Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace

Ellen Mayock

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137514622
• eBook ISBN: 9781137508300
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book employs the image of "shrapnel," bits of scattered metal that can hit purposeful targets or unwitting bystanders, to narrate the story of workplace power and gender discrimination. The project interweaves stories of gender shrapnel with an examination of national rhetoric surrounding business, education, and law to uncover underlying phenomena that contribute to discourse on privilege and gender in the academic workplace. Using concrete examples that serve as case studies for subsequent discussion of data about women in the workforce, language use and misuse, sexual harassment, silence and shutting up, and hiring, training, promotion, and the glass ceiling, Mayock explores the deeper implications of gender inequity in the workplace.      

Part I
Gender Shrapnel

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Ellen MayockGender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Gendered Stories, Hybrid Methods

Ellen Mayock¹

(1)

Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, USA

End Abstract

As an employee in her 15th year at her institution, a professor goes to her annual performance evaluation meeting with a supervisor. He looks over the paperwork in front of him and remarks, “You have been really busy—new publications, plenty of students, long hours of service.” The employee is thinking, “Yep, you got that right. It has been a busy and productive year,” but then she is completely taken off guard when the very next thing out of the supervisor’s mouth is, “How does your husband deal with this?” “Ouch,” she thinks extremely loudly inside her head, “did he really just say that? What is my husband doing at my performance evaluation meeting?” She wonders what her face must look like at that moment, because it feels as if the skin is peeling off in chunks. One part of her brain tells her to maintain composure and to carry on with the meeting, while another, distant part of the brain is screaming inside her head, “What the hell? Isn’t it good that I’ve taught new classes, published new works, done the necessary service?” As she hears herself say, “My husband is busy, too,” the other part of her brain is pissed off and screaming, “Don’t continue this unfair line of conversation. Get to the performance review. This person is too busy thinking about your role at home and not your role at work.” The performance review continues for another 40 minutes, but it doesn’t go well. The employee keeps wondering why her home arrangement came up, and the boss keeps assuming that his employee doesn’t spend much time with her kids. He feels sorry for the husband, who seems lamely to have to put up with this gender role reversal.

The meeting ends. The evaluation was strong enough, but the professor is left wondering how she can ever be treated as just another employee, and not the workplace wife and mommy. She is sputteringly aghast, still only in her head, until she reaches a co-worker’s office and vents to him. “Jeez,” he sympathizes sincerely, “that sucks.” “But what can you do?” What can you do, indeed?

When you’re evaluated on your performance at work and on your perceived performance in the home, you’ve been hit by a form of gender shrapnel. The first time you’re hit by it, you have no idea what it is, where it came from, or why. You just know that something went wrong, that something’s not fair, and that you probably can’t do much about it. When it happens again—maybe you’re asked at a meeting why there are no cookies, as if you and Betty Crocker had better get busy taking care of the workplace troops—you start to figure out all too clearly that the unsettled events are indeed largely about gender. If you ever try to confront the events, you feel half-crazy and afraid, mainly because we just don’t go around the workplace pointing out all the shrapnel. We keep it quiet and get the work done. It’s only after an accumulation of gender shrapnel that you reach that “last straw” moment of confrontation. You name the behavior and ask for a change, and that’s when you’ve really done it, you’ve called the organization out on its inequities. People start to tell you to calm down, to pick your battles more carefully, and to be grateful for what you’ve got—in essence, to just be quiet. As you obey and shut yourself up, you start to notice more of what is happening to other women around you. The shrapnel itself and the silence surrounding it start to seem more and more absurd. You start coming up with nine-block cartoons and lyrics for a sexual harassment musical. You wonder who’s crazier now, the employee who’s writing cartoons and lyrics, or the employers who don’t understand why you just can’t say some things. The more you look around you and the more you read, the more you realize that gender shrapnel is all around us.

If Clarence Thomas, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, the Catholic Church, and the alarming sexual assault statistics on our college campuses aren’t enough to convince the US public of the enduring issues of sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace, then perhaps the spate of 2011 news stories is. Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky and Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain revealed to the US public the prevalence of sexual abuse and harassment in the contemporary workplace, the cultural, political, and social depth of the issues, and the importance of gender as a tool of analysis to understand the workplace problems and offer viable solutions for improvement. In 2014–2015, national news focused on sexual violence on campuses and the reach of Title IX in adjudication of these cases. The topic of sexual discrimination and harassment comes alive or goes dormant in cycles, depending on the ebb and flow of political news. In the world of the workplace (education, and also business, law, medicine, politics, etc.), no matter the sexiness or dormancy of the topic in the national news, understanding and prevention of sexual harassment remains vastly important—for the well-being of students and employees, for the legal implications of Title VII and Title IX, and for the coherence of mission and practice. Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace aims to keep the understanding and prevention of sexual discrimination, harassment, and retaliation on the front burner of educational institutions and of the individuals who are a part of them. In addition, Gender Shrapnel sees sexual violence as part of the discrimination, harassment, and retaliation continuum and therefore contributes to the conversation about how to reduce all of these phenomena in the education workplace.

The twenty-first-century workplace, with its dizzying need to keep up with technological innovations, media messages, and proven output, looks very different from the workplace of old except, unfortunately, for the prevalence of sexual discrimination. The Clarence Thomas case of the early 1990s, with its utterly bizarre resurgence through Ginny Thomas’ 2011 early-morning phone call to Anita Hill, reveals to us that male power runs deep, that female employees who have experienced sexual harassment are often silenced, that many of us are afraid to question privilege (gender privilege, White privilege, etc.) and its functions, and that we are particularly afraid to correct the ways in which men treat other men in public, no matter their actions in private.

Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace argues that experts in law, organizational management, and education have not gone far enough in their examinations of gender operations in the workplace and that a broad, interdisciplinary approach that provides a bigger-picture view is warranted in this changing twenty-first-century workplace. Gender Shrapnel posits that women’s more ample presence in the workforce foments a certain Betty Friedan-esque “problem with no name,” or a “professional mystique,” which is still unresolved in both the home and office workplaces. We still do not value “women’s work” in the home and are therefore unsure about how to value the work that women do in the away-from-home workplace. The women—wives, lovers, mistresses, mothers, ball-and-chains—who are mislabeled at home come to the workplace and are labeled and mislabeled there as well. In Gender Shrapnel, I use this metaphor of shrapnel to suggest that oftentimes no one person or organization is purposefully discriminating against women based on sex, but that the gender norms of our homes and of our public interactions that consistently follow a patriarchal flow are replicated and entrenched in the workplace. These interactions become the fabric of a pattern of sexual discrimination that is usually not consonant with the organization’s professed values and that is often in direct opposition to Title VII and Title IX law. And so, many women are surprised to find themselves hit with shrapnel, crying out, “Ow, what the hell was that?”

Gender shrapnel is a series of small explosions in the workplace that affect women and men and reveal an uneven gender dynamic at all levels of the organization. Gender shrapnel is damaging, even if the principal actors never intend or understand that the actions they take place at least one woman at a disadvantage and send the message to all male and female laborers that this type of disadvantage is the way of the workplace. How do you describe a phenomenon that you have to experience to understand? This book is an attempt to give texture to the concept of gender shrapnel by defining concomitant terms, reviewing and analyzing current literature on women in the workforce, and telling real stories from a variety of sources so that readers can grasp more clearly how gender shrapnel plays out, step by step.

My own story, in brief, is that my administrative mettle was proven at one point and then severely tested afterward. I served in an administrative post, and my aim was to work with and welcome all new colleagues—with respect, knowledge, and a spirit of collaboration. My approach was complicated by two factors: questions about retention of women faculty and administrators and the launch of an initiative to commemorate the 20th anniversary of co-education on the undergraduate side and the 30th anniversary of the first graduating class of women on the law side of our campus. A series of gender incidents piled up, whether intentionally or not, and this amounted to gender shrapnel and translated into negative consequences for individuals and groups involved, as well as for the organization as a whole.

The two factors—being the only woman in academic administration and being the “voice” of women at my institution by chairing the yearlong series of events about co-education—shaped the rest of that year and allowed me to understand fully the concept of gender shrapnel and to begin to name and describe the phenomena involved. That academic year was by far the most visibly challenging of my life. I continued my “regular” job of training new faculty, allocating space, preparing the capital budget, overseeing faculty development and speakers funds, completing performance reviews for non-faculty staff, participating in strategic planning efforts, and advising students. The additional jobs given to me included the co-education programming and serving as the institution’s head designated officer, who oversees processes of formal and informal complaints of violations of university policy. During my time in that post, every complaint I handled had to do with gender discrimination, thus adding significantly to my visibility as the “point man” on gender issues. An extra bit of irony was that I was completing a two-year round of teaching our introductory course for the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. In a nutshell, my work was defined by gender, and the reaction to me and my work was characterized by gender shrapnel.

As the only woman in academic administration, I became the token female on academic issues, and thus found myself more in the spotlight among all university constituencies—students, staff, faculty, communications officers, admissions and development officers, administration, and, especially, alumni. In addition, my work as an academic in gender, coupled with my assigned administrative work having to do with gender, brought me into the public view in ways that I neither sought nor relished. It started to feel like it was feeding time at the gender zoo. The visibility was not necessarily a result of appreciation for jobs well done, but rather for a discomfort with a (then) not-so-radical feminist doing her job—a job increasingly defined by gender chores—in a way that was authentic to her. I think the discomfort stemmed from a sense that I was somewhere I didn’t belong—that a younger woman didn’t belong in administration, that a new mother should be at home tending to the new child, and that the question of gender in and of itself was being addressed too directly, which felt somehow “uncivil” to more traditional sensibilities.

Without the eagle eye of my partner and his homegrown feminist legal expertise, I might have surrendered. He propped me up again and again throughout the “shrapnel years.” Just recently, my partner and I watched Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia. Two features of the movie struck me as highly relevant to gender shrapnel. The first was Julia’s and her sister’s physical stature and the ways in which it did and did not define them. Julia’s sister says somewhat merrily at Julia’s wedding, “You’re different, and others see you as different, and then you are that—different.” This ended up being the way I felt in my workplace—kind of merrily different, but necessarily so. (And I’ve learned to be indifferent at times, which has protected me when I haven’t had the strength to speak out or to protest.) The second scene from the movie that stayed with me was the one in which Julia’s attempts to get her first cookbook published have been foiled again. She comes home to her husband, Paul, played so well by Stanley Tucci, explains the situation, and cries in frustration on the couch. Paul comforts her, assuring her that her cookbook will get published, maybe by someone else, but it will get published. He hugs Julia and kisses her and generally makes her feel better. When her sobbing subsides, Paul adds, “And fuck them. Fuck them!” This combination of gentleness and well-placed outrage, along with some understanding of feminist legal scholarship, is part of how we can work through the worst of the gender shrapnel years.

The major American Association of University Women (AAUW) study of the 1990s regarding gender in schools, Schoolgirls. Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap, authored by Peggy Orenstein, documented case after case of neglect and/or harassment of girls in primary and secondary schools. The AAUW followed up 18 years later with an additional study titled Crossing the Line. Sexual Harassment at School. The findings demonstrate that sexual harassment is more, not less, prevalent, even after two decades of academic studies, articles, books, and increased education for prevention.¹ Could it be that our leaders in higher education, politics, and business are sending a stronger message—a message that gendered behaviors are fine, that boys will be boys, that concealment can work for a long time to the detriment of many—than any number of careful, data-filled, thought-provoking, sensitively wrought studies have? I believe so. Media are a powerful force, as Betty Friedan stated 50 years ago in her work to understand women’s disenfranchisement in the home and the traditional workplace.

A colleague (professor and novelist Domnica Radulescu) and I co-edited a volume in 2010 that treated feminist issues and activism in the academic workplace. Our experience in the time since the publication of the academic volume is that (1) the volume keeps selling, telling us that the issues addressed are of interest to a broader reading public than just the few professed feminists in the academic world, (2) when we speak to audiences about the collection, we gather more and more stories from the women in the audience, which reinforces for us the degree to which our stories about gender problems really matter, and (3) it is important in these times to retain the aspirational aspects of activism. Why be activist if you don’t believe change is possible? The scholarly heft of the volume, the ways in which the volume has elicited more and more stories, and the hope embedded in the concept of activism clearly signal that more needs to be done and can be done. By gathering and telling stories in an intelligent, informed way, we can understand common gender problems in the workplace, get to the root of the problems, and start to suggest viable solutions for employers and employees.²

As the world of publication changes and adapts to the many new platforms for writing, it must take into account the ways in which blogs and tweets have re-emphasized the fundamental importance of storytelling, of day-to-day details that, when accumulated, can speak to the evolution of broader cultural phenomena. To this end, Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace incorporates several narratives in order to give voice to the often-silenced problems of sexual discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. The inclusion of additional national news stories also avoids the perennial problem of lumping together “certain groups of women” as if we all had exactly the same thoughts and platforms. In addition, it gives more space to questions of gender’s intersectionality—the ways in which other “protected categories,” such as class, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, and ability, crisscross with gender and reinforce and complicate notions of male and White privilege.

Derald Wing Sue’s excellent Microaggressions in Everyday Life examines everyday occurrences of discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. His eighth chapter focuses on “gender microaggressions and sexism.” Sue states:

Similar to racial microaggressions, gender microaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioral indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative gender slights that potentially have a harmful impact on women. […] Likewise, gender microaggressions are often delivered through educational texts, mass media, institutional norms, and cultural scripts that are not necessarily overtly sexist, but communicate hidden messages that may be internalized by both perpetrator and victim. (164)

A term originally coined by Chester Pierce (Sue 5), “microaggressions” is a term I now hear frequently among colleagues in higher education because it is such a useful way to sum up this daily, frustrating, energy-sucking phenomenon of dealing with (and/or repressing) repeated occurrences of discrimination. This concept of gender microagressions is intimately linked to gender shrapnel, but I also want to emphasize that the impact is harmful not only for women but also for all employees in the work environment. It foments a limited way for individuals and collectives to exist in the workplace and stifles creativity.

In addition to Pierce’s and Sue’s conceptualizations of microaggressions based on race, gender, and sexual orientation, Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 published her groundbreaking work on the need for increased critical attention to intersectionality, and two years later she published an article li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Gender Shrapnel
• 2. Gender Problems in the Workplace
• 3. Solutions
• 4. Case Studies in Gender Shrapnel
• 5. Clearing the Shrapnel
• Backmatter