She`s an experienced attorney, a sixth-year associate at one of New York City`s largest and most prestigious law firms. She brings a male junior associate to an important negotiating session with other lawyers (whom neither she nor her colleague has met) so he can learn something. The opposing lawyers and clients, all men, enter the room. They immediately and automatically gravitate to the male associate. She is virtually ignored. When they are seated around the conference table and the woman begins to conduct the meeting, they are shocked into an embarrassed silence that shouted, ”You mean, she`s not the secretary?”
A middle manager in a technically oriented company is at a meeting. Her boss, emphasizing a particular point in the informal language typical of a shirtsleeves working session, says, ”Damn!” Suddenly he interrupts himself, turns to her and apologizes. The meeting grinds to a halt as everyone looks at her, the only woman present.
A woman securities analyst is interviewing for a job, and the senior partner asks her what her husband does for a living. She tells him. Then he asks her what he did before that, and before that. ”I was very angry,” the analyst now recalls. ”I wanted to say, `Well, what does the little woman do?` ” But a job was at stake. And the senior partner thought the questions were relevant. ”He wanted to put me in a social and economic context,” she says, ”because I think somewhere inside him he still defines women by the men they associate with.” She suppressed her anger and got the job.
Almost every woman is familiar with these kinds of male behavior-stereotypi ng, exclusion and condescension. These and other forms of sexism are not as blatant as the outright sex discrimination and sexual harassment that have led to court cases being filed since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act took effect in 1964.
But taken together, the gestures and remarks-sometimes unwitting, sometimes deliberate-form a pattern of subtle sexism that prevents women at all levels from achieving the success for which they`re qualified. It`s a kind of discrimination that often wears a cloak of sensitivity and deference to women, and causes them a discomfort so vague that they may be unable at first to recognize it or articulate it.
Sharon Howard, an Atlanta-based attorney who specializes in union law and race-discrimination cases, has given a lot of thought to the way she`s treated in the courtroom: ”Interruptions, speaking to you as if you`re a child, showing deference to the other (male) attorneys. . . . It`s all very subtle, and it`s nothing you can go to court on, and I don`t know how you can change it, because they don`t know they`re doing it themselves.”
The unconscious aspect of subtle sexism is especially bewildering to women who thought they`d won the battle for sexual equality in the workplace. In 1987 women held nearly 40 percent of all executive, managerial and administrative jobs, for example, more than double the percentage of those jobs in 1972. And yet women still earn just 70 cents for every dollar earned by men, and they`re simply not making it into upper management. Subtle sexism is part of the problem.
Lisa Hicks, an assistant director at Catalysts, a nonprofit research and advisory group in New York that works with corporations to promote women`s career development, says, ”In many ways, especially at a higher level, sexism is subtle. It`s unintentional, it`s unconscious, and it`s rooted in traditional attitudes. One reason women have not advanced in senior managerial positions is that the older male managers feel some discomfort with women in those roles. ”A woman doesn`t fit their image of what a senior manager looks like.”
Kathleen Neville, a vice president of the nonprofit group WAGES (Women`s Action for Good Employment Standards), has been counseling victims of sexual harassment and discrimination-overt and subtle-for six years. ”It shocked me when I started,” she says. ”These were women in high-paying positions, and they`re still treated as though, when they walk into the board room, they`re less important than their male subordinates, who are addressed first. . . . I`ve done some counseling of women (who work in) coal mines in Pennsylvania, and they see it too, but they`re not so surprised. Those of us in executive positions are shocked, but we shouldn`t be.”
In many cases of subtle sexism, women are battling stereotypes they thought had been defeated long ago. Especially in fields that traditionally have been male-dominated, women still are not accorded that automatic acceptance in their work roles that men enjoy. Having switched to real estate law from tax law, the woman attorney who was mistaken for a secretary says,
”The reception females get as tax attorneys is much cooler than the reception females get as real estate attorneys . . . perhaps because women brokers have already tested the waters for many generations.”
All too often, subtle sexism can have direct economic impact. The woman whose boss was afraid to use profanity in front of her recalls attending a conference at which her vice president discussed the results of a survey in which employees rated the 10 most important things about their jobs. Her department put ”personal enrichment” and ”opportunities for advancement”
above salary and benefits, while the rest of the company rated salary and benefits higher. ”A man in the audience suggested, `Maybe it`s because we have more women in this department, and salary isn`t as important to women, because they are the second income in their families.` The women in the audience booed and hissed. If I worked for him and he had only so much bonus money to give out, I would be worried.”
The stereotyping becomes most crippling when it comes to that most traditional of women`s roles: motherhood. The real estate lawyer, who works four days a week so she can spend the fifth day with her child, has been told she won`t be considered for partnership in her firm for that reason. She willingly accepts the sacrifice, but it`s not easy to accept the attitude that accompanies it.
”I was discussing with a partner the fact that we`re going to have to deal with women having children,” she says. ”I said, `You`re going to have to make some kind of part-time policy, because it`s going to become a bigger, not a lesser, problem.` And the partner said, `Maybe this will have a backlash. It used to be we wanted to hire good-looking women because we thought that it presented a nice face for the firm. Now, however, maybe we`ll just hire ugly women, who we don`t think will have children and present that problem.` ”
Other cases of sexism can be unintentional, if no less disturbing. At a company in the midst of a corporate takeover, the male vice president took his two male managers to lunch, leaving the woman manager behind to wonder whether it was time to circulate her resume. She decided instead to ask the vice president directly about the reason for the exclusion. Surprised at her concern, he replied: ”Oh, it has nothing to do with you or your performance. I`m just more comfortable with men.”
What complicates instances of subtle discrimination and harassment even more, says Kathleen Neville, is that their definition differs from one woman to the next. ”We all have a line,” she says, ”and if someone crosses that line, we make a personal decision that we`ve been violated professionally and personally, and we take some action.”
In Neville`s case, the offense was blatant and actionable: In 1981 she was threatened with the loss of her job if she didn`t sleep with her boss; she was fired when she complained to his superior. She sued, and the courts ruled that there had been a clear instance of harassment, but that it was unrelated to the termination of her employment. Neville was not awarded any money. Her book, ”Costly Encounters: The Price of Sexual Harassment,” is due out next winter.
Though most cases of subtle sexism are not actionable, the courts are expanding their definition of sexual harassment. In the first sexual harassment case to reach the Supreme Court, the court found in favor of Mechelle Vinson, a woman whose boss intimidated her into repeated sexual encounters, and that 1986 decision has paved the way for other cases claiming far more subtle forms of discrimination and harassment. As Neville explains, the decision ”put employers on notice that they`re liable (for sexual harassment) whether or not they are aware of it.”
Jane Dolkart, a Washington, D.C., attorney specializing in employment law, is encouraged by the 1986 decision and looks forward to continued legal precedents.
At the same time, Dolkart prefers to avoid litigation. ”I always tell my clients they need to realize they`ll go through hell in court. Some people may be better off moving on than fighting.”
Neville, who was in the midst of a promising career in television broadcasting when her boss harassed her, is also wary of going through the court system. ”Litigation is so costly and time-consuming, and it eats up crucial career years. I was in litigation for a total of seven years, and I know how much it costs a woman, and I know what it cost my career.”
For a woman who would like to stay in her current job, the solution to sexist treatment can be as subtle as the offense.
Atlanta attorney Sharon Howard, for one, has come up with one strategy that makes her feel better. ”I stop attorneys who call me `dear.` It happened yesterday. I was negotiating a settlement and I made some demands, and I guess he didn`t like that, and he said, `Look, dear,` and I said, `Miss Howard.` ” But she`s not entirely comfortable with that solution. ”You also have to be careful,” she admits. ”If you start doing that too much, they brand you as a being a feminist or carrying a chip on your shoulder or being paranoid, and that`s dangerous.”
For other women, the only way to play may be to try to become one of the boys, the securities analyst learned: ”I was negotiating with two managers-who typically call each other Peter and Tom. When I walked into the room, they sat next to each other and one said, `Tommy, what do you think, Tommy?`
(Then the other would say,) `Well, Pete.` I wasn`t going to divide them-that was the message-`We`re going to be wrong, but we`re going to be wrong together, and you`re not going to play one of us off against the other, because this is Tommy and I`m Pete. You don`t play the game. You don`t have a uniform.` ”
How did she handle it? She got coaching from someone who knew the rules:
her husband. ”He said, `You`re going to lose this, but it`s just a battle, and at the end of the battle you have to let them know that you know how to play the game. So you lean across the coffee table and you say, `OK, guys, I lost round one, but I`ll be back.` ”
She took his advice. ”As soon as I said that,” she recalls, ”they were astonished, went on to the next subject and started joking with me because it was comfortable. But it was not comfortable to me.”
Whatever women may accomplish one-on-one, the most effective agent for change is the company itself. As companies realize they`ll be held accountable for the kind of hostile work environment created by subtle and not-so-subtle sexism, they`re beginning to try to change attitudes.
In the last few years, says Lisa Hicks of Catalyst, many companies have instituted gender-awareness programs or supplemented existing programs that were started in the 1970s to educate managers about affirmative action. ”For more and more companies,” she says, ”it`s in their bottom-line interest (to combat subtle sexism) just because of demographics. By the year 2000, women, minorities and immigrants will constitute 80 percent of new entrants to the work force.”
In the face of such statistics, companies are rewriting their sexual harassment and sex-discrimination policies and hiring consultants to run training seminars and encounter sessions.
The most satisfying way to put a damper on subtle sexism, of course, is to become the boss. Barbara Corday, a co-creator of television`s ”Cagney & Lacey” and a former president of Columbia Pictures Television, says the view from the top is different.
”When through sheer luck and determination, you reach a point where you become one of those people who cannot be left out, it`s in (the men`s)
interest to talk to you. (When you`re) the president of a division of a major corporation in America, they can`t not invite you to a meeting or to lunch. It`s not that people become any nicer or any better, it`s just that it`s no longer in their interest to treat you badly.”
