The Six D's: Tactics Against Women - Discriminate

Discriminate – it’s still happening

Discrimination still exists in many forms – both blatant and subtle. It is frequently used in response to a woman who has become a threat to the status quo, or to the ego of someone in the workplace.

Because you are a woman

Working mothers often find the most blatant discrimination disguised in the form of caring about how you balance your work and family life.

When Judy was pregnant with her second child, her manager told her she wouldn’t be recommending her for a new Team Leader position in her company. According to her manager, “You would have gotten the role, but with you going on maternity leave soon we didn’t think the timing was right for you.” Judy was never given the chance to even apply.

Valerie had similar issues when she was raising her youngest son. She discovered she was not being recommended for projects because she had a baby at home – even though she was willing and able to do the work. According to Valerie, “I find people will make decisions about somebody, whether they are ready for a job, a promotion, whatever. If they know something is going on in their personal life, they’ll say ‘oh they shouldn’t take that on, that’s just more stress, they don’t need that.’”

Sometimes the simple fact of being female can limit you, for reasons you might not even know about.

Karen and Rosa both witnessed discussions and decisions being made about women up for hiring or promotion where the following statements were made:

“You can’t hire her because she is beautiful and will distract the men.”

“You can’t promote her because they won’t want to work for a woman.”

“I can’t hire her – my wife would be pissed! Find me someone ugly.”

Because you will pick up their slack

Often women get stuck in a position because they are willing to take care of the dirty work, and take up the slack of others who have let things slide.

Sheila built a hugely successful program at one of her earlier jobs, putting in long hours and doing most of the work herself. When it came time for appointing a Director of the program she had built, they hired a man from the outside and moved her onto another project.

At another job later in her career, Sheila had implemented a manual billing process and was doing all the billing herself. This continued long past when it made sense to do manual billing, but they had no incentive to fix it because she was doing the work.

Because we are trained from a young age to allow it

It seems this tendency starts early. I recently spoke to a young woman doing an internship at a local technology firm. On her small project team, the others often do a sloppy job or leave things undone, knowing she will come in and clean it up to make the team look good – putting in long hours to make it happen. It’s something of a Catch-22, because if you don’t pick up the slack, the whole team looks bad. But it sets a precedent for being in that type of role for the long term.

Because you want to move up

It is no secret that upward mobility for women is still much slower than for men. Even in industries where women are a majority of the workforce, the management team is often dominated by men.

Women in the Workplace 2016, a study conducted by LeanIn.org and McKinsey, reports that, “Women remain underrepresented at every level in the corporate pipeline. Corporate America promotes men at 30 percent higher rates than women during their early career stages, and entry-level women are significantly more likely than men to have spent five or more years in the same role.” As part of the study, 132 companies employing more than 4.6 million people shared their pipeline data and completed a survey of HR practices. In addition, 34,000 employees completed a survey designed to uncover their attitudes on gender, job satisfaction, ambition, and work-life issues.

Shirley found that women in her large defense contractor were becoming stuck at the Project Manager level, and had trouble moving even to the Director level.

I bounced up against the glass ceiling at my first company, and I was barely standing up.

All of us have seen it. Notice how many teachers are women, and how many school administrators are men. Why is that?

Because you want to make as much money as your peers

Another widely known issue for women is the pay gap. In a report put out by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) titled The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap, Fall 2016 edition, data from The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau show that women are paid, on average, 80% of what men are paid, a gap of 20%. Some of the difference is explained by occupational choices – where typically male-dominated jobs in construction, transportation, and engineering pay more than typically female occupations in health care, education, and administrative support.

According to the study, “even women in male-dominated jobs such as computer programming still face a pay gap compared with their male counterparts (19%), even though women in such jobs may be paid higher salaries than women in traditionally female fields are paid…Not all of the gender pay gap can be “explained away” by choices such as college major, occupation, work hours, and time out of the workforce. Discrimination and bias against women in the workplace are also culprits in the pay gap.”

The above chart is somewhat dated, but the numbers haven't changed that much.

When I questioned why my salary was lower than a colleague with less education, less experience, and less responsibility than me, I was given a bullshit answer and no raise.

Mostly, though, salaries are hidden from employees to avoid questioning. In the most progressive companies, systems are in place to try to prevent a huge wage disparity. But because so much of your value to a company is subjective, managers can skew reviews or give choice assignments to men to make them more upwardly mobile. Salary discrimination is alive and well.

The Six D's

I call the tactics used against women the six D’s: Dismiss, Disparage, Disconcert, Dissemble, Discriminate, and Dishearten. Follow the links to the others in my series. When you know what is happening to you, you can prepare to deal with it. More strategies are in my book, Savvy Women: Gaining Ground at Work.