by Laura Bates
The problem doesn’t end with sexual harassment. Recent figures from the Equality and Human Rights Commission reveal that a shocking 54,000 women a year are estimated to lose their jobs as a result of maternity discrimination, representing around one in eight of all pregnant women in the UK.
We tell women to ‘lean in’, but those who do negotiate more firmly or act assertively at work are often lambasted and punished. They’re seen as abrasive and shrill where their male peers would be considered authoritative and ambitious. We expect women to speak up if they experience discrimination but many who do are rewarded with a backlash at best, or redundancy at worst. Little surprise that 80 per cent of women in the Everyday Sexism and TUC research didn’t feel able to report the sexual harassment to their employer, especially considering the further results that among those who did report, three-quarters saw no change and 16 per cent said they were treated worse as a result.
We complain that women simply aren’t applying to certain fields in great enough numbers, while presenting girls with stereotypes and media portrayals that teach them those fields are not for them. We expect more women to move into male-dominated industries but those who do often face stratospheric levels of harassment and discrimination. We encourage women to combine motherhood with career, but fire them for becoming pregnant. And in every field, from the BBC to Hollywood, the football pitch to the boardroom, we pay them less than men for the same work. Recent figures revealing that just a third of the BBC’s top earners are women and that just two of its fourteen top-paid staff were female, as well as exposing a pay gap for BAME employees, represent the very tip of the iceberg.
This isn’t only devastating for women. When systemic discrimination renders career opportunities off-limits for over half the population, every business, organization and workplace suffers. Picking from a pool of only white, male candidates inevitably diminishes the excellence of the workforce by excluding some of the finest prospective workers. Workplace harassment and abuse cost businesses millions in tribunal fees, diminished productivity and lost employees. Studies repeatedly reveal that organizations with better diversity on their boards perform better and flourish financially. Fixing the problem is in everybody’s interest.
TEN SEXIST SCENARIOS THAT WOMEN FACE AT WORK
Each of these situations has been reported again and again to the Everyday Sexism Project. For most men, they will be difficult to imagine. For many women, they are painfully familiar.
1. Being mistaken for the secretary
‘Although I’ve been a senior figure in client meetings, when all other attendees are men it’s regularly expected that I’m the one to take notes and distribute drinks.’
‘I am head of the fundraising department in the charity I work for. Every time I go to a meeting with the man in my department, he is greeted first, his hand is shaken first and the conversation is directed towards him. Once, I was asked if I was there to take notes even after I had been introduced as the manager.’
2. Being told to make the tea
‘International visitors from the company’s head office came for a meeting at which I, the only female in management, had to report. I walked in with my report and they asked for coffee, white with two sugars.’
3. Being called a ‘good girl’
‘Being told I’m a “good girl” when offering ideas to senior management. Have to resist the urge to bark. A raised eyebrow and “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that” worked with one. The other just repeated it . . . I did call one of them a good boy once, but not in a meeting. He seemed to get my point but said that they “didn’t mean anything by it”.’
4. Being accused of menstruation when voicing a firm opinion
‘My colleague had to chase up someone in another department for not meeting a deadline for paperwork to be submitted. When she went to speak with him about it, his response was: “Is it your time of the month?” This is in a huge listed company. She’s a lawyer.’
5. Being asked if ‘a man is available instead’
‘Working in a law office, I’ve had plenty of people on the phone demand to speak to a man instead of me.’
‘People asking if another vicar is available for wedding/funeral: “Nothing personal but we’d prefer a man.” ’
6. Having an idea ignored only to be repeated by a male colleague five minutes later to interest and applause
‘A female friend of mine in an office meeting proposed a logical, simple solution to a recurring issue. Blank stares from the group and a “We’ve never done it that way” from the senior (female) manager. A male colleague then makes the exact same suggestion and the room nods enthusiastically and congratulates him on the idea.’
‘I attended a meeting last week where a question was posed. I knew the answer and told everybody: “The answer is yes, there is going to be a group assigned to do this.” The chair of the meeting (a man) ignored my comment completely and said to everyone: “I think the answer is probably yes, the board promised to work on this topic so I guess they will assign a committee.” I shared a look with the only woman in the room, sighed and repeated: “Actually yes, I KNOW there is a committee assigned to this task.” I wished this was the first time that this happened . . . it is not.’
7. Being asked about childcare plans
‘During my interview for my current position I was asked if I planned on having any more children and what my childcare arrangements are. Each time the question was preceded with: “I’m probably not supposed to ask this but . . .” Too blinking right you’re not supposed to ask it! Would you have asked it if I were a male candidate?’
8. Being considered a ‘maternity risk’
‘I had an interview for an office job for a small company when I was in my early twenties. The senior partner who owned the company told me they wouldn’t hire me because I would probably get pregnant and go on maternity leave, and that if I repeated what he’d said he’d deny it.’
9. Being accused of ‘baby brain’
‘I was told on my first day back [from maternity leave]: “You’ll never be the same for us now you have baby brain.” ’
‘I recently came back from maternity leave to my overseas posting, to meet the new boss for the first time. In our first meeting, he explained that I would no longer be in charge of the unit I had been setting up for a year due to my “special circumstances” . . . He also stated that while I was nursing it would be difficult for me to focus on my job, so he was being generous by giving me less responsibility, and downgrading my position.’
10. Avoiding wandering hands
‘I was twenty-two, just graduated from university and working a three-month trial period at a very small company – just me and the boss (married, with kids my age). One day I was busy with filing, and the boss came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me and stuck his tongue on my ear. I shoved him away and told him not to do that again. Ended up being fired a week later because I wouldn’t have an affair with him.’
If these scenarios sound shocking to the male reader, try running them by some of the women you know – you might be surprised to find how common they are. For many women, this piece will read less like an article and more like a bingo card – how many did you cross off?
Originally published 30 July 2014
FEMALE ACADEMICS FACE HUGE SEXIST BIAS – NO WONDER THERE ARE SO FEW OF THEM
Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, has created an online tool that allows users to compare the frequency of particular words in evaluations of male and female professors. Schmidt created the interactive chart using data from 14 million student reviews on the website RateMyProfessors.com. The results are striking.
We already know that performance evaluations can reveal serious gender bias, whether deliberate or unconscious. But this new data seems to suggest that the problem starts earlier, and is already in full effect during higher education.
There is something almost hypnotic about typing
search terms into Schmidt’s tool and watching the coloured dots swim from one side of the chart to the other, splitting themselves repeatedly along gender lines. The more terms you can think of, the more the tool reiterates (most) societal stereotypes. Try switching from ‘funny’ to ‘annoying’, for example, and watch the dots zoom towards opposite sides of the screen.
Reviews of male professors are more likely to include the words ‘brilliant’, ‘intelligent’ or ‘smart’, and far more likely to contain the word ‘genius’. Meanwhile, women are more likely to be described as ‘mean’, ‘harsh’, ‘unfair’ or ‘strict’, and a lot more likely to be called ‘annoying’.
Immediately recognizable societal stereotypes emerge – the words ‘disorganized’ or ‘unorganized’ come up much more frequently in women’s evaluations, while men are far more likely to be described as ‘cool’ or ‘funny’, with one of the widest gender splits of all on the word ‘hilarious’. Women are more commonly called ‘nice’ or ‘helpful’, but men are more often described as ‘good’.
There is a silver lining here – while the results certainly reinforce gender stereotypes about intelligence and personality, there is less focus on female professors’ looks than one might anticipate. The search term ‘hot’ reveals completely mixed results and, though it is used rarely, the word ‘sexy’ is more likely to appear in evaluations of male rather than female teachers. The battle isn’t entirely won, however, as ‘beautiful’ does crop up for female teachers, albeit far more rarely than other descriptors such as ‘good’ or ‘funny’.
As Schmidt himself points out, the reliability of the data is limited – these are online reviews rather than official student feedback; it’s not possible to break down the results by the sex of the reviewer; and, of course, there is room for error in making assumptions about the sentiment of a sentence containing any given word. But this can be mitigated in part by Schmidt’s tool, which allows users to see the frequency of each word (with higher frequency results likely to be more reliable), and to filter for results from only positive or negative evaluations.
The findings are also backed up by other studies, one of which surveyed college students’ feedback about online course professors and found that the ratings were higher in every category when students were told the professor was male. The strength of this unconscious bias is quite astonishing – even for a relatively objective measure such as promptness, students rated a ‘female’ professor 3.55 out of 5 and a ‘male’ professor 4.35, despite the fact that they handed work back at the same time.
The implications are serious. In the competitive world of academia, student evaluations are often used as a tool in the process of hiring and promotion. That the evaluations may be biased against female professors is particularly problematic in light of existing gender imbalance, particularly at the highest echelons of academia. According to the American Association of University Professors, in 2012, 62 per cent of men in academia in the US were tenured compared to only 44 per cent of women, while women were far more likely to be in non-tenure track positions than men (32 per cent of women in academia compared to just 19 per cent of men).
Meanwhile, statistics obtained in 2013 by Times Higher Education revealed that only about one in five UK professors are female, with the percentage of female professors at some universities as low as 8 or 9 per cent. Data from the non-profit organization Catalyst suggests that the imbalance persists internationally, too.
Set alongside the unconscious bias of academic recruiters themselves, as well as the difficulty of juggling parenthood with the demands of research, the apparent sexism in student evaluations provides yet another hurdle for women in academia.
It is interesting to consider these results in the context of a wave of troubling recent reports about sexism and misogyny on campus. Perhaps it will be difficult to tackle biased and sexist appraisals of female professors until the wider issue of student sexism is also seriously confronted.
Originally published 13 February 2015
TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE GENDER PAY GAP
According to the Fawcett Society, 9 November marked Equal Pay Day – the date from which women in Britain effectively work for free until the end of the year, due to the 14.2 per cent gender pay gap. Myths and misconceptions still persist around unequal pay. (This week alone I’ve heard ‘the gender pay gap doesn’t exist’, ‘women shouldn’t have babies if they’re going to complain’ and ‘women aren’t paid less, they just earn less’.) So in the interests of clearing up some confusion, here are ten facts you might not know about the pay gap . . .
1. It starts young . . . really young
A website set up to allow parents to pay pocket money to their children via online accounts revealed that boys were paid 15 per cent more than girls for doing the same chores. The gap widened for homework, where boys received more than double the amount of pocket money girls did for completing an assignment.
2. It’s an intersectional problem
Research by Race for Opportunity found that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) workers make up a disproportionate number of people in low-paid jobs, with almost a quarter (23 per cent) of Pakistani employees and a fifth of Bangladeshi, Chinese and Black Caribbean workers earning less than £25,000 per year. It also found that a white British employee has an average of almost four promotions during their career, compared to just 2.5 for British African, Indian and Pakistani employees. Figures from the Low Pay Commission found that 15.3 per cent of Pakistani/Bangladeshi workers earned the minimum wage – more than twice the number of white workers in minimum wage jobs. Teach First research has revealed that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are paid 10 per cent less than peers with the same qualifications, even after graduating from university. And the pay gap is wider for older women than for their younger colleagues, with women in their fifties earning nearly a fifth less than men of the same age.
Research also suggests that trans women are more economically vulnerable and can earn almost a third less after transitioning.
3. It’s complicated
The pay gap exists for many and complex reasons. As well as both direct and indirect discrimination, there are issues such as occupational segregation and the devaluation of jobs primarily associated with female labour. The fact that women make up the majority of part-time and low-paid workers, and the relative lack of promotion opportunities for part-time workers, are also factors. Among part-time workers, women are still more likely to be lower paid than men.
4. It happens across a huge variety of professions
Attention has recently been drawn to the wage gap between male and female stars in Hollywood. But the gender pay gap affects everybody from architects to athletes. Recent research from the Office for National Statistics revealed that female architects are paid a whopping 25 per cent less than their male counterparts. And while members of the England women’s football team earn around £20,000 per year, male Premier League players earn an average of £1.6 million per year.
5. It’s not performance-based
Talking of football, the US national teams recently provided a stunning, high-profile example of pay failing to correlate to performance. In the World Cup, the women’s team were victorious, winning the whole championship, while the men’s team went out in the first round. But the women’s team won prize money of $2 million, while the men won $8 million just for being eliminated at the first hurdle.
6. While working mothers lose out, working fathers actually benefit
We all know that the motherhood penalty can have a huge negative impact on women’s careers. Mothers are less likely to get jobs in the first place, and less likely to be paid as well as their similarly qualified male colleagues. But to add insult to injury, working fathers actually see a boost to their salaries, with their earnings increasing an average of over 6 per cent when they have children, compared to mothers, whose salaries decrease 4 per cent for each child on average.
7. It affects gr
aduates too
Much has been made recently of the diminishing pay gap among younger workers. But studies still show a graduate pay gap, where women can earn up to £8,000 less in their starting salaries than their male peers who took the same degree. According to the Higher Education Careers Service Unit, one in five men are paid more than £30,000 after their degree, compared with just 8 per cent of women who earn the same. And research from the Higher Education Statistics Agency found that the average graduate salary is £2,000 higher for male graduates than for female graduates.
8. Not all work ‘counts’
As Katrine Marçal points out in her recent book, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?, the very methods by which we measure and value labour have long disregarded the enormous contribution and impact of the unpaid domestic and caring work carried out predominantly by women.
9. It can arise from subtle bias
When we think of the pay gap, it’s easy to imagine a villainous boss deliberately choosing to pay a female employee less than her male counterparts. But while that can happen, discrimination can also be more complex. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences submitted identical applications for laboratory manager jobs, but assigned female-sounding names to half the applications and male-sounding names to the other half. In a randomized double-blind study, participants not only considered the ‘male’ applicants more competent and hireable, but were also likely to offer them a higher starting salary.
10. Even technology isn’t immune from discriminatory practices
It was recently revealed that Google’s algorithm displays far fewer adverts for high-paying job opportunities to women than it does to men.
So the next time someone tries to tell you feminism is unnecessary and the gender pay gap doesn’t exist, fix them with a beady stare, talk them through its complexities and, if all else fails, hit them with Twitter user @LauraLuchador’s viral joke: ‘If I had a pound for every time I was told I didn’t need feminism I’d have 85p each time.’