To everyone who doesn’t care what I have between my legs
How I found my place as a woman and realized a “toxic work environment” is actually dangerous disguised sexism
I’ve always seen and experienced sexism — as any woman, I am sure. But I did not always know it was sexism, and to be honest I still sometimes don’t realize it right away when it happens.
It’s not like you enter an office and see a sign “women’s opinions here are not to be heard”. We all know it’s the opposite. Everywhere we look it seems we live in this unicorn paradise where women’s voices are heard (if we don’t speak that much), companies are hiring women to leadership positions (if the final decision is not ours) and we can achieve everything we want (if we pick from the options previously displayed). Just remember not to complain.
I blame turning 30. Yes, I’m just one more millennial girl, filled with hopes and dreams (kidding, they are gone), plants (that keep dying) and a dog owner (that one is fine). I’m also married. To a man, yes, it happens. But the point here is: everyday I can see more and more the small drops — sometimes splashes — of disguised sexism surrounding women. The unseen, not obvious sexism. I now know that if one thinks “hum, was that sexist?”, it was.
I recently decided to take a break. Stop working, redefine goals, experiment new things, maybe go back to old ones. And the reason was not the pandemic, it was (wow!) sexism. It is a privilege, I know, that I was able to decide and take it further. But because of that, I decided that my place is to scream and put the sexism I’ve experienced into a billboard to help as many women as possible to put a stop into the unseen things men do to take us down.
It would be easier, for sure, if all sexism had a tag on it. Abuse, catcalling, jokes, unequal payment.
The ones we see everyday, that we are in the process of learning how to deal with, the ones we can prove (if we are lucky enough). But what do we do with disguised sexism? When you don’t get a promotion because “you still need more experience”, when your male colleague gets a leadership position in his first job after university. When they don’t let you speak in a meeting, when you are ignored, when they explain your job to you without having a clue about what you do.
I have around 10 years of experience working with content, marketing and brand development. Only now I look back and regret so many times I should’ve screamed. I think of key moments of my career where I felt down and I replace myself with a man figure. Would that have happened to him? The answer is always no.
There were, of course, obvious moments. One time I heard that I had to go to a specific meeting, where I had nothing to say, because “the client liked girls who looked like me”. I took it to HR, and heard that “oh, men are like that”. The CEO had said that. I didn’t take any further action — no LinkedIn post, no billboard with the screenshot attached, no lawyer. I went to the meeting, I was alone with the client in the room for one hour. I felt like shit, but I didn’t do anything about it.
That was one obvious case, among others — like hearing I should “hire a man to my team to balance hormones” and that it was a pity that a female colleague was leaving the company because “she works like a man”. Things I could easily point out and say “this is sexist, this is abuse”.
In many other moments, I only felt injustice, a toxic work environment, but I could not point or prove the sexism. Still, I knew it was there somehow.
Fast-forward a couple of years, I left the company and decided to make a personal life change to take care of me. I moved to another country aiming for a better work-life balance (the cliché). I wanted to start a new chapter in my career. So I got to the advertised Disney of the working environment: the Startup.
Flat hierarchies where white men will only disrespect you during flexible working hours, a room with a Playstation used by men while you work, amazing growth opportunities for white men whose whole experience is a couple of LinkedIn influencer posts they’ve read, fresh fruits to eat while you cry in the bathroom and dogs allowed in the office (this one is nice though).
I must say, during the almost year and a half spent at the “amazing company in the heart of Berlin”, I’ve never felt so disrespected and distrusted, having my experience undermined at almost every interaction. I started truly doubting my own capabilities, questioning my experience, and that’s when it hit me. I was always secure with my work, but out of a sudden I felt like the dog in space GIF.
Simple interactions, not easily seen as sexism, happened everyday. I had to explain every little decision I took. Phrases like “this is not what our clients want to see” (when I had data proving it), “this is not a website best-practice”, “this is not what we should post on social media”, “that’s not how a CTA should be placed”, “ask the male developer to teach you basic Project Management” — needless to say all these came from inexperienced men outside the marketing department. The same was not happening to other male decision-making colleagues, obviously.
“I don’t care what someone has between their legs” — a proud CEO beautifully pointing out he is not sexist
In a meeting with the leadership team (I’ll let you guess their gender) about company values (I was the Brand Manager), I was going through the importance of Diversity. Well, only the fact that someone needs to explain the importance of Diversity is already, choosing carefully the word, interesting. I was abruptly interrupted by the CEO, who proudly said he “doesn’t care what someone has between their legs” and went on a monologue about what really matters is how competent the people he hires are. We didn’t have any woman in a leadership position, and, obviously, no efforts into real diversity in the company.
Although I had achieved the “work-life balance” I was aiming for (9 to 5, no extra time) , I was still crying after meetings, I could not sleep well anymore, had panic attacks before certain interactions. I noticed the women in the marketing department had to work double, and had to constantly prove why they were doing what they were doing. Now it would look like any of us should do that, right? That’s “strategy”. You explain the context, include data, go through the actions to get to your goal.
But imagine you are cooking and you have a child beside you. They ask “what are you cooking?”, you say “pasta”. “Why pasta?”, “well, it tastes good and will give us energy for the day”. They go on, “I don’t like pasta, it doesn’t give me energy”, “ok, I’ll change it to rice”. They continue in the kitchen, “why do you put this amount of water”, “well, that’s how you cook rice”, and they go “well, that’s not what I’ve read”, “yes, but I cook rice everyday”, “no, you should look into the video I saw about this cartoon who makes rice”. “Alright, let’s try it your way” — it doesn’t work. Who gets blamed because you don’t have lunch?
That’s what I went through everyday, and what I’m sure many women have to face in their lives, not only at work. I started going back to past experiences, looking for similarities, trying to get to the heart of the issue. I realized there were infinite moments where I felt disrespected, which I didn’t see as sexism, but now imagining a man in my place, I am sure it wouldn’t have happened like that.
One time, years ago, I had a conflict with a male colleague. I found out the leadership had asked HR to go to my previous company and ask for references, to learn if I had had conflicts there as well. They never asked for references for the male colleague, although we were both new. I kept thinking what I had done wrong, why this happened to me. Well, I was a woman. (At the end, it turned out well for me as I had great references).
What I mean is, this disguised sexism is dangerous. I decided to leave this workplace and want to tell all women who feel like this that being constantly questioned, doubted, ignored, interrupted is not only “a toxic work environment”. It is pure sexism, and it has to be brought to light.
We are still far from reaching equality, no matter how many women we have in leadership positions, how many laws against unequal payment are signed, if disguised sexism is not fought.
I decided it is now my place to point the finger at that, share my experience and let no man take amazing women down.
And to whoever writes Startup job descriptions: please include “Psychological Support” at least.
