Let’s Talk About Sex
As part of a coaching session, I was asked the other day what makes my blood boil.
My answer was something along the lines of sexism, the lived experience of many women in organisations and the casual disregard of experience, skill, qualifications, passions and knowledge. The hiding of light, keeping small, to make others feel comfortable which I often hear described by some of the women, midlife and millennial, that I coach.
In my first job when I was 21, I was asked by a male colleague “give me 5 reasons why we shouldn’t have sex on this table right now”. When I fumbled and pushed back the question I was told it was a common question asked of new employees to see what they said and if they understood risk. Apparently.
In one of my first public sector jobs I was told by several of my colleagues “we don’t wear trousers here, they like women to wear skirts”. So I bought a trouser suit to wear. Obviously.
In my next, as a team, we successfully challenged the fact that the only man in the team of 6 of us all doing the same job, earned £10k more.
Fast forward a couple of years and I was being horribly harassed, sexually, and professionally at a conference. By a man, more senior than me, who even years later made me absolutely terrified when we bumped into each other on an escalator in Euston. I was supported by my CEO to contact his organisation, via a solicitors letter, to make them aware of his behaviour. Important to do, even more so as his NHS consultant job was solely about treating women……
In an another I was told “You’ve just got engaged. I’m sure you’ll be off making babies soon, so maybe this isn’t the right time to take this on”.
In another I turned up to lead a public meeting to be greeted by a finger, attached to a fist, millimeters from my nose while the man made his point of view clear about what I needed to do and hear about his perspective.
In one of my last jobs, I was told to “go to the conference, go and smile, go and show them your personality”. A euphemism for what exactly, doesn’t bear the exploration but I was and am pretty clear as to what was actually being said.
I’ve worked with and spoken to countless women who have experienced the same and worse in the same and other values driven organisations that I have worked in and for and around.
I had a vague thought as I said out loud what made my blood boil, that maybe one day the experience I described would seem alien, of another era and something that people might recognise but not experience. I know, all too well from the women that I work with and coach that we are a long way away from that. Sexism, in all its forms, casual, unintended, specific and pointed, deliberate and determined is alive and indeed kicking, and something many women have been party to or experienced in the workplace.
It makes me angry, sad but determined to read this report published by the BMA today which draws on the experiences of 2500 men and women working within medicine and is partly what sparked me to write about this.
A couple of the most telling paragraphs include
“While 89 per cent of men responding to the survey said that they felt they had not been assumed to be in a more junior position than the one they actually occupied due to their gender, only 15 per cent of women said the same”
and
“When asked how frequently on average they had personally experienced sexism at work in the past two years, 31 per cent of women doctors said they had experienced it on either a daily or weekly basis, with just nine per cent saying that they had received none.
The number of reporting witnessing sexism in their workplace during the same period was even greater, with 37 per cent saying they had observed such behaviour on a daily or weekly basis”
https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/the-extent-of-discrimination-emerges
It makes me want to stand up, show up and be counted by speaking out about my experiences. For the purpose of balance and clarity, I want to say that I have worked with, been mentored by, been led, managed and been championed by some brilliant, wise, authentic and truly amazing and inspiring men in my career. I have also worked alongside, met and been led by some of the other kind that have either contributed (or been bystanders) to the experiences described above.
So far, this is the article I have hesitated about writing the most and even more on pushing the publish button. If you are reading then you will know that I eventually took a deep breath and set it free.
I know it’s hard to talk about this, hard to raise our heads sometimes but this is an invitation to talk about this, an invitation to bring this into the light, an invitation to do better if we want our daughters and the daughters of our daughters and their daughters to do better. An invitation to let other women know where we stand, an invitation to make a stand and be counted.
If we want things to change then we must start by being the change. We must start by showing up.
