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?

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.

Feminist classic on women's household burden: Hochschild's "The Second Shift"

I picked up Arlie Hochschild's The Second Shift this past week on vacation, a book I'd been meaning to read because it was "a classic" but which I also dreaded would be a dry screed on hopeless inequities that didn't really affect me. But I kept picking it up, in every bit of downtime I had, and now I can't stop talking about it with everyone I know. (Unlike The Quants, which I have to finish for my work bookclub next week but can't get into - is that because it's a Man Book?)

Hochschild, a professor at UC Berkeley, first published this book in 1989, after extensive fieldwork interviewing and observing two-career couples in the greater Bay area. She compiled case studies of exemplar families, detailing the breakdown of childcare and housework as well as the relations between the two. Hochschild also documented the participant's family background, feelings and ideology regarding gender roles, and opinions about how work was being divided (which often conflicted with her observations). Her conclusion was that in the vast majority (~80%) of households, women carried a disproportionate share of the load, in essence working a "second shift" after they got home from work. The case studies are presented objectively, but are nevertheless incendiary, both for the story they tell and the clarity they draw to unfair breakdowns of household labor many readers have seen or experienced personally.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: the iPad, customer service, Kwanzaa cakes, and more!

The iPad is here!  And Huffington Post is apparently now the iPad Post!  Gawker thinks you should buy one or ignore it!   Boing Boing thinks Apple is a creativity-squashing bully!  Some guy who likes being in newspapers was the first in line for it!  Modern Family (on ABC, owned by Disney, whose largest shareholder is Steve Jobs) did a 30-minute infomercial for it that was definitely not product placement!  Oh man, Apple exhausts me.

I just spent 40 minutes on the phone trying to get my money back from boots I returned 3 months ago.  Do you have a really horrific customer service experience?  Please, do share in the comments.  And, to make you feel better, read this hilarious complaint letter to Virgin Airlines. 

Have you seen Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake yet?  I just came across it after clicking a link from the Fug Girls, and let me tell you, it's a treat you don't want to miss.  (Sandra Lee hosts a show called "Semi-Homemade," where she takes store-bought food and does unspeakable things to it.)

Jennifer Hudson has a new Weight Watchers commercial that awesomely emphasizes making healthier choices instead of focusing on weight loss.  Moreover, Hudson doesn't express discontentment with her old body, or measure her success in pounds.  I think it's badass, but, I mean, it's still a Weight Watchers commercial.

The NYTimes has an interesting Op-Ed about female Chechen suicide bombers.  There's also a semi-decent column by David Brooks (who you know I could do without) about how one's personal life (he says marriage, but I'm not sure that's right for everyone) is more important than professional success in determining happiness.  I agree to a certain extent, but think it's all about the balance.  For example, it can be hard to have a very happy marriage if one is professionally frustrated.  Also, you have to see this amazing story about people suffering from Parkinson's disease who can nonetheless ride bicycles with perfect ability.

On the topic of marriage, I like this piece by Bitch, PhD on open marriage.  She makes the important point that our concept of normality is defined by what works for us.  (But she phrases it thusly: "If you've slept with n people, anyone who's slept with n+1 people is a slut.")

Also in the NYTimes, some reasonable pieces about confronting America's health problems without fat shaming.  And, some very thoughtful reader letters in response to this piece on women in the sciences.

Femonomics reads the internet so you don't have to: women in politics and the sciences, Passover, AT&T, and more!

This report shows that women are less likely to be recruited by political operatives to run for office, even at equal levels of experience and political connectedness.  This might be a major reason for the under-representation of women in elected office.
 
Elsewhere, women are making strides in representation in the sciences, but are still anemically present at top levels.  Nick Kristof is worrying about the boys for a change, and how to keep them engaged early on in school.  This issue has been brought up many times before, but Kristof handles it well, acknowledging that men still disproportionately dominate most arenas of society, but cogently arguing that we're doing a disservice if we let this fact blind us to the educational difficulties of young boys.
 
The march of bad science continues, with Louann Brizendine offering up some insane theories of how men are "hard-wired" to ogle our breasts in the workplace.
 
Happy Passover!  This year, President Obama will be hosting a seder, as he and his staff have done for the past two years, first on the campaign trail and then in the White House.  It's a sweet story, and I think gets at the nice thing about Passover: the universalism of the message that freedom is worth enough to risk a lot.
 
There's a new iPhone ap that let's you avoid AT&T...except not. It just lets you make calls through WiFi instead of through your AT&T minutes. But you still need that dern AT&T contract.
 
Feminist Review offers up women-penned reviews of things women are interested in watching, listening to, eating, and using. It's a worthy goal, and they're currently in the middle of a major fundraising drive, so I thought I'd draw attention to it here.
 
In this amusing interview, the author of Yes Means Yes!, Jaclyn Friedman, offers up the following handy test to see if the guy you're dating is feminist-compatible:

Right now my basic litmus test is this: Is he interested in feminist issues when I bring them up? And can he talk about them in ways that express curiosity and engagement and respect, instead of defensiveness or dismissiveness or attachment to stereotypes? If we can talk about this stuff in ways that are interesting and productive, I can work with it most of the time.

 [hat tips Larry, Katherine]

Kelly Cutrone: Bringing the Power of the “Ancient Feminine” Back

I just finished reading Kelly Cutrone’s If You Have to Cry, Go Outside and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You and was pleasantly surprised by how inspiring and motivating her coming of age and rise to power story is. Expecting this to be the wanna-be PR girl’s handbook, I was also surprised by how universal her message is. Kelly Cutrone is the founder of fashion public relations, branding and marketing company People’s Revolution. You may have seen her using her tongue as a lethal weapon doling out brutal truths to employees and clients and pulling rank on a number of sobbing interns on shows like The Hills, The City or her new Bravo series Kell on Earth. Cutrone is the leader of the New York PR power-girl pack and serves as “Mama Wolf” over all twenty-something fashion girls who dream of one day rubbing elbows backstage with the likes of Jeremy Scott or Vivienne Westwood. If You Have to Cry…is her no-bullshit how-to guide to making it in New York’s crushing and soul-stealing fashion publicity world. I’m not a fashionista, nor am I looking for a New York Fashion Week internship. I’m just a health policy consultant with a reality-TV addiction who has found Cutrone interesting since first seeing her mentor Whitney Port and Lauren Conrad on The Hills. I wanted a little insight into her and her industry. I also thought “this woman is completely balls-out crazy on TV—she must have an interesting story to tell and I sure need some entertainment on this long-ass bus ride I’m about to take!” Six hours and 197 pages later I had laughed, cried, furiously scribbled notes in the margins, and had recalculated an old resolve.

Femonomics reads: Gail Evans' "Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman"

I recently picked up Gail Evans' 2000 business playbook for girls, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success that Women Need to Learn. Unlike many business books, it is actually a quick read, so major props to Evans for that. Too many business reads are 250-page books that should have been a 10-page essay.

Evans has had a very successful career, having served as EVP at CNN, taught B-school classes at Emory, and written a New York Times bestseller. Although retired, she still offers speaking engagements, and has been booked by such multinationals as Coca-Cola, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Johnson & Johnson. She has a lot to offer any career woman (or man), and much of her advice in the book is solid.

So, the book is a good read, especially for those that have serious inter-personal issues at work, but like most such books, it should be taken with a grain of salt. The hook for this book is not Evans' qualifications, but rather the gendered nature of her advice, and it's not all good.

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.

From 2008: Michela Wrong on why women make better investigative journalists

I just discovered this little rant from way back when, and I have to say, I kindof love it.  Especially this part--After Michela Wrong receives a call from a young aspiring male journalist who is looking for tips on his latest project, a book about Africa, despite having no experience covering African stories, she muses:

I realised that my conversations with aspirant writers, and there have been dozens, had one thing in common: they all involved the male of the species. Africa is full of female reporters who tramp through Darfur’s refugee camps and grit their teeth during Mogadishu firefights. Yet not one of these indomitable females has ever called me for the Quick Guide to Successful African Book Writing. I think I know the reason. It’s the same one that ensured I tried my hand at being an author only after 16 years of journalism. Women probably see an Africa book as featuring Africa first, their own exploits second. They fear they know too little, have nothing original to say. Even in this neo-feminist era, they have a sneaking suspicion they are not worthy.

Now, I won't deem to paint all women with such a broad brush,  but it is an intersting counterpoint to all those articles telling us we need to be more like men.  I can just hear what those career counselors would say--that's because those women are too shy, too reticent to reach out and ask for help, and too self-doubting to recognize their own abilities!  While there may be some truth to that, too (I often have to push my female friends to not be afraid to draw on their network for help in projects or career searching), there's also definitely something to Wrong's point.  Growing up as a woman has a tendency to make us more convinced of what we can't do than what we can, and in some cases, that lends a beneficial pensiveness to our actions.  For example, some female journalists might find it necessary to do some research on African subjects before making them the topic of our latest vanity project.

This just in: Women are earning more now than in 1970, marriage is not easy

The most popular article on NYTimes.com today reveals the shocking news that women's increasing income has led to shifting patterns of dating and marriage. The article seems pretty even-handed (if heteronormative), but is surprising to me for two reasons. 1) That this is news at all. The article analyzes income data from 1970 to 2007, and we've known about these changes for quite a while now (decades). 2) For a man bites dog story, this has resonated hugely with readers. It was posted yesterday and is already the number one story.

The Pew Center (who wrote the report) gives the topic an interesting spin: women's gains in income are relatively better for men when the marriage market is taken into consideration. I think this kind of messaging can convince skeptics that feminism is good for everyone (including men). However, I think the NYTimes' focus on how the new dynamics tilt the marriage market against high-achieving women is not so great. This was definitely not the main message of the report, and seems like imposing a narrative that might not be quite right or appropriate.

Jezebel on why women shouldn't just try to be like men

I liked this.  It turns out, trying to "act like a man" in the workplace only works if a) our bosses will respond to us the same way as they do to men (which we know they don't) and b) if we're willing to accept that the only positive traits to have in one's career are those associated with the "male" gender, (which I'm not).
What do you think about women trying to--or needing to--act like "men" to get ahead?

Jezebel: 3 reasons why women can't be more like men

Womenomics from the Economist--is leading "like a woman" really so bad?

Hat tip to Woodstock.

Womenomics: Feminist management theorists are flirting with some dangerous arguments (The Economist)

The article opens by quoting some famous female leaders who supposedly represent a traditional meritocracy--Margaret Thatcher, who always ordered steak; Hilary Clinton who's not afraid to answer the phone at 3 a.m., and Dong Mingzhu, who says, “I never miss. I never admit mistakes and I am always correct.”

It then goes on to talk about new ideas about women in the workplace, suggesting that maybe women need not be men to get ahead (the horror):

But some of today’s most influential feminists contend that women will never fulfil their potential if they play by men’s rules... The new feminism contends that women are wired differently from men, and not just in trivial ways. They are less aggressive and more consensus-seeking, less competitive and more collaborative, less power-obsessed and more group-oriented. Judy Rosener, of the University of California, Irvine, argues that women excel at “transformational” and “interactive” management. Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, the authors of “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom”, assert that women are “better lateral thinkers than men” and “more idealistic” into the bargain...