Microaggressions and Victim Culture

Parent Cafe
301

I think the sluggish pace of hiring and advancement of women and minorities is really what drives an interest in reducing barriers, including the awareness of microaggressions. I also find it likely that those who microaggress are much more direct at home and with their buddies and are strengthening the attitudes that keep things from changing. If people are trained not to make the statements, in public, that hint at different skill mixes between men and women, whites and non-whites, and address all good work as exceptionalism, maybe this will have some change in what is said on the golf course or in the men’s room.

Also the lack of good flexible schedules and family supports really has winnowed down the number of women I personally know in engineering. Stepping down to part time work does limit your chances to get that breakout assignment that moves you into management or high level positions, and these assignments do require work hours that are not at all conducive to family life, especially children. Without being in a high-level, well-paid position with a reasonable chance of getting into the really well paying jobs, women often can’t take the step of having a househusband arrangement.

Unfortunately, that means there are not a lot of women in STEM fields to serve as mentors or guides on how to advance, and not a lot of women who have the power to make decisions on a more equal basis. That and somehow there is a backlash from feminism and also some strange women-to-women politics that seem to prevent women from working together within their organization.

PS - It appears Jesse Jackson was not just stirring up trouble hunting down micro-differences in opportunities in SV for women and minorities, those two articles in post 296 point to massive issues with diversity and advancement. Women are graduating in droves in STEM fields and should be hired and advancing well. And minorities, well, there is no way there is an underlying difference driving this.

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I also in my later 50s and I am in a male-dominated technical field (not computers). I am still often the only woman at the meeting and was the only woman scientist/engineer at my company for quite some time. Now, however, there are three others. I never had anyone tell me that they wouldn’t hire me because I might have babies (although I still recall the look of horror from the company pres when I told him I was pregnant with my third). While all the professors were men, many of my fellow grad students were women, all of whom were fully supported and funded. But this was in the NE, not the south, in the early 1980s so that may have been the difference. I certainly had men make comments that I would not return from maternity leave or should be home with my kids.

I also went to part-time status (for close to 20 years!!) when I had kids below high school age. That very much impacted my career path in that I stayed at a small place, that was flexible but had no real career path. Certainly, there were negative comments about me being part-time (even though I was very flexible and would change my days in the office for meetings). Work from home was not an option most of that time as the computer connection was not good. Overall, though I was lucky to have that option and lucky to have a wonderful, long-time caregiver for my kids.

Of the women I was in grad school with, very few went on to full-time faculty positions, opting instead to not move due to husband’s jobs or have families and work as research professors or at agencies. Of my friends and family members that are of similar age and are moms, most have chosen to limit their career paths for their families - turning down positions that would have required moving, longer hours or more travel. The ones that chose the full career path in most cases had a husband with a flexible job. Others left fields like law or business to become teachers. Yes, much of the glass ceiling is discrimination by the establishment and by white men, but some of it is we women deciding to choose a path that allows us more flexibility for our families. Of course that doesn’t mean that those women who want to get to the top shouldn’t have a clear path. Like most things in life, the issue of women in the work place is complex, particularly for moms.

There is still a lot of judgement out there and much too little support for family friendly work places. In my state, disability benefits are paid for 4 weeks after a birth and can be paid for up to 6 weeks, but then any time off would be benefit time or unpaid. Many women can’t afford that or are afraid they will not look like a serious worker. OTOH, look at the Yahoo CEO who is expecting twins and is planning to go back to work pretty quickly. She is getting a lot of flack for not planning to take more time off (she only took 2 weeks after her first child was born).

cross-posted with #300.

303

I think we can see a move towards women at the highest levels of corporations. GM, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard all have women CEOs. Unlike 25 years ago women are moving into the upper echelons of companies that were not traditionally led by women. 25 years ago you might have seen women as the heads of fashion houses, women’s magazines, cosmetic companies etc. but you wouldn’t have expected a women CEO of GM. Today we are moving away from such biases. The ceiling is becoming less of a barrier and more of a filter. What I don’t know as much about is women in the process and production phases of companies. It seems this forum has many women who are engineers, and professionals so perhaps you have a better idea. When I was in college we used to joke about the women going to college to get their MRS degree. I told that to my D and it took her a bit to understand what I meant. She had not heard the term before.

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‘some strange women-to-women politics that seem to prevent women from working together within their organization’

YES! So true. I’ve seen this in my male dominated field as well (non-STEM). It’s always perplexed me. The men have each other’s backs so I’ve never understood why women are not more supportive of one another.

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Here are just three of my stories. One of them might be deemed not a microagression but a macroaggression. You be the judge.

[color=red]I.[/color=red] I was 22 or 23 years old and had gone from earning $7,000 a year in my little publishing job, to $8,000, to $8,500. Whoo hoo!! I was eager to leave my company and ready for the next step – all the way up to $9,000 a year. There was an advertisement in the newspaper that led me to call a particular employment agency; I went in to chat with the fellow about possibly appropriate positions he might have available. He stared the entire interview at my knees, but what was more amazing was that he insisted there were no jobs at $9,000 a year. At all. In all of New York City.

Obviously he himself didn’t have any, so he thought I’d buy the fact that they didn’t exist. Just plain didn’t exist. So I’d go for one of the $8,500 jobs.

[color=red]II.[/color=red] I was still 22 or 23 and had told my boss that I was interested in leaving for a new challenge. He was supportive. He had a business acquaintance (let’s call him Mr. L) in a similar line of work who was in town from Minneapolis, and he suggested that the two of us meet to determine if there was mutual interest for me to pursue a job with him in MN.

Now, my current boss was an old friend of my father’s and treated me like his own daughter. I assumed Mr. L would be the same.

Mr. L suggested we have dinner at a specific restaurant. We met at the specific time and had a good conversation. When dinner was over, he said he’d like to continue our conversation but needed to make a phone call from his hotel room. It would just take a minute or two; would I mind? (You can tell what’s coming, can’t you.) Once we got to his hotel room, Mr. L proceeded to throw me on the bed and tried to kiss me. I resisted and he apologized. We continued with our “interview.” I never heard from him about the job and assumed I wouldn’t, given what had happened. Then, six months after we met, I got a very standard, official “Thanks but no thanks” letter in the mail from his company.

Yeah, I was naive as all get-out, but he was a friend of my father’s friend. What could possibly go wrong?

In retrospect, I was damn lucky he stopped. He could easily have raped me, and of course who would I tell? I would have felt responsible.

[color=red]III.[/color=red] This story is actually comprised of Parts A and B. The people involved in both parts are the same, Part B is actually a continuation of Part A, and they took place about a week apart.

[color=red]Part A:[/color=red] My job was Director of Employee Benefits for a Fortune 500 company. My boss, the head of HR, could not attend a meeting with the CFO and the CEO to discuss employee contributions to the medical plan for the upcoming year. Our benefits consultant (a very nice fellow; let’s call him Bill) was with me in the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the CFO said to the CEO, “What’s our next meeting about?” and gestured to the conference room next door.

“Oh,” said the CEO, “That’s with our specialist” – referring to the consultant who advised the company on stock-related issues.

“Gosh,” said Bill, “I thought we were your specialist.”

“You are,” said the CEO. “You’re our benefits specialist, and VeryHappy is our honey.”

I stuttered, “VeryHappy is our what?” because I couldn’t believe I had heard him correctly. He repeated it, and Bill and I just stared at each other with wide eyes.

That afternoon, I went into the CEO’s office and asked him what he meant by the statement. He asked if the comment had bothered me, and I said it had. I have advanced degrees, I’ve always conducted myself professionally, and I didn’t think his comment was appropriate. He became obviously embarrassed.

[color=red]Part B.[/color=red] Fast forward about a week. The CEO came into my office and said, “Boy, are you sensitive!”

I reiterated that I did my best to be completely professional at work and I didn’t think his comment was appropriate. He then said, “Jeez, you’re tough! I’m going to start calling you Butch or something!”

I responded, “The name is VeryHappy, Mr. CEO. Simple name, just four letters.” He mumbled something and left.

I’ve told this story to probably 50 people, and no one can believe that this happened – in 2008. This isn’t some story from the Dark Ages.

I have more, but that’s enough for now.

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Part B, I think the current microaggression conversation would have summarized it all. Since you are part of HR, you have the obligation to explain to senior management or really any manager, that “honey” is not an appropriate term. It could really lead to lawsuits if there is even a hint of this being less than a completely egalitarian workplace.

That said, there are lots of sexist terms that could be used to describe a man, but “honey” just seems like a 1950s gal who is decorating the C-suite. Obviously, saying “Veryhappy is our man” would be odd, probably the exact right thing to say would have been “Veryhappy is our director of employee benefits”.

I think all the date rape publicity has made going to someone’s hotel room much less likely. Terrible place to be when someone hits on you, but really the job was lost when you were attractive and young.

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Remember, “STEM” describes a range of fields where the knowledge and skills are not interchangeable. Women make up the majority of new bachelor’s degree graduates in biology and are about half of new bachelor’s degree graduates in chemistry, but are still very underrepresented in engineering fields, physics, and computer science.

http://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/womenmajors.cfm
http://www.ngcproject.org/statistics

Obviously, the employers referred to in the articles linked in reply #296 do hire many people for jobs that are not really major-specific, or where non-“STEM” majors are more relevant (e.g. art, business, etc.). But in the realm of jobs where “STEM” majors are highly relevant, it is mostly those fields where women are poorly represented – computer companies do not have many jobs where a biology degree is of any advantage over any other bachelor’s degree.

308

Well, not much I could do about it at the time. No different than not giving me the job because I was black, or Asian, or in a wheelchair, or unattractive and old. Discrimination, pure and simple.

309

My wife (an engineer, late in that sort of weird transitioning from real engineering to management thing engineers do as their career progresses) has frequently noted to me—not without some glee—that more and more of the younger male engineers she knows are standing up to management and demanding more work-life flexibility, paternity leave, and such. She had to fight tooth and nail for the flexibility to raise our kids with me and still remain current and respected as an engineer, and since she views that as horrid rather than some sort of hazing ritual every woman ought to go through, she sees the generational shift toward men wanting family-work flexibility as a Good Thing that will (hopefully) make things easier for the coming generation of female engineers—if both sexes want it, perhaps it can break the old model.

So maybe there’s hope.

310

At a job interview lunch with a software company in, IIRC, 1980, I was asked if I planned to get married and have children any time soon by the male VP. I replied, “I think that’s an illegal question, but no.” My eventual (female) boss, who was with us and who was doing the hiring, was horrified. I have to add that the man who asked me that question was a great guy who didn’t evince any sexist behavior in the actual workplace that I noticed.

Later, at the same company, some of the female programmers started a “women in engineering” lunch group to which I, as a technical writer and trainer, was invited. One of the slightly older female programmers with kids was told by the founder of the group that she was at fault for putting her family ahead of her job.

Then there were the guys who, when people wrote graffiti on a wall that was about to be demolished, just had to write something very nasty about feminists. And who would make statements such as “no woman has ever made a significant contribution to the field.” Apparently Grace Hopper didn’t count?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

But those were what I would call macro-aggressions, lol.

311

Wow, did you tell your dad or your boss about the first incidence? It is hard to believe that in 2008 a CEO of a Fortune 500 would not know that was inappropriate - esp in front of the HR director. Didn’t the company have all that training? Do you still work there?

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Re #308

I remember discussing with another student (male) back in college about such “family friendly” policies as maternity leave. When I mentioned “what about paternity leave?”, the reaction made it seem like a completely alien concept back then, as if no man would ever take time off work for family reasons (except high profile executives using that as a claimed reason for leaving that no one believes).

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I believe that it is still the case that a man actually taking real paternity leave is looked down upon.

314

@mom2and: Re Post 310 – No, I never told my boss or my dad about the behavior of the creepy fellow in the hotel room. I assumed I’d be told I was “asking for it” by agreeing to go to his hotel room.

And No, I am no longer with that Fortune 500 company. They relocated to another part of the country and I chose not to follow them. When I was about to leave, the CEO (the fellow who called me Honey) came in my office and told me he’d be pleased to help me find another job. Since he had absolutely no contacts in my field, I just thanked him nicely and told him that was very generous of him. Given that he called me Honey out of the blue and for no good reason, I’ve concluded that he thought of me in a sexual manner, and there was no way I was going to keep in touch with him after my job ended.

315

“The men have each other’s backs so I’ve never understood why women are not more supportive of one another.”

@doschicos – this is a cliche about men - and about women. In my 20+ years in corporate America, I’ve seen women mentor and support one another, and men stab each other in the back with a scary relish. Let’s not stereotype; day-to-day work life for us all is hard enough.

316

Another of microaggression:

[color=red]IV.[/color=red]In December 1984 I was working for a wonderful man who wound up being my boss for around 12 years. He loved to mentor young people (well, I was 36 at the time) and I learned a huge amount from him.

However: After my son was born, I took a three-month leave. When I returned, I still worked pretty hard, although not as hard as I had before he was born. One day when I was walking down the hall toward his office – his desk was situated so that one literally walked toward him as one was coming down the hall – he said, “Everytime I see you I think ‘Mommy,’ and then you open your mouth and I’m reminded how good you really are.”

[color=red]V.[/color=red]In 1981, I had just gotten my MBA and I started working in HR for a very well-known, very prestigious bank. Office space was tight in my department, so I was given a big executive desk that unfortunately was situated right outside a male AVP’s office. I can’t count the number of times it was assumed that I was a secretary and someone asked to see Mr. K, who was in the office. Mr. K became quite embarrassed. That went on for a year.

Geez. I’d better stop now. My blood pressure is starting to climb.

317

“more and more of the younger male engineers she knows are standing up to management and demanding more work-life flexibility, paternity leave, and such”

@dfbdfb – Halleluja

318

My female coworkers and friends were denied raises and promotions for the same reason. This wasn’t in the dark ages, it was NYS in the early 21st century.

319

My experience is different. I worked for companies where women were in senior positions, including president and CEO. Some of my previous bosses were women who were on the Forbes, Fortune, etc. type of lists - women who have their own wikipedia articles. I now work for a woman-owned company (and we get benefits from that “status” - clients have goals to spend x% of their budgets with minority and women owned companies). I’ve never felt at a disadvantage being a woman. I had one male coworker come on to me once (I said no thanks, not interested, and we continued working collegially for years) and another commented favorably on my body and I just smiled and let it go.

320

@Pizzagirl

Was it a “Nice hair!” type of comment or something more along the lines of “You must work out…”? (or more aggressive than that?)