary, ask for a raise, or market-price yourself, talk to your most bad-ass, successful, confident friend (who's in a similar industry)--male or female--and ask their advice.  Then go out there and do it the way that feels right to you, and the way you know how.  I believe in you.

Are men smarter than women? Your guide to detecting bad science

The UK's Daily Mail recently published an opinion piece by Richard Lynn stating "on average, men are more intelligent than women."  Moreover, Lynn asserts that at the near-genius level of IQ, "brilliant men outnumber brilliant women by 8 to one."

In this context...indignation that only one in ten science professors is female doesn't seem all that bad. It also goes some way to explaining why, in almost 110 years of Nobel Prize history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four have won the Prize for chemistry and why no women at all have ever won the coveted Fields Medal for mathematics in eight decades of trying.

Making this argument is pretty much exactly as ludicrous as saying the fact that no women were recorded to have voted in federal elections before 1920 shows us that women are, on average, less politically inclined than men.  And Lynn's article is chock full of such gems.

When I expressed my horror on twitter, a friend wrote back saying "It's the Daily Mail!  And it's Richard Lynn!"  In other words, don't waste your time.  Yes, this is Richard Lynn, staunch advocate of The Bell Curve, eugenics, and other racist pseudo-science.  And yes, the Daily Mail isn't exactly the Wall Street Journal.  But, sorry, I just can't bring myself to sit this one out.  Because the fact that Richard Lynn can still call himself a scientist, and his theories and the evidence he provides to back them up can be thought of as scientific, is an embarassment to every real scientist out there, and to those of us working our tails off to put the letters P, H, and D after our names.

For some people, it will always be the 1950s: The IOC's sexist behavior

As DRDR pointed out in the comments, the Olympic Committee's actions have been raising a few eyebrows, notably for their insensitive blaming of "athlete error" for a Georgian Luge athlete's death.  As the sane world quickly pointed out, athletes frequently make errors, and almost never pay with their lives.  Usually death occurs when athletes' natural human fallibility combines with unsafe conditions.

On top of that, DRDR mentions some blatantly sexist behavior on the part of the committee.  They have refused to allow women's ski jumping to become an Olympic sport, despite a woman holding the world record (among either men or women) at the Whistler jump.  From Time magazine:

In 2005, Gian Franco Kasper, FIS president and a member of the IOC, said that he didn't think women should ski jump because the sport "seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."

Ah the ladies, with their breasts and lady bits and things, so clearly unable to participate in dangerous athletic competition.  Except for, you know, the rest of the Olympics.

And recently, the IOC has announced it's opening an "investigation" after photos of the Canadian women's hockey team celebrating their win with (gasp!) Champagne and cigars on the ice rink surfaced.  There's an amusing video on ESPN (courtesy DRDR, once again) of commentator Skip Bayless absolutely wigging out about this "shameful" behavior, before the female anchor witheringly points out that men frequently spray chamagne on each other after sporting events, break out a stogie, and generally celebrate their victory without anyone dying of shock.  Check out the pictures for yourself, and read the Daily Mail's breathless commentary.  The celebration doesn't look particularly rowdy or undignified to me.  Admittedly, the woman who is 18 (underage in BC, though not in her home province of Quebec) and shown drinking beer should have known better, but as Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory points out, most of the outrage over this incident has to do with plain, old-fashioned sexism.

I like how the Canadian officials tried to cover their backs by making it clear they did not provide the alcohol.  These aren't girls in a boarding school!  They're athletes!  Let them have their moment.

Women can't be men: Social expectations and salary negotiations

Earlier at Femonomics, we discussed the pressure for women to behave like men to be successful, and why this won't work. The Harvard Business Review brings us more evidence for why this is an unsuccessful strategy, especially when negotiating salary. It turns out women are in a classic catch-22 when it comes to negotiating compensation.

Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who did ask for more, the perception being that women who asked were "less nice."

Women cannot succeed simply by changing their behavior if the true criteria for success is others' perception of that behavior. The original study can be found here.

The Daily Show lampoons those who argue men are falling behind

Love it.

(Millionaire) Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match

Patty Stanger, founder and CEO of The Millionaire’s Club, is a firecracker. I have some questions and reservations about the value of a dating service that hooks up single male millionaires (and on occasion, a female) from all around the country with PYTs in Los Angeles, but I also have to give Patty props. I mean, it is obviously entertaining—Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker is a smash hit. And it is apparently very lucrative.

Are you too busy hopping about in your private jet from boardroom to private estate to just ask a girl/guy out to dinner Saturday night? Are you afraid that those Armani suits are only attracting gold diggers? Well, Patty will take the guess work out of the dating game and deliver the meat market to you…for a LARGE fee. These ain’t Match.com/eharmony prices. For $20,000, and on up there, she’ll bring you sea of average intelligence hot girls in stilettos and push up bras, which is her makeover recommendation for every “average Annie” and aspiring model that shows up at her agency hoping to get an invite to an exclusive meet and greet for the chance to snag a millionaire. Seriously, WTF?

Gender discrimination or different preferences? And does it matter?

As an economics student, I've encountered two strands of literature on gender discrimination. There is one side that attempts to expose and document discrimination against women by measuring the wage gap that is unexplained by observable factors, by showing that the hiring and promotion of women orchestra players is increased when there are blind auditions with a screen, and by finding other examples of blatant gender discrimination in the job market. In the rest of the world, people often point out how women are portrayed differently in the media than men (Sarah Palin, for example), or how there's too much focus on women to be thin and young, or how women are stereotyped as being sensitive on the job. On the opposite extreme, there is a strand of literature that dismisses any notion of gender discrimination. This literature claims that women simply have different preferences than men (for example, they want to have children or to stay home with their children rather than work, or to be fit and work out), and that any evidence of "discrimination" is completely explained by these different tastes.