Seeking advice: How have you navigated misogyny in the workplace?
After a recent incident I've had with a male colleague at work this past week, I feel lost and downtrodden on how to move forward in my career. I've experienced various forms of misogyny in most roles I've held, but this has been the worst offense I've encountered. It honestly has me sick with stress and I feel so alone in how to handle it.
For context, I am often the only woman on meetings and regularly have to lead groups of all men. I've done this all throughout my career and have accepted it as a norm. While I have encountered issues in the past, never anything as egregious as what I dealt with the other day. I am often having to verify and source technical information to ensure project items are on track and this requires me to connect with various individuals. When some recent concerns were brought forward for an ongoing project, I was continually given the runaround by this male colleague. Due to days passing and the lack of cohesion for the issue of concern, I attempted to have a group discussion amongst the relevant folks.
This action sent that male colleague into an absolute rage of which I was the target. An action that I have regularly done for months without issue and is a run-of-the-mill thing for communication was misinterpreted by him. Instead he viewed it as an attack and ran to my lead to accuse me of running to higher-ups to assert he isn't doing his work properly; a completely opposite story from what I had done. This male colleague proceeded to yell at me like an abusive ex and is proceeding with excluding me out of important discussions. My lead is also male and due to this male colleague running to him first, he sided with him when I attempted to connect about how I was treated. When talking with both men to explain or try to understand their perspective, I was continually talked over, hushed, and essentially silenced into submission. I was told I am now a risk to team cohesion and that I am causing problems when I have been receiving nothing but praise from all others for my work.
I'm honestly so distraught from this experience and the lack of support from my lead. Each meeting with the male colleague that screamed at me has me on edge and I feel sick when determining how to get the answers I need for my work. Instead I am having to find a way to get placed on another project and the stress of sorting this with my company's HR. My confidence in my capabilities feels wounded and I am filled with anxiety now even when talking about topics I am familiar with. I am struggling to move past this and have the energy to find something better.
For those of you who have experienced similar misogyny in the workplace, how did you overcome incidents like these? How did you stop feeling so broken by how it affected you? I'm so worried about landing another project or job that will have these same issues and I really don't know if I can take being treated by men like this in the professional world anymore. How do you interview or gage a company to determine you won't encounter this again? I am so bitter of continually seeing men have this behavior, yet have been rewarded in their careers by being elevated to positions of authority. Any advice, sharing of wisdom, or any support would be greatly appreciated.
Specifically about feeling broken by it, are you in therapy? Do you have friends who will listen to you vent? Do you have contacts from past jobs who value your work and will remind you that you have excellent skills?
This coworker has declared war on you. His reaction is in no way proportional or reasonable. He is your enemy. That is not a common level of antagonism that I have experienced in any work place although I did face it in a relationship once.
Feel what you feel about rejection and the unreasonableness of it all. It's painful and it's going to be painful. But his unreasonable choices are in no way your fault. You are no less competent than you were a week ago. Being sabotaged can happen and you might not get help from management. On the other hand you might.
In your shoes I would try to make contingency plans, including finding a new employer. Best of luck.
I've been in therapy on-and-off for the past 7 years for PTSD. I actually have a session today and was planning to discuss this since this event has knocked me off-track mentally. I'm fairly certain that the behavior of this male colleague triggered me due to it "mapping" to abuse I endured in the past. I try not to let my PTSD interfere with my work capabilities, but this is the first time where I feel it is impacting me. The incident is being warped into a new intruder to all the work I have put into my mental health.
Truth is, this job has had a number of characteristics that have made it a toxic environment to work in. I have been venting to friends and my husband, but I want to be mindful of their own struggles they are working through right now. I sometimes worry that I come off as nothing but negative to them due to how bad things have been lately. This is just a final nail to the coffin that I have to get off this project.
I'm a planner due to navigating difficult situations in my past, and already have a plan of action on how to navigate this moving forward. My company is pulling me off the project soon, but I need to remain a little longer to help plan for someone to takeover my duties plus wrap-up things in progress. Their leadership has been helpful, but I am more so struggling that I am the one having to take on these risks. The risk of having HR have this documented on my files or the risk of struggling to find a new project or job in this tumultuous economy for tech. I'm frankly terrified of being laid-off because I had to leave a project due to this man's behavior.
I guess I'm guilty of jumping to conclusions of the worst outcome possible, but it's like my brain can't process it any other way. It's the fear of consequences for just trying to save myself mentally and the effort required of me to fix it. It feels unfair and instead this man will not face the same struggle. I am mentally overwhelmed by the burden placed onto me.
I needed to hear it stated this way. Thank you. Part of me feels like I'm crazy because there has been no reprimand of this behavior and instead it was flipped on me when I reached out to my lead. I'm seeing my initial concerns coming to fruition and now others will be crunched due to this colleague's behavior. It's hard not to feel like I could have prevented that if there were more level heads in the room.
You were the one who stayed focused on the outcome and tried to be professional. You took the steps needed to be equitable to all your colleagues, and then some.
Your lead fucked you over by listening to someone who had an abusive interaction with you that should be totally prohibited in any functional organization.
This is not your fault. Any attempt to behave as if it is, is purest gaslighting. I can empathize with the discombobulating distress, confusion, and terror that you're relating. Bullies count on this to ensure they'll never be called to account. The most sociopathic ones have already been systematic about cultivating protections in the corporate hierarchy.
You're doing your best right now. If you feel you can continue to work in this company, or opportunities seem scarce, it's totally reasonable that you'd seek a project that lets you avoid your abuser. But let me caution you that a company which tolerates this behavior will never have your back.
Keep your own documentation. Make sure you have private copies of any e-mails or messages that give a history and context for the negative interactions with the abusive coworker and your lead. Keep a journal of conversations with colleagues that maintains a chronology of events. Ask colleagues to write references for you on LinkedIn. And if anyone else has sustained abuse from this person, ask them if they'll write down their story for you, even anonymously.
Your employee handbook should list a reporting process for harassment or discrimination. To the extent possible for you, get these events documented in company records. If there's a confidential hotline number for reporting, use it. I know it's frightening, and it may seem late in the game. But you're building leverage to ensure that you get moved to a different project or role without overt career penalties.
Furthermore, and I hate that it has to happen this way, you're protecting your (and others) ability to litigate. I wish I'd followed the path I've described above, but by the time I had the strength and resolution to deal with things properly, exit was the only available recourse.
I can't guarantee you can avoid misogyny in technical roles where you're surrounded by men. But I will say that I'm in a much better place now than the company I left.
P.S. Feel free to PM me if you think more support would help.
The problem is that the presence or absence of more level heads in the room is entirely outside of your control. Don't ask yourself to do the impossible than blame yourself for failing.
PTSD definitely makes it harder, but anyone would be impacted negatively by what you describe.
Sometimes it's ok to back off, step aside and let the project fail if that is where inertia is taking things. At that point higher ups might notice that there is a problem. Document every effort you make to try to salvage the situation, with date and time stamps, but you are not the superhero to save the day here.
If you don't know the terms quiet quitting and work to rule, you might find them helpful. work to rule and quiet quitting
Thank you for everyone's advice and support on this situation! Reading the kind replies lately, especially while I am still in the pits of this, helps reaffirm that I'm not overreacting. After connecting with my therapist, I'm very much in a mourning type phase due to how traumatic this was for me to endure. I'm trying to give myself the validation that it's OK to be angry and depressed about this. I have a plan of action now, but I am giving myself the grace to take this time to collect myself and then proceed with what needs to be done once I am ready.
Thank you again for the kindness shown through this post! You are all lovely and beautiful people!
I'm afraid I might not have advice that is helpful for your specific experience, but I'll share anyway for the sake of discussing this concept in general.
The ways I've experienced misogyny in the workplace have been disturbing, but luckily limited to one area - inappropriate sexual comments from male coworkers. The main two situations that came to mind are: 1) an office summer barbeque social event was coming up, and a male coworker told me and another woman that "he hoped we would wear skimpy swimsuits or skinny dip" at the family friendly event, and 2) while at an office happy hour, a coworker told me he had always thought I was "hot" and that he would ask me out if I wasn't married.
My method for dealing with the sexual harassment has always been successful, but might sound a bit discouraging to some. Instead of going to HR, I have confided in other male coworkers who held power at the company (specifically, held power at a higher level than the offenders,) and who I generally knew to be allies to women. They privately discussed the behavior with the offending men, and told them to get their act together because it would become a much bigger problem if it were to continue. One of the offending men never spoke to me outside of a work context again. The other promptly set up a meeting to apologize to me, said he felt awful for making me uncomfortable because he valued me as a colleague, and said he would not behave that way again. I worked with him for five years after that and never had a single problem, so I believe he was genuine.
As for avoiding misogynistic environments, I've had good experiences working on teams that are majority women, but I'm sure my ability to do that is related to my specific career/roles working on legal, HR/accounting, and operations teams, which commonly have lots of women (at least in my experience.) I'm sure that a female software dev, for example, does not have the luxury of seeing out a majority female team.
I wish I had something more helpful to say, and I'm sorry you're experiencing this. Sometimes it is astonishing what awful behaviors are allowed to continue within the workplace.
It seems to me that your coworker is trying to protect his position because he didn’t do his job!
I would not tolerate working for a boss that didn’t have my back or wouldn’t listen to my side of things. It sounds like you have great skills, and potentially a lot of leverage when looking for a new position internally or externally. The writing capability and way you framed the problem in your post makes me wish you were a project manager for one of my programs…
I think that other posters have already hit on all the salient points but I believe there's a few more actions and points to consider:
It is never acceptable to yell at another coworker. When you speak of his actions to others, don't bury this. In fact, it should be the focal point of conversation - that you do not know how to interact with a teammate that is yelling at you. That you find it difficult to listen to their side, when you fear for your safety. Shift the focus to the behavior which is most unacceptable. By framing it as an issue of communication, you prevent him from controlling the narrative - it's not about whether this was a disagreement, it's about how he communicates to you that it's a disagreement; it's not about whether you did something wrong, it's about how he communicated to you that you did something wrong. This makes it seem like you're trying to do everything to cooperate with this individual, but are unable to do so because of his behavior.
Take a look at your organization hierarchy and start reaching out to women who are in positions above you for mentorship. Chances are not all of them will be good fits, but there will likely be at least one individual above you who is willing to mentor you. Even if you don't feel they have much to offer you in terms of mentorship, building connections with women who are above you, so that you can come and confide in them the struggles you are facing which are sexist in nature, can be an invaluable connection to have. Even if it's not explicitly for mentorship, building relationships with people who are minorities and sit in positions above you can be extremely rewarding when it comes to political snafus like this. I regularly seek opportunities to communicate with minority leaders above my own position as I've found these connections extremely valuable. Along the same lines of thinking, pay attention to white male executives who end up as executive sponsors of minority groups such as employee resource groups as some of them may be true allies, and good people to develop relationships with which you can leverage in situations like this.
If you are not already in the habit of it, pay close attention to every political situation which happens at work and results in a negative outcome. One great way to build a rapport with the person immediately above you, is to seek political advice from them. Even though I am frequently seen as the political expert at work, for which people often reach out for advice, I still regularly come to my boss and ask them for advice whenever there's an outcome more negative than I have hoped in order to seek his "wisdom". Nineteen times out of twenty I already know what he's going to say or have a better answer myself, but my regular reaching out to him is more about building rapport than it is about receiving advice. If I humbly come to him seeking his advice, we are solving problems together and it is an opportunity to win him over as an ally on a regular cadence so that he may be more willing to listen to or side with me in the future. It also increases the number of times I am speaking with him where the outcome of the conversation is positive and allows me opportunities to follow up with him about his personal life or other matters which can win over his friendship.
Thank you for sharing your experience and advice! Truth be told, I'm still struggling from this mentally, so seeing your comment was an affirmation that I needed to hear. My company's HR has been fairly supportive, but my immediate mentor of sorts is male and the majority of the team I work with are as well. So having another woman as a mentor is something I sorely need right now. The current demands of my job and the anxiety I am facing makes it very hard to find the energy to start outreaching right now.
I don't think my current mentor meant ill by saying this; more so I think it is a sign of his ignorance of what I and other woman deal with in the workplace. He questioned if I may have blindsided my lead about how I was treated by my colleague
due to the lead praising me highly in other communications. It just adds another bone for my anxious brain to chew on and I keep having to affirm that my lead talked and shushed over any attempt I made to discuss. It also adds to the toxic two-faceness of the situation.
My brain keeps fearing I will be laid-off if I can't find another role. That I am rolling the dice of economic uncertainty due to wanting to avoid this type of treatment. It's politics that has landed me in this difficult position and although it might be more helpful in the future to understand, I really hope I can avoid it wherever I land next.