Fight Drifting and Casual Sexism at Work

There is no running away from it. Every single person-regardless of economic or social class, gender, designation-should examine their gender biases. There are far too many people I know, who are widely read-conversant in science, politics, business and broad feminist ideas, who themselves promulgate deeply sexist ideas. The source of casual sexism that these social beings-well- read and seemingly broad-minded, remains a mystery to me. Are we just too lazy to examine our beliefs? Or too lazy to act on our beliefs? I’m not sure I’m asking the right questions here.

Here are common examples of sexism at the workplace-said to me by employees spread across the designation spectrum. I’m sure these examples are not uncommon. They’re also not lazy jokes-i.e. they were said in seriousness.  

1. Women are becoming lazy these days and don’t want to enter the kitchen. That’s why I learnt how to cook(man to 8 men and me)
2. Even if you’re working, you’re a girl, no, make some snacks and come for everyone (another man to me in the same audience as 1.)
3. We don’t want to hire a newly-married girl. She’ll become pregnant and go on maternity leave.
4. It is so nice to see two woman being friends-usually we don’t see it. (Said to two women by a man)
5. Why are all the ladies sitting together? Is there a ladies club? (4 women sat together, all the men crowded around their own tables. Alright, this was a lazy joke, but I don’t remember walking up to men in the office and asking them if they were in a men’s club)
6. What are you girls doing, sitting around? (I was standing) Go, mingle with the others (This, after we stopped by all tables to pay our respects to the men. No man was told to mingle with us)
7. Girls shouldn’t be in the same team (my thought: in order to force diversity in the group, force the discomfort on the women)
8. Why are you cutting the cake, the girls are there. They should do this(a man to another man cutting his birthday cake)

I’ll stop there. I’m getting terribly riled up. And I hope you are too, if you’ve read some of those bullet points above this paragraph. How awful it is, that I am in no position to object against such crass sexism. Often, the people who choose to be violently insensitive get away with saying anything they want to, leaving the average receiver of insensitivity, stuttering in anger. 

It is a right damn shame-the conservative Indian industry is so strongly hierarchical that it has the potential to snuff out creativity and positivity. A junior female is at the bottom of the entire system. She is told not to say “No” to any kind of work, because it is important that she learn. Game, she naively begins to say “Yes” to everything-the classic problem-not at all as fun as the It's Always Sunny episode when Charlie says “Yes” to everything.

So, she is asked to sit the entire day-she is an engineer with over a year of work experience-to scan cards. She says “yes” unwillingly. She is at fault here. So she tries to communicate her discomfort to her manager.  And he says-“it may be routine, but it’s your job”. Then the manager’s boss finds out that you’ve been scanning cards and decides to do something about it. Nearly in tears, she tries to tell him how she gets through the day, and he can see her struggle. He decides to help her and give her more challenging assignments, and also trains her in the basics of business. But there is no work for her. Nobody in the office will take her seriously, and will continue to pile on their mundane tasks on her. She is again left stranded. Should she quit? She has spent over a year at the place, and is still being told that she has no decision-making power. She has no path to a future in the firm.

Around her, the men who joined after her, are welcomed warmly into their teams, assigned challenging work, dispatched to training programmes, taught ways to improve their skills and are shown a path to a future in the firm.

Drifting, with no path or set list of tasks, is a brain-sucking place to be in. I chose to  listen to podcasts to cling to a last shred of intelligence in me. I think I hung on to it.

To anyone reading this-fight against drifting-young women, fight even harder. I didn’t. I still haven’t worked up the energy or the courage to fight. I hope you do.

P.S: I say women specifically because I can speak as one. I wouldn’t claim to know what is like to fight any other kind of bias.