Forcing the Issue?

Sexism in the workplace is endemic. If you have breasts, sit down to urinate, totter around on high-heels and adorn the occasional skirt, then it’s more than likely Bob from IT is taking bets on what size bra you wear, while your fling from last year’s Christmas party continues to entertain the lads around the water cooler every lunch time by telling them how few drinks it took to have you legs akimbo on the Xerox machine, photocopying your ass and “begging for it.” For every year you are employed after 25, your earning potential unofficially begins to depreciate, as you cruise towards the much-maligned “childbearing age.” This is the thorny decade during every working woman’s life when her menstrual cycle becomes boardroom fodder, and is charted with the same diligence as projected sales figures. Alarm bells sound at head office every time some bright young go-getter ovulates, as the managing director closes his ‘hot young sluts’ web page, looks wistfully out of the window wondering “will we lose another one?” before calling the finance office and having her bonus blocked and her pension scheme suspended.

Extreme, huh? Although these are not sweeping generalisations, but instead conclusions drawn from a recent briefing issued by the Fawcett Society on the launch of their “Just below the surface” campaign last week, the premise behind which is to expose latent sexism against women at work. The statistics have been extracted from a number of UK, European and US sources, claiming that 70 to 90 per cent of women are exposed to sexual harassment, full-time female employees earn on average 17 per cent less than their male colleagues, and 16 per cent of men have viewed pornography at work. The cheeky scamps. Furthermore, 52 per cent of employers are said to consider the possibility of a woman getting pregnant before hiring her, with around 30,000 new mothers celebrating the birth of their babies with the receipt of flower arrangements, cuddly toys, their P45s, highlighters and reams of job adverts. How many women were questioned, or how representative these figures are, is not outlined in the briefing, and while empirical information of this nature cannot be digested without some understanding of the context in which it was harnessed, what it does communicate is the extent to which sexual discrimination is still rife in office blocks across the land. To counter this, from 6 October until 17 November, posters emblazoned with the claim “Sexism at work: it’s just below the surface” are being displayed on escalator panels in Westminster, Bank, Barbican, Blackfriars, Farringdon, London Bridge, Liverpool Street and St. Paul’s London underground stations. Goody. Or maybe not.

Some women are still the victims of the basest form of prejudice, overlooked for promotion and their ambitions thwarted simply because they don’t wear a pinstripe suit and a handlebar moustache quite well enough. That cannot be disputed. But while Fawcett’s campaign has centralised this social injustice, their report doesn’t recognise the extent to which female employers are often the biggest perpetrators of discriminatory behaviour. A number of my close friends became embroiled in heated exchanges with their bosses, who barked grittily at them through lipstick stained teeth, when the subject of maternity leave was raised, with the months leading up to the birth of their children marred by vitriolic comments relating to the fact they would be failing to fulfil their contractual obligations by taking paid leave. Similarly, the report fails to explain that sexism can affect both genders. While a man happening to accidentally glance across a women’s chest could facilitate his hanging from the gallows by the short and curlies, should a woman intentionally stare at, touch, or prod a man’s nether regions, or speak to him in a way that could be considered explicitly sexual, not only would he be less likely to file a report for fear of being emasculated, he would probably find it difficult to prove to upper management that this was impinging on the quality of his professional life.

For the next month London commuters will be bombarded with the message that sexism prevails to the detriment of professional women, but to what end? Will it help to counter chauvinism, or ironically reinforce it? Women, those who never considered this a problem, may begin to over-analyse any interaction they have with male colleagues, until the fateful day someone’s line manager accidentally brushes her chest while passing her a company report, and finds himself hurled across blazing hot coals by the ball sack at an industrial tribunal as legions of teary women are catapulted into the hearing to speak of how they, too, were made to feel uncomfortable by his lecherous smile. Something innocent will morph into something sinister. Gender discrimination is serious, but is this campaign potentially more damaging for working women than the behaviour it is purporting to challenge? In homogenising the female working experience in this way, does this scheme disempower us as individuals? And rather than allowing us to progress, sadly begins to undo the threads of equality so carefully woven by our feminist foremothers? We don’t share the same thoughts and opinions. We don’t all have awful stories to tell about our treatment in the professional sphere, but it is understandable how the ethos of Fawcett’s campaign invests employers with a sense of reluctance when recruiting, by inadvertently perpetuating the fear that we may all attempt to hitch a free ride up the career ladder on the politically correct train. Many women are hugely successful, their gender not an an issue, so is it fair a campaign should speak for us all? It’s not that sexism is a problem seldom talked about, but rather it is discussed too frequently, making it lose its bitter bite. Choo Choo.

To a certain extent, this initiative could devalue the genuine experiences of those women who have been badly treated, by bolstering pre-existing beliefs that we are overly sensitive, easily offended, and likely to take recourse to the “is it ‘cos I is a woman” argument should we not feel our professional remuneration and status is proportionate to our efforts. This is because instead of targeting specific individuals who are/likely to be proponents of this brand of bigotry, everyone who happens to use the aforementioned tube stations will be indoctrinated with this message which, while increasing awareness, dilutes the severity of this problem as a cultural malady. Of course, there are still a number of issues that must be addressed to secure equality in the workplace, the need to close the pay gap being the most significant, but what this campaign has highlighted is that direct action is essential, rather than speculation that suggests if you are not being undermined for being a working woman, you soon will be. But it is difficult to get the correct balance when you want to make a difference, and sometimes being reactive is an essential component of a proactive long-term plan: what else can be done?