Catching up on a pile of newspapers (new social media may have captivated me – sent my 1000th tweet on the weekend – but a stack of papers still gives me a thrill), I came across an article titled ‘The only way is up’ by Fenella Souter in The Age Good Weekend (May 1, 2010). I had to read it through a few times because I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Rebecca Smith – fake name because she’s “keen to keep her job”– is a junior associate in a small city law firm. She wants to advance in the company. To do that she watches cricket or tennis with the men in the boardroom, swears, talks badly about people, drinks with the men and doesn’t leave work early. They like her being “one of the boys”. But see what happens next.
At a commemorative dinner recently, she was fixing her collar and caught one of the senior partners starting at her across the table.
“Stop staring at my collar”, she chided.
“I’m not staring at your collar,” he said. “I’m staring at your tits.”
She was taken aback, but not astonished. There’s a steady stream of comments like that in the firm, she says. Usually the women try to ignore it or take it as a joke. “Mostly, the men don’t mean anything by it. They just say the first thing that comes into their heads,” Rebecca explains mildly.
Does she ever object? “One time I did say something and afterwards I walked into the boardroom and the managing partner said, ‘uh-oh, here she comes, the fun police.’ It’s like you’re some sort of extremist.
“I also want to become an equity partner of the firm one day and I worry that they would sit there and say, ‘Well, you know, Rebecca is a bit of a femo. If we made her a partner, she might start throwing her weight around and saying we have to do everything differently.’ So the more I can play the game, the better it is for me. I know that sounds like a complete sell-out.”
When I was a cub reporter on a country paper, working in a male-dominated environment, I encountered sexual harassment. Back then I didn’t really understand it as that or have the language to articulate it. I was barely out of my teens (actually I was a teen when I started work experience there). Sexual remarks, inappropriate touching, a ruler up my skirt, porn on the walls of the print room… I didn’t speak out. I wouldn’t have known if there was any recourse.
But Rebecca is living at a time when sexual harassment is recognised as inappropriate. Actually it is unlawful , (See Division 3. See also Dr Helen Pringle below). Sexual advances (like touching, grabbing) or sexual comments (that can be offensive and/or joking) that are unwelcome or inappropriate are included in sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment contributes to a hostile work environment. I’m not saying it’s easy to speak out, and often there are repercussions for doing so. But when women don’t object, it just means men continue to get away with “staring at their tits” and even admitting to it openly. Is wanting to get ahead worth putting up with this? Is it worth the price for new women entering the firm, who will also likely be subjected to unwanted remarks and possibly more?
Fenella Souter helps to identify a reason that young women like Rebecca play the game and keep the men in the boardroom happy and entertained. It is what American author Susan J. Douglas calls, “enlightened sexism”:
Enlightened sexism insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism… so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women… [It] sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power – power that is fun, that men will not resent, and indeed will embrace… True power here has nothing to do with economic independence or professional achievement: it has to do with getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you.
Girls and young women, especially, says Douglas, are persuaded that now that they “have it all”, “they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on being hot, pleasing men, competing with other women, and shopping…And is women are increasingly objectified…that’s okay because they’ve chosen to be sex objects…”
Souter notes, “Apparently, women have achieved such completely equal status, it’s safe to go back to celebrating our “femininity” and our sexiness, source of the new empowerment”.
In Getting Real, I cite a 2006 article in The Guardian titled ‘Today’s ultimate feminists are the chicks in crop tops,’ in which Kate Taylor points out the advantages of wearing a g-string to work. It will cause men in the office to “waste whole afternoons staring at your bottom, placing bets on whether you’re wearing underwear.” You should let them, says Taylor, because you can “use that time to take over the company while they are distracted.”
The focus on bodies, clothes and sex as where our empowerment lies is acutely dissected by Laurie Penny in a piece a few days ago in The New Statesman, in which she characterises Sex and the City 2 as:
…a pernicious strain of bourgeois sex-and-shopping feminism that should have been buried long ago at the crossroads of women’s liberation with a spiked Manolo heel through its shrivelled heart.
Any woman who claims not to enjoy Sex and the City is still considered to be either abnormal or fibbing, at least by a certain strain of highly-paid fashion columnist whose lives probably bear an unusual resemblance to that of the show’s protagonist, lifestyle writer Carrie Bradshaw. For the young women of my generation, however, Sex and the City’s vision of individual female empowerment rings increasingly hollow, predicated as it is upon conspicuous consumption, the possession of a rail-thin Caucasian body type, and the type of oblivious largesse that employs faceless immigrant women as servants…
The type of feminism that gives serious thought to whether a girl should buy her own diamonds has missed something fundamental about the lives and problems of ordinary women… A fantasy feminism of shopping, shoes and shagging is not an adequate response to a world that still fears women’s power…
Lindy West feels the same way, though employing somewhat cruder expressions (to warn more sensitive readers who may click on this hyperlink)
SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society…and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.
And I can’t help but quote this SATC2 review as well: “the ugly smell of unexamined privilege hangs over this film like the smoke from cheap incense”.
In regard to the treatment of women in the workplace, American Apparel seems to think it is fine to use models depicting its own employees in sexualised photo shoots. While it’s good the Advertising Standards Board has acted on it, case report here there is nothing said in the ASB report about how the ad works to normalise the sexualised treatment of women in the workplace.
I’ve commented already on the Hooters Employment Handbook, in which their female employees have to agree that sexual joking is all part of the job and they won’t complain because it’s to be expected in their workplace.
If sexual harassment and objectification of female employees is going to stop, women need to take up their lawful rights and speak out. And they need to be supported, not penalised for doing so.
While we’re talking about women and work, here’s another item that caused me to do a double take.
I don’t usually read ‘The Deal’ magazine of The Australian, but it was lying around so I took a look.
In a piece titled ‘Women at Work’, (May 2010), Lyndall Crisp interviews ‘diversity expert’ Maureen Frank who calls for more flexibility and less tokenism in our corporate culture. She says women need to be courageous, think outside the square and “put together a compelling argument about how your flexible hours would work and then approach your boss.” So far so good. So how did she “buck the system”?
Almost 10 years ago, when she found herself a single mother of twin girls aged nine months, she had to reorganise her work schedule to spend more time with them. She’d arrive at the office at 4am, leave at 4pm and be working online at 7.30pm. [I’ve added the bold so you don’t miss it]… The cost of a full-time nanny left her, often, with only $50 at the end of the month. But it was worth it.
So Franks is working at least a 12 hour day, with three hours off. Gosh, all that free time to play with the babies! She’s then working again at 7.30pm. This is the deal women should fight for? This is how we are to see flexibility? This is the kind of arrangement that will attract women to go for high level jobs? So that they can be slave worker women?
I don’t think so.
Dr Helen Pringle, in the School of Politics and International Relations, UNSW, notes how the law on sexual harassment as it stands today got started:.
In Australia, the landmark in the recognition and treatment of sexual harassment was the case of O’Callaghan v Loder. Until 1983, discrimination laws did not explicitly cover harassment. The case concerned the NSW Commissioner of Main Roads Mr Loder, and a woman lift attendant in his department. Justice Matthews defined sexual harassment in this way: “a person is sexually harassed if he or she is subjected to unsolicited and unwelcome sexual conduct by a person who stands in a position of power in relation to him or her”:
If a complainant has been subjected to unwanted and unsolicited sexual conduct by his or her employer in such circumstances that the employer knew or ought to have known that the conduct was unwelcome, then it will amount to a contravention of the Anti-Discrimination Act in the following additional circumstances: firstly, if the conduct was such as to create an unwelcome feature of the employment… or to be a ‘detriment’; or secondly, if the employer secured compliance with his sexual demands by threatening adverse employment consequences; or thirdly, if rejection of the employer’s sexual demands led to retaliation in the form of loss of access to employment opportunities; or fourthly, if rejection of the employer’s sexual demands led to retaliation in the form of dismissal or some other loss of tangible employment benefits“ (O’Callaghan v Loder (No 2) [1983] 3 NSWLR 89).
Although Mr O’Callaghan lost because she didn’t establish that Loder’s conduct was unwelcome,the case nevertheless set an important precedent. The unlawfulness of harassment is now set out explicitly in the Sex Discrimination Act (Cth), under Division 3.
See ‘Sex discrimination, sexual harassment’ and ‘Sexual harassment’
See also: Corporate Sexism: the sex industry’s infiltration of the modern workplace
12 Responses
Brilliant article.
I’ve got a similar situation at work. Almost all of the women have complained to me about a co-worker who talks to/stares at their boobs. I’ve called a meeting with my boss to ask him to have a quiet work in this co-worker’s ear. No one wants to make a complaint to HR because it will go on their record and make it harder for them to get promoted, because somehow it’s their fault? Or maybe they made it up? Sigh. We still have a long way to go.
Good article, no one should have to work in an unpleasant environment like that. I do think it can get complicated. A recent US case shows how:
http://blog.blowfish.com/culture/sex-discrimination-or-sexual-harassment-pick-one/1256
We do have a long way to go. Went to a little local bakery the other day and there sitting on the magazine rack for customers was a Women’s Weekly or some other rubbish and a soft porn lad’s mag. I was furious. I put it on the counter and asked the young girl serving if she was offended. She shyly said “Yeah. Kinda”. I told her that she did not have to put up with that in the workplace and that if she was too shy to say anything to tell her boss (I know it’s a male) that a customer asked for it to be removed. It will be interesting to see if it is gone the next time I go there. My gosh there’ll be hell to pay if it’s still there!!
You know how Lauren Rosewarne (in Getting Real) asks the question about why this sort of behaviour and material in a workplace is illegal, but in public spaces it’s anything goes?
Well, I’m starting to think that the public space standards are filtering back into the workplace. I wonder if men and women think that what’s OK on the billboards is the new standard for the workplace. Rather than fighting to pull the public place standards up to where they ought to be.
Back in 1990 I was the third ever female police prosecutor in the new south wales police force, as it was called back then. At the time I was also studying to be a lawyer. I left the police force and did not complete my law degree because of sexual harrassment. I never complained officiially and I understand how difficult it is to complain. However now I can not over stress how important it is to complain speak out and find your voice. You will fall on your feet you will be ok and you will feel a whole lot better about yourself for speaking out. It is one thing you will definitely not regret. It has been said that evil wins when a good, well in this case, woman says or does nothing. It is our responsibility as women for ourselves and our children females and males, to speak out against the ingrained attitude that says that women exist for the pleasure of men. To have intimate relationships with women is not the birthright of a man but the priviledge of one that knows how to nuture and respect and honour his relationship and his woman. We collectively need to speak out against this disgusting attitude it is the root of every transgression against humanity. It has been said that the health of a nation rides on the integrity and shoulders of its womanhood. We need to teach the men and women in our world how to treat women with dignity and respect not just for our benefit but for theirs as well.
Oh Sandy, i feel so sad that this happened to you. Thanks so much for sharing this here and for encouraging others to speak out.
I’ve not had a similar situation myself, but I do know of one woman who took up a trade as she had always wanted to do, but copped so much flak for ‘being a chick’ that she left. Like you, she didn’t make an official complaint. I think for many women they just want to get as far away from the situation as they can, the thought of complaining is too exhausting.
When men call soft porn magazines ‘work mags’ or ‘tradie mags’ as they have in recent blog posts, you betcha the culture is filtering back into the workplace (did it ever leave some of them?). Keep in mind, service stations, milk bars, newsagents, etc, are also ‘workplaces’, yet their employees (and the public) are subjected to porn displays on a daily basis that wouldn’t be tolerated if pinned to the ‘office wall’.
Say No 4 Kids is currently seeking legal advice about this issue, and welcomes any employees of such retail outlets who feel harassed to get in touch.
I should say ‘who feel harassed..by the display, or at point of sale, of soft porn/porn/highly sexualised men mags magazines…’.
Catherine, to claim that the sale of magazines like Zoo and the like are a form of sexual harassment to staff and customers is pretty absurd. You can’t expect to be an employee in a workplace knowing exactly what that workplace does or sells and then try to claim sexual harassment. That’s complete madness. If I worked in a bookshop knowing full well that they carried titles like “Lolita” or “American Psycho” or a record shop which sold metal records like Cannibal Corpse, then what right do I have to force my employer not to sell these products because they personally offended me? Zero to none I would imagine. I’d probably rightly get the sack. It’s not the employee’s right to deem what products are morally right for the owner’s shop to sell. If you have a problem with what is being sold, work elsewhere.
I think what disappoints me here the most Catherine is that you are using a very serious issue like harassment in the workplace (which I have been subjected to many times in a number of workplaces) and attempting to use it to remove material that you personally find a bit “icky”. Not any in anyway illegal material mind you, just stuff you don’t like. Oh and by the way “tradie mags” are magazines related to particular industries, not girlie mags. Unless you have some problem with “Australasian Paint and Panel” or “Hospital & AgedCare” magazine.
Sexual harrassment is still rampant in the workplace. Often the problem is that companies are run by men that don’t see a problem with it, so you know that you can’t go and complain to them about it because they’ll just think it is hilarious.
I also think that many women feel that they need to joke along with it to keep the peace. I’ve had women at work approach me and confide that they are extremely worried because the suggestive remarks or touching have escalated and they no longer feel comfortable joking along – but have no idea what they can do. They feel guilty about these men having wives and kids and acting so smuttily with them at work.
A lot of things happened in my old workplace that people could get the sack for, however workplaces often become their “own little world”, with their own laws and customs and culture. Without strong leadership it feels hard to get things changed.