The hiding places of sexism

I came across an interesting article that talks about Gender Swapping on the internet. There's google plug-in called Jailbreak the patriarchy which swaps the gender words into the opposite gender and presents the content. I was so amused with this and it gave me one of those moments of – "Oh My God, I can’t believe I didn’t see that!" So I felt compelled to think a bit more about it and write.

I tried it out for myself. Here’s an excerpt from an article on Sheryl Sandberg featured in Time Magazine.

“She says she had misgivings about sharing these family fables because they make her seem bossy, a term she takes issue with. “I notice bossy is applied almost always to little girls,” says Sandberg over lunch (she ordered a Wagyu hot dog with no bun and no relish). “It’s just not used for men. 
In person, Sandberg does not give the impression that she’s bossy. She gives the impression that she was born 43, that she was delivered preloaded with the capacity and will to order people around but also the capacity and will to ensure that they thrive. Now that she is really 43, she has so perfected these skills that merely helping run a $66 billion tech company is not quite enough of a challenge.”

Here’s the swapped version:

“Sandberg tells these stories about himself early in his first book, a memoir–slash–”sort of masculinist manifesto” in which he enjoins men to pursue their careers with more rigor, to engage more energetically in the corporate cook-off, to Lean In—as the book is titled—to the opportunities and challenges of becoming a boss. He says he had misgivings about sharing these family fables because they make him seem bossy, a term he takes issue with. “I notice bossy is applied almost always to little boys,” says Sandberg over lunch (he ordered a Wagyu hot dog with no bun and no relish). “It’s just not used for women.In person he does not give the impression that he’s bossy. He gives the impression that he was born 43, that he was delivered preloaded with the capacity and will to order people around but also the capacity and will to ensure that they thrive. Now that he is really 43, he has so perfected these skills that merely helping run a $66 billion tech company is not quite enough of a challenge.”

There are a few things that struck me here. The whole concept of being a bossy / authoritative person being considered unfeminine & rather unpleasant in women. In the gender swapped piece, I’m pretty sure "Mr. Sandberg" would have said it proudly, unapologetically, feeling all the time like a hero Army General or Commander (think Robert De Niro in Men of Honour! After all we apply lots of management strategies from the army into the corporate world)! I felt weird reading it, because I kept feeling (despite knowing I was reading a toggled version) why would a man have an issue with coming across as bossy or authoritative? That’s the sort of quality they admire in men because it’s considered important to get things done (not that I agree with that, but that’s a common mindset). And then the justification, “but she’s not actually bossy, she also helps people” – in the swapped version of this, I just felt like "Oh good! This guy is a good person / leader" whereas in the female version it felt like “ Oh, bossy (ugh) but can help people get better, maybe she isn’t that bad to work with after all!” I think myself fairly progressive when it comes to feminism, and this was MY internal chatter – again another moment of, “Oh Shucks! Can’t believe that was a code in my brain!! “

It’s again one of those things so deeply embedded in our systems, the concepts of masculinity and femininity; that despite the tremendous shift in context from hunter gather days, we still associate men and women with specific characteristics and stereotype them. A bossy boy / man is sort of a given and even though he may not be liked as much, he won’t have a hard time being respected. A bossy woman is unpleasant and needs to fix herself to be liked more and gain respect. Irrespective of whether she’s caring for an infant at home or running a multi million dollar company!

I also started to think about the language we use at our workplaces. One common trend for example, is the use of the word “guys”. E-mails, conversations, taking a training session – I’ve used this word commonly to address an audience / group which included women.

How about gender swapping this?

“Hey guys!

Wanted to thank you for doing such a wonderful job. Everyone executed his / her piece perfectly! You guys make for an awesome team!”

Swapped version

“Hey girls!

Wanted to thank you for doing such a wonderful job. Everyone executed her / his piece perfectly! You girls make for an awesome team!”

Now imagine a bunch of male employees reading this e-mail from their peer or boss, how would they feel? I even asked around a couple of men, they just gave me the “are you crazy look” and said “of course we won’t feel good”. So why don’t women get offended when they are addressed as guys? I debated with my husband about it, and his take was that it’s possibly because it’s a way of women to feel equal to men after a prolonged period of not being given that place. In the army for instance, women might want to be treated as equal to men and not seen as “girls”, hence they take no offence.

That is probably valid But I think this needs to change. We need to start changing the language we speak, the language we use in our heads and the associations we make. Women have their own unique set of qualities and characteristics and that needs to be respected and given room at the workplace. That’s the true meaning of diversity. It’s not just about including women in a male oriented system and expecting them to change their personalities in order to fit that. We need to think differently about our systems as a whole, what we consider as success and what sort of people we define as role models. Either a bossy boy needs to be considered as unpleasant as a bossy girl, or they should both be equally acceptable in our internal coding of the brain.

There are very subtle details in which sexism can hide and thrive, and we need to keep looking consciously I suppose. I for one want to pay more attention to language I use, because I think that’s an easy way to watch what I’m thinking consciously and subconsciously. A couple of pointers I came up with:

• Use “her / his” with words like “everyone, everybody” rather than just “his” – this is still very common.

• When describing a successful woman, gender swap once in my head what I'm about to say / write. Would I say for example “ She’s very confident & tough in her approach and really gets things done ”. Possibly not. I wouldn’t feel the need to emphasize that about a man because that seems like the norm or a given in some sense for successful men in our culture– confident, tough, ability to get things done. I would probably focus on qualities like “strategic, innovative, long term thinker” to give real praise!! Why should be any different for a woman?

• Take offense if someone addresses a group I am in as “guys” :-)