Category Archives: Gender

Posts about language, gender, and social justice

Speaking Up and Taking Space: Women Resisting Gendered Workplace Bias one “Mr. Vice President, I’m Speaking” at a Time (by Pauline Matthey)

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As of this month, for the first time ever, a woman, and a woman of color at that, has become Vice-President elect of the United States. Without a doubt, Kamala Harris is making history and is now inspiring and empowering millions of women and girls all around the world to dream a little bigger. But her success is also being met with the type of backlash that only women are familiar with. Gender disparities in the workplace are nothing new and they directly impact women and our families as they prevent us from earning salaries that matches that of our male counterparts while they also keep us from certain opportunities. But gender inequalities also hurt companies and their productivity.

When workplace gender inequities are discussed, the glass ceiling, gender pay gap, and representation are often the issues being discussed. What is less frequently addressed is the sexism women face due to the biased ways in which we perceive gendered language and women’s voices. But attributes typically associated with feminine speech and language, such as a higher pitch for example, can play a role in workplace discrimination. During the presidential campaign and since the election, Kamala Harris has been been the target to such discrimination as she was attacked about not only her name but her voice as well. One of those attacks came from Trump adviser Jenna Ellis who compared Harris’ voice to Marge Simpsons’, to which Marge promptly responded. Harris was also criticized after the vice-presidential debate with Mike Pence during which she stopped him from interrupting her with a simple “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” a quote that has now become famous and been reclaimed as a symbol of empowerment.

Harris is not the first woman politician to be criticized for her voice. During the 2016 US presidential election season, Hillary Clinton was also often targeted for how she speaks and sounds. Some argued that her voice could even have been the reason she lost that year. Clinton’s speech is sometimes described as shrill or aggressive. The fact remains that male politicians like Bernie Sanders, whose voice suffers some similar issues, are not subjected to the same scrutiny.

Politics is not the only industry where women are being discriminated against because of their voice and speech. In fact, women’s voices are not only being policed but we are also being silenced or “manterrupted.” Entertainment media has long shown the ways in which women are being silenced. In this episode of Girlfriends, the men at a law firm continuously speak over Joan Clayton, one of the only female lawyers at the company, during a meeting and treat her differently when she tries to adapt and starts acting like them. The show used humor to depict a very serious issue. And while the episode aired in 2000, not much has changed, at least not culturally. However, research shows that women’s voices have changed and become deeper over time due to the dynamics of men-women interactions. While this finding highlights women’s ability to adapt, this finding is alarming.

Now 20 years after that Girlfriends’ episode, if our voices sound deeper, it’s only to match the depth of workplace sexism. This past October, Claire McDonnell, a young TikTok creator, posted a video that illustrates just how deeply anchored into their habits and how natural it is for men to speak over us. As a young woman in STEM, this college student shared her experience being silenced by her male counterparts while working on a project to her TikTok account and while it is wildly similar to Joan Clayton’s experience, it is far less funny. The video went viral and while many expressed that they could relate and offered support, others attacked the college student and tried to discredit her experience.

For every person denying the validity of McDonnell’s experience, there are just as many lists of tips focusing on traits that are typically masculine as being successful, articles on how women can change their voice and speech in order to better match the needs and culture of the workplace, and podcasts designed to help women make themselves heard at work. These tools are marketed as helpful and described as bridging the gender gap when they in fact perpetuate the oppression of women in the workplace. The underlying assumption that men’s speech is neutral is ludicrous and arguing that women need to sound more like men is not only unrealistic but it is harmful and discriminatory. Deeply engrained, our society holds the belief that women should sound elegant, as this 2019 post reminds us, and that belief prevents women from being as successful as men in the workplace. Simply because men’s voices are not being questioned does not mean that women should have to learn how to speak like men in the workplace to be heard. No matter if we are in a boardroom, at a podium, or on a COVID-19-imposed Zoom call, the gender bias lens through which speech is being used as a weapon to minimize women’s contributions is just as problematic today as it ever was.

It is indeed “time men stopped telling us what to say and started understanding what we mean.” Women do not need advice or strategies on how they can be heard at work. Women do not need to speak up. Women do not need Gmail Plug-in like “Just Not Sorry” to help us craft emails. Women do not need to find our voice. We do speak up. We know how to draft emails. And we already have a voice! What we do need, though, is a workplace culture where masculine and feminine attributes are equally recognized and valued. So, stop telling us to speak up and stop forcing us into adapting our speech. Whether we sound like Marge Simpsons, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Joan Clayton, or Claire McDonnell, we have a voice… and men would know that if they would take a seat, shut up, listen to us!

Gender Roles in Native American Communities (by Hanna Braswell)

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In the centuries before the colonization of North America, Native Americans held nation-specific answers to questions related to gender roles. Several groups of indigenous people living in North America had their own concepts of the gender spectrum and their own language for it. Examples are given in the following video of nation-specific definitions of gender in Lakota and in Diné:

 

It is explained that, “each nation’s understanding of gender and sexual diversity is different and grounded in specific spiritual beliefs.”

The U.S. government did its utmost to eradicate the vivid cultures of Native Americans in addition to their languages through mandatory boarding schools, which took tens of thousands children in the 19th century to force them to assimilate. As an integral part of the cultures and sacred beliefs of several nations, the notion of expanded gender roles to include more than two genders is part of what was sought to be erased. Today, the umbrella term two-spirit is used by Native Americans that live outside the gender binary, traditionally taking on the gender roles of both men and women. As there are still over one-hundred tribes in North America, each with their own unique culture, two-spirit and how it is defined are Nation specific.

By claiming the term two-spirit, Native Americans are working to undo the damage done to their cultures, to decolonize their nations and revive what the U.S. Government tried to destroy. Additionally, claiming Two-Spirit is another way forward for educating non-native people about Native American history and traditions and how those were nearly erased. It is one more area within which Native Americans have to fight to be heard and seen.