Sexual harrasment at workplace is invisible, that's what makes it so dangerous
Misogyny, for women, is the great equaliser. All women at the workplace have at some point or the other experienced harassment and discrimination.
It could be snide remarks about "needing" maternity leave and "wasting the companies resources" on expecting women or about "not being serious enough about work" because you asked for a half day to attend a parent-teacher meeting.
It could be you being told "be less ambitious/aggressive" and be "more likeable" instead. Sexism isn’t just the words that get thrown at you — it’s how you’re treated as well. Instances where male colleagues invade your personal space — a stray hand on your shoulder, inappropriate questions or comments in the guise of a joke, body shaming, persistent overtures — we’ve all been there.
Just today, you had a woman lodge a police complaint against the co-founder of the website, ScoopWhoop. Suparn Pandey has been accused of passing lewd remarks, making advances at a female colleague and also sending her obscene videos for over two years.
The company reportedly paid no heed to her complaints. The narrative here quite similar to what we saw in the TVF sexual harassment case.
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| Sexism is so insidious that it slowly robs women of their agency — ironically, often in a sphere where your competence is all that should matter. Photo: Web |
A woman tries to rebuff advances from her boss, complains to the management but the blatant harassment and sexism is not just ignored, but in a sense rewarded. I too was similarly harassed.
In my first job, a male colleague who I didn’t even know would often approach me. He’d come over to my desk, and if I was wearing a sleeveless top, he would very nonchalantly place his hand on my shoulder or my arm while trying to engage with me. Terrified, I didn’t even have the presence of mind to shake his hand off.
I stopped wearing sleeveless tops to work and changed my shift. He then started sending me persistent emails asking me about my whereabouts, reminding me to add him on Facebook. When those went ignored, he managed to get my number and started hounding me on text messages.
It was only after I confided in a senior colleague and a friend that the harassment stop. She flagged it off to the management who fortunately for me treated this with seriousness. He was no longer allowed on office premises. I got lucky.
Most women don’t, which is why many women never speak out about the verbal, mental and physical abuse they face for the fear of being penalised — by the management, by their colleagues.
Even I had been afraid of speaking out, scared of making a fuss because I had already internalised the stigma. Being a woman at the workplace is akin to walking a tightrope without a safety net whereas the men have been given access to a wide, open racing track while wearing rollerblades.
Being a man in a workplace is an extreme privilege that often comes with an "anything goes" pass. An acquaintance once recounted how despite being more qualified for the job, she got talked over by her male co-worker for three hours during a meeting.
Frustrated and fuming, she finally started interrupting him as well. When the meeting finally ended, her boss chided her to say, "It went very well but maybe you shouldn’t have talked over him so much!"
Another friend once told me her boss told her that she’s too pretty so it was tough to take her seriously. Personally, getting married about a year ago exposed me to a slightly nuanced form of misogyny. "So, are you cooking for your husband yet? I’m sure you’re learning how to make all his favourite dishes."
"When are we expecting the good news?" "Is that a baby bump I see?" "Have you changed your name yet?" "Now that you’re married, your career will be over in about two years time, which is when you’ll have kids I assume?"
Needless to say, my husband who worked at the same organisation was never once grilled about his lack of culinary skills or the shockingly unchanged last name.
Any doctor’s visit or bout of illness immediately meant that my womb was suddenly the only part of my anatomy that warranted any medical attention. Any weight I might have gained had to be because of a baby bump I was trying to hide.
The lowest point though was when one very senior male colleague told me, with absolute sanguinity, that for the next two years or so I should give my career all I had, because (of course) in two years’ time once I had children, my career would come to a screeching halt.
And the sexist sledgehammer of an assault on my nerves didn’t end there.
He then went on to recount, very fondly might I add, how his wife had devotedly given up her career to stay at home once they had children, because all "children need their mother".
And which woman needs her career as much as she needs to be a mother? Clearly a very bad one. I remember being so angry that I could barely formulate a reply, which in hindsight angered me more.
Why hadn’t I put him in his place? Where were my witty feminist repartee? In that moment, I did nothing but extract myself from that conversation as quickly as possible.
I had been trying to laugh off similar comments for many weeks but this particular exchange burst that proverbial bubble I had ensconced myself in — I was being treated and looked at differently because of my marital status.
And while one learns to tolerate that from family members and distant relatives, I had never anticipated that something as simple as being married would so drastically impact how my professional capabilities were viewed.
My career, my ambitions had in the eyes of others taken a back seat because I had "other priorities" — mind you, the same "priorities" my husband had, but being a woman automatically allowed people to assume that I would give less importance to my career.
I was domesticated overnight at my place of employment without my consent. The misogyny and the harassment may not always be visible to everyone and that’s what makes it that much more dangerous.
A recent study by the Boston Consulting Group found out how women are just as ambitious as men at the start of their careers and it’s companies who snuff out that ambition: not family status, nor motherhood.
The glass ceiling at the workplace isn’t just about the scales of success that inherent gender bias denies women access to — it’s everything that leads up to that moment.
Sexism is so insidious that it slowly robs women of their agency — ironically, often in a sphere where your competence is all that should matter.