Every month or so, a dozen of us – women in our 20s and 30s – would gather and talk about our jobs. It was a fight club, except without the fighting and without the men.
The rules were simple: what was said in the group stayed in the group. Membership was based not on merit but on vagina. Once you were in, you were in: embraced and respected, encouraged with fist bumps and cat videos, but no cattiness.
We were smart, ambitious women striving to “make it” in New York, a city that eats the soft alive. We had grown up in the era of girl power, when it was expected that girls could be and do whatever they wanted. The gender war, we thought, was a battle won long ago. And yet each of us was stumbling into gender landmines at seemingly every turn, often ones we didn’t even know existed.
There were times we’d gather in smaller, informal settings as needed: if one of us had a crisis, an upcoming job interview, an impending mental breakdown, or looming unemployment – which nearly every one of us had faced at one point or another.
But usually we simply hung out, ate, shot the shit, and talked about work.
There was Nola, a project manager at an advertising agency, who was leading a top-level client meeting when one of her male colleagues asked if she wouldn’t mind grabbing some coffee for the group. Stunned, she found herself trudging to the kitchen to complete the task. She returned to the meeting with a coffee stain down the front of her blouse and daggers in her eyes. There was documentary film-maker Tanya, whose idea was handed to a male colleague to produce. She was livid, but stayed quiet, not wanting to be viewed as too “emotional” or a poor team player.
I was working at Tumblr at the time. I’d been hired along with another editor; we would be co-editors, I was told. Which was sort of true, except that I had accepted the job before we had finalised my title. I was informed, casually, that he’d chosen the title of editor-in-chief. As in: the highest possible title a person in our field could hold. (I’d gone for “executive editor”.) I had been sneak-attacked with a surprise boss, and that boss was a dude. People looked at him, not me, in meetings.
Recognising sexism is harder than it once was. Like the micro-aggressions that people of colour endure daily – racism masked as subtle insults or dismissals – today’s sexism is insidious, casual, even friendly. It is a kind of can’t-put-your-finger-on-it behaviour that isn’t necessarily intentional or conscious. Sometimes women exhibit it, too. None of that makes it any less damaging.
On a day-to-day level, it’s being mistaken for the admin when you’re actually the one in charge. It’s being talked over in a group setting, over and over again, or having your idea attributed to someone else (more often than not a man). It’s following all the rules, leaning all the way in, and still having to worry about being perceived as “too aggressive” when you display the behaviour required of a person in charge. It’s having to work twice as hard to prove you’re once as good, or three, four, five times as hard if you happen to be female and of colour. It is the fact that women are still more likely than men to feel like imposters and that, when women rise up through the ranks, we like them less. Some call this form of sexism Death By A Thousand Cuts. Taken individually, the affronts don’t seem like that big a deal. But over time, and collectively, they are fatal.
In an ideal scenario, we’d have policies in place to ensure that our workplaces are equal – and hopefully we’ll get there. But even if we are working on a political level toward systemic change (wage equality for instance), even if every pop star in the world proclaims herself a feminist (thank you, Bey), most of us still have to roll out of bed each morning feeling relatively powerless and face the mundane, subtle bullshit that confronts us on a daily basis. Diversity training doesn’t solve being the default “coffee girl”. We need weapons of our own, then. We must be armed with tactics to chip away at it from the outside and the inside. We need skills, hacks, battle tactics to fight for ourselves while also advocating for wider change. But this is not a solo task. We need other women by our side. So let’s start by linking arms.
Know the enemy: behaviour to watch out for
The enemy: the Himitator
He’s the guy in your creative writing class who restates your interpretation of a poem in an attempt to clarify what you said, but the teacher remembers him as the one who said it; the colleague who echoes your lesson plan, but then somehow gets seen as the innovator. He is not necessarily stealing your ideas outright, but in repeating them he gets the credit for them anyway.
The fight move: confront
Don’t be afraid to confront your Himitator – maybe he actually thinks he’s doing you a favour. If he’s your boss, try asking for advice on how you could convey your ideas better on the first round, because you’ve noticed he tends to restate them. If he’s a colleague, tell him you’re worried his attempt to help you might be backfiring. At the end of the day, giving rightful credit doesn’t just help you: it makes your creditor look good, too.
The fight move: shimitate
Move a preposition and a noun, and let the games begin.
You: “Given our first-quarter performance, I think it’s important we devote more resources to marketing.”
Bro: “You, know, Bob – marketing did really well in Q1. We should spend more money there.”
You: “Yup. As I said three seconds ago, it makes sense to increase our marketing budget.”
Bro: “Blah blah blah – my recommendation is that we double down on our spend.”
You: “I’m glad you’re in agreement with me, Dan. Since we’re all on the same page here, I’m going to let the marketing team know we’ll be increasing their budgets.”
The enemy: the menstruhater
The menstruhater assumes that any time a direct assertion comes out of a woman’s mouth it must be “that time of the month.” The Menstruhater is Donald Trump to Megyn Kelly, when he suggested that the Fox News anchor must have been “bleeding out of her whatever” because she’d dared ask about his verbal attacks on women. But he also goes as far back as the early days of space flight, when menstruation was part of the official Nasa argument – in the 1960s – for why women shouldn’t become astronauts. These days, he’s also likely to emerge in the form of that mostly likable guy who comes up to you after a meeting where you expressed displeasure with something, and asks, “Are you OK? You seemed really upset.”
The fight move: call him out
“Nope, Paul, I’m not on my period, but your sales reports look to be bleeding this company dry.”
“Oh, wait, Sam, I’m confused. Do you mean the time of the month when I conduct your performance review?”
The fight move: keep calm and carry on
Men gain professional status when they act angry, viewed as “passionate” about the job, while women lose status. So take a deep breath. Speak deliberately. Your anger is valid, but channel it into strategic manoeuvres. Don’t give him an easy way to say, “See?”
The enemy: the Hoverer
Like clockwork, he would appear at my desk – the boss who could come up with any number of reasons to talk to me. As far as I could tell, his main objective was to casually stare down my shirt. The Hoverer is a neutered version of the creepy Mad Men–era ass-grabber that your mother or grandmother had to contend with, and while he may not actually cross a line, he’s always about two minutes away from asking you out (and if it weren’t for HR departments and sexual harassment policies, he probably would). He makes you uncomfortable – and you want him gone.
The fight move: the brush-off
Do not make yourself available for conversation. Plug in headphones. Look away. Call your own voicemail. If you must engage, keep your conversations short and say you have to get back to work.
The fight move: see something, say something
Keep a record of each and every creepy interaction, with the time, date and circumstances. If it continues, report him to HR.
Know thyself: female self-sabotage
It’s a strange feeling to believe at your very core that you’re good at something, yet simultaneously doubt that very thing is true. I never remembered feeling that way in school, but six months into my first job, doubt crept in and became a constant voice in the back of my head. Soon, it seemed to be taking over.
It began as I watched the guys in my intern class get promoted into staff writing jobs, while I was still a part-time temp, babysitting for my editor’s kid on weekends and working nights at a bar. It continued after I was hired on staff, even as I outpaced those same guys. It caused me to stumble over my words in meetings, certain I sounded like an idiot, or offer to get the coffee or take the notes, so that at least I’d be visibly contributing.
Amanda, a research assistant at a nonprofit organisation, was told she was doing an amazing job in her review, which would have conceivably been followed by a salary bump had she not interrupted her boss to say, “If you’re happy, then that’s all the raise I need.” (Yes, really.) Maybe it’s a sense that we still don’t deserve to have careers. It’s that little voice of self-doubt that chips away at your confidence; the feeling that even when you get the promotion, you’re undeserving, unprepared; or the sense that one mistake means you should probably just give up.
Everyone gets in their own way sometimes – men, too. What is essential is recognising when it’s happening and becoming aware of it, so that we can find a solution – or talk ourselves off the ledge.
The saboteur: the Humble Bragger
She’s #blessed to have been granted a full scholarship, “grateful” (and “surprised!”) to have been promoted, and feels #lucky – not proud – to have won a prestigious award. What she’s trying to do is inform the world of her achievements – or, in other words, self-promote. The problem with the Humble Bragger is that she hesitates to brag directly, instead masking her pride in faux humility. She may not even be conscious of it, but the Humble Bragger knows that nobody likes a woman who boasts. But she also knows that too much modesty will undermine her. So she’s come up with a system to attribute her accomplishments to luck, so that we still like her. Which might be OK if it worked, but it doesn’t.
The fight move: don’t deprecate
One study found that people who bragged openly (“I’m the life of the party”) were actually more likable than those who made self-deprecating claims (“I’m never the life of the party”). Women are deprecated enough already. Leave the self-deprecation to the men who can afford it.
The fight move: just the facts
State facts, not opinions, when you’re talking about yourself. As in, “I programmed 79,387 lines of code this month”, not, “I’m a really good programmer”. While you’re at it, try to frame your accomplishments in a way that compare you with you, not with somebody else. So: “I programmed 79,387 lines of code, which is 10,000 more lines than I programmed last quarter”, not, “I programmed 79,387 lines of code, which is 10,000 more than Sasha.”
The fight move: find a boast bitch
She’s your female hype man. She boasts for you, you boast for her; boasting for each other makes you both look better, yet neither of you is perceived as bragging about yourself. And no, I’m not making this up: research shows that having someone boast on your behalf is effective even if it’s clear that person is biased (like your mother).
The saboteur: the Ever-Faithful
The workplace isn’t a convent, or even a Scientology centre. Last time I checked, faith wasn’t paying the bills or buying your next round. And yet the Ever-Faithful is real: that person who believes that by putting her head down and doing a great job, by being loyal to the company, by simply having faith in the system, she will succeed. She’s the employee who doesn’t pursue another job offer because she wants to show her commitment, but then never gets that promotion she was hoping for. The merit system can work. But let’s be clear: there is no divine providence in the workplace.
The fight move: ask for what you want
Not the neutered, self-compromised version you think you can get. People, especially women, often don’t ask for what they want, which is one reason the wage gap still exists. Just consider asking for what it actually is that you want (a raise! An extra day of holiday! A new chair because your back is fucking killing you!) exactly as you want it.
The fight move: faith no more
Track your accomplishments so you’re relying on facts, not faith, when you ask for what you want. Even if you aren’t ready to quit, keep a log, so you have it when that blind faith runs out.
The saboteur: the Burnout
The Burnout exists in a world in which superhuman-like stamina is often required of women. Men burn out, too, but not as much: in one study of 18- to 44-year-olds, women were almost twice as likely as men to say they felt very tired, exhausted or worn out most days. And for women with children? When the first shift ends, the second one begins: kids, laundry, dinner, homework – all things that still disproportionately fall on women’s shoulders.
The fight move: phone-free zone
“Work will happen 24 hours a day, 365 days a year if you let it,” the Hollywood showrunner Shonda Rhimes has said. So set boundaries: when you’ll leave the office, the time you stop checking email. If you have the ability to do so, state these limits publicly so they set a precedent for others. Here’s what Rhimes’s email signature states: “Please note: I will not engage in work emails after 7pm or on weekends. IF I AM YOUR BOSS, MAY I SUGGEST: PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE.”
The fight move: max’n’relax
The less time you give yourself to recuperate, just to relax, the greater your burnout risk. Stop feeling guilty for going for a walk on your lunch break. Make time for you, and for the things that will help you keep your stress levels in check.
Booby traps: office stereotypes and how to hack ’em
Being a boss of any kind is hard, but being a boss as a woman is like an obstacle course, a maze of stereotypes, landmines and invisible booby traps surprising you at every turn. Oh, she asked you twice for something? What a nag. She made a demand? She’s such a diva. Then there are the challenges of simply trying to find a leadership style that works: not too authoritative, or you’ll be deemed unfeminine, but not too feminine, or you’re suddenly soft, not capable of making the tough calls.
And on and on and on . . .
The best thing we can do is sharpen our eyes to spot the traps and the hidden biases we are statistically almost guaranteed to face.
The trap: “Bitchy, bossy, too ambitious”
In early 2016, if you were to google “Bernie Sanders” and “ambition”, you would have found a host of articles about his “ambitious plans” and other posts commending his professional determination. But in the same web search for Hillary Clinton, the top hits would focus on her “lifelong” personal ambition: “unbridled”, even “pathological”. Behold the catch-22 of women and power. To be successful, a woman must be liked; but to be liked, she must not be too successful. We may all know that women are perfectly capable as leaders. Yet on a deep, unconscious level we still find the image of an ambitious woman hard to swallow. For hundreds of years, it’s been culturally ingrained in us that men lead and women nurture. So when a woman turns around and exhibits “male” traits – ambition, assertion, sometimes even aggression– we somehow see her as not ladylike enough, and thus we like her less.
The hack: get your sexism in check
All of us – yes, really – are a little bit sexist (racist, too). It’s what scholars call “unconscious bias”, and each of us has it, the result of cognitive shortcuts made by our brains. If we acknowledge our inner sexist, we can check it. So, the next time an ambitious woman rubs you up the wrong way, ask yourself: would I dislike her if she were a man?
The hack: make female power the norm
Use sweetness, ambition or a combination of the two to get the fuck in power. Make ambition a female trait. Chip away at that glass ceiling and don’t apologise for it. And when you’ve trailblazed your way to the top, remember to bring other women with you.
The trap: “She’s too nice to lead the team”
Ebonee was everything a political campaign might want in an intern. She was smart, committed, unwavering. Yet when it was announced that the campaign would hire one internfor a staff position, she didn’t get the job. As the campaign manager put it, “Ebonee is too nice. She can’t be taken seriously.”
Being nice shouldn’t undermine the perception of a person’s competence, yet when it comes to women, we tend to view the two traits as inversely related – a surplus of one leading to the belief you’re deficient in the other.
The hack: sweet like arsenic
Use niceness to your advantage by mastering the art of being nice and tough at once. Cloak your demands in sweetness, but make the demand.
The hack: watch your words
Cut the word “nice” from your vocabulary, along with all those other nurturing words we use to describe women (“kind”, “helpful”, “a team player”). Research has found that those words cause people to be viewed as less qualified. Next time you have the urge to describe your female colleague as “sympathetic”, try one of these “male” words instead: independent, confident, intelligent, fair.
The trap: “Am I confirming the stereotype?”
So you get hired by a company that likes to tout its commitment to “diversity”, yet you are one of just a few women on the team. You start to wonder if they’re looking at you funny, scrutinising you because you’re the only “other” in the room. One of them questions your work. Another asks, either innocently or not, “Where are you from?”
The pressure builds up and you start to second-guess yourself. You’re angry but you’re also anxious: you simply cannot fuck this up or you will prove the stereotype right. Then you make a small mistake and suddenly you begin to spiral. It’s a combination of imposter syndrome (that phenomenon where high-achieving women and minorities feel like they don’t belong) and stereotype threat (the fear that you will confirm the worst stereotypes about yourself– performing worse as a result), with actual sexism and racism thrown in (yes, often women and minorities really are held to a higher standard– their mistakes noticed more and remembered longer).
The hack: believe your own hype
Writing affirmations is one way to do this – they’re shown to boost confidence and improve performance. Writing down your successes is another method: so you can look back on them every time you feel a hint of self-doubt coming on.
The hack: underest-him-ation
Use any underestimation of your talent to your gain. Slay the assignment, win the negotiation, run intellectual circles around your opponent while they sit there trying to catch their breath. Then swivel around in your chair and say, ever so politely, “Boom.” (Also, keep a record of all the assignments you’ve slayed, so that when your boss expresses hesitation about your readiness for a promotion, you can attach it in an email to him. Subject line: Bitches get shit done.)
There was a brief period in 2014 when a few of us in the Fight Club seemed to hit rock bottom at once. I had been dumped after an eight-year relationship, gone freelance, and was now working out of my apartment, AKA my bed. There was one particular afternoon when I was coaxed out of my house by some Fight Club members for a sanity check. Three of us met at a cafe in the East Village, and spent 10 minutes talking about our bowel movements (we all had stress-induced IBS).
Amanda, a comedy writer, had – after months of searching for a new job while she toiled in a shitty one – quit without another one lined up. She was “free,” finally – but also not living for “free,” and so she was desperate for work. Asie, a set makeup artist and stylist, was four months pregnant and struggling to muster that enthusiastic “soooo excited, the gift of motherhood!” grin you’re apparently supposed to have. She was happy, but she was also terrified of what a baby meant for her career. Already she was too nauseated to work. We bought Amanda lunch, and Amanda fanned Asie with a menu when she thought she might vomit all over our table. Asie told me I needed to wash my hair. And then we burst out laughing.
This was the beauty of the Fight Club. Just as we could rely on one another for support when things were good, we could commiserate when things were bad. Many in the group were successful – but nobody is successful all the time.
Six years after it started, we could see that there was a lot of shit, but there were also a lot of victories. Negotiating raises. Boasting on one another’s behalf. We realised that the thing we were complaining about was actually doable – even conquerable – with the right support. Sometimes we just needed to vent, to laugh, and to go back to work a little lighter the next day. “That was the air in our lungs,” explained Asie, now with a 10-month-old daughter, the Fight Club’s youngest member. “It was going to a bar and laughing. Texting when ill or poor or disappointed. Or paying for someone’s lunch, because she quit her miserable sexist job.
“It was knowing we were not alone.”
Finally, embrace the tears
Here are a few places I have recently cried:
- In bed.
- In the bathroom of my office, crouched on the floor.
- In a payphone that reeked of pee.
- In front of the mirror trying to put on makeup, but crying every time the mascara wand hit my eye, resulting in black streaks that looked sort of sexy.
- While watching a YouTube clip I later realised was branded content for Microsoft. Now I’m more depressed.
- On every form of public transport: planes, cars, trains, subways, the bus, taxi. Also walking and cycling.
- Outside my therapist’s office, which is next door to an STD clinic, which always felt like a very public statement.
- In the shower, sitting down, wondering if I was going to get some kind of terrible vaginal infection from touching the porcelain.
Naturally, because I am apparently not only a frequent crier (I had a bad breakup, OK?), but also a professional journalist, I started keeping notes on everything I could find out about crying. There’s a whole lot of advice out there on the topic, most of it speculative, telling you to avoid the tears.
Cry too much, and you’re too emotional, your intellect and business acumen clouded by emotion. But if something sad happens and you don’t cry: stone cold bitch.
There’s plenty of advice on how to allegedly stop yourself crying: jutting out your jaw, drinking water, pinching yourself (really?), or even doing push-ups.
What that actually means is that we end up crouching in the stairs, blaming our allergies. Or we simply run outside and do what my friend Alfia calls “blinking one out” before walking back in and pretending like nothing happened.
Or… here’s a wild idea: we could just cry.
We could cry, because sometimes it happens, because everyone can get over it, because we’re grown-ass professional women who have good work to stand on, and because the other women in our office have most definitely cried, too.
We could cry because crying is good for you: it lowers cholesterol and helps high blood pressure, boosting your immune system and your mood.
We could cry because – guess what? – our tear ducts are anatomically shallower, leading to spillover, which makes our crying more visible.
Or we could cry because crying is sometimes our way of expressing frustration, and because work can be frustrating, and because, when men get frustrated at work, they get angry – and nobody writes articles about that. So, yes cry I tell you. Cry publicly.
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