I know the article has nothing in it that will seem new to feminist blogging fans, but I really liked this piece in Newsweek about the continuing problems facing women in the workplace 40 years after the landmark lawsuit against the magazine for sex discrimination. It’s a great synthesis of the various ways that women with the talent and skills to compete with men are being held back, and they avoid the tendency common in the mainstream media to blame women themselves. For instance, they note that women are far less likely to assert themselves and ask for things from their bosses, but they also acknowledge that the reason for this is not that women are weak, but because of sexism. Women are far more likely to be considered bitchy than men for asserting themselves.
And I think I learned something new, actually. Or had a new perspective I hadn’t thought about before, because I’ve never faced what they describe:
In a highly sexualized, post-PC world, navigating gender roles at work is more confusing than ever. The sad truth is that when we do see women rise to the top, we wonder: was it purely their abilities, or did it have something to do with their looks? If a man takes an interest in our work, we can’t help but think about the male superior who advised “using our sexuality” to get ahead, or the manager who winkingly asked one of us, apropos of nothing, to “bake me cookies.” One young colleague recalls being teased about the older male boss who lingered near her desk. “What am I supposed to do with that? Assume that’s the explanation for any accomplishments? Assume my work isn’t valuable?” she asks. “It gets in your head, which is the most insidious part.”
I correct myself. I have in fact faced this prejudice. When I joined Pandagon, there were very few female bloggers in the top ranks, and the biggest one was assumed by most readers to be a man (Digby). It’s hard to believe it now, but back in 2005, bringing a female blogger onto a blog like Pandagon was really unusual, and so Jesse and I both got some kind of weird attitudes from some people about his choice to ask me to join the blog. We’ve joked before about how a lot of people outright assumed that I had used my feminine wiles to lure Jesse into giving me this spot, but the mundane reality is that we had never met when he asked, and I don’t think that we even knew what each other looked like. (Pictures weren’t as big a deal online then as now.) To make the whole situation more frustrating, these insinuations that Jesse had ulterior motives of some sort rested right next to contradictory assumptions (usually made by fanatical wingnut readers) that I was some sort of ugly beast. The sexist assumption that women are “for” sex with men underlies both accusations/insinuations. If you’re good-looking, you’re seen as somehow exploiting men’s sexual interest, but if you’re not, it’s assumed you only work hard because your true purpose in life as a sex object has been taken from you and you’re bitter.