Earnings & yearnings

Women are finding it no laughing matter that gender bias continues to prevail in the workplace, writes Indu Balachandran

The story is told of a young lady intern who was advised to begin her first office presentation with a joke. So she put a picture of her payslip in the opening slide.

Her male colleague from the intern’s cabin laughed and clapped the loudest (perhaps to camouflage the fact that he was secretly getting paid much more), but women are finding it no laughing matter that gender bias continues to prevail in the workplace. And are determinedly chipping away at the glass ceiling with their stilettos. True, there are bosses who try hard to bring about change. I know a guy boss who thought he did a great thing bringing gender equality to his office by making all the bathrooms unisex. But by and large, higher pay, promotions, travel and training opportunities continue to go the way of male office workers over females in many countries around the world. Consider this scenario.

Boss to mid-level woman employee: “You’re brilliant! A huge asset to our company! But we’re giving the promotion to John based on his higher testosterone scores, his superior strength in moving the Xerox machine around, and also because he doesn’t get periods once a month.”

Take heart, working women reading this. There are crusaders for equal rights who never stop fighting for change, and even young girls are being influenced to be more aware of biases in the workplace. Some modern fairy tales begin education early. As in this new version of Snow White and the Seven Dorks:
“Mirror Mirror on the wall
Who’s the fairest of them all…
In paying women’s salaries?”
Fair play at work dominates the cause of feminists, who are ready to even throw tantrums to be heard during annual raise time. Act your wage, is the war cry. And snide remarks like ‘oh it’s that time of the month’ by judgemental coworkers can never be tolerated.
And then there’s the even more challenging world of working moms. They go to work knowing that only the first five days of the week are the hardest. Then comes the weekend! When many mothers get so exhausted with catching up on another form of labour, that going back to the office on Monday is sometimes a relief.

I bumped into my good pal Molly at the supermarket last weekend, wheeling around a gigantic cart loaded with snacky foodstuff. I thought she’d put on weight ever since she returned to her office after having a baby, and felt sorry she was looking so tired and distracted. Clearly, she was caught in a conundrum: she was holding on to her job, as it paid for the expensive stress-eating food bills (which was caused by the job). I gently asked Molly over a cup of coffee at the mall, if she’d heard of new-fangled office concepts like Quiet Quitting (not working beyond what is strictly needed) and Mindful Working (slowing down when stressed). “Oh yes, we do have a lady boss, who’s against something called ‘Hustle Culture’ or putting work in the centre of our life. But then she has work targets set by her guy boss, so she’s always calling us for meetings mid-work into the conference room, and says she’ll keep on having meetings till we figure out why work isn’t getting done…”

There are also matters of sexual harassment to deal with. And here again, raising girls with rewritten fairy tales helps. Here’s an excerpt: “Hello Cinderella! I am your fairy godperson. Do you want to stop slogging in the kitchen and go to work trussed up in the male concept of feminine desirability? Paint your lips with chemicals cruelly tested on animals? Jam your feet into impractical glass slippers?” “Oh no! I’d rather go out in my rags… and quietly work my career path towards riches.”

Working women simply want to feel respected, trusted, needed, fulfilled, recognised, satisfied, actualised, accomplished, gratified, effectuated, complete, and sometimes crack the perfect plot to sedate that male boss with a roving eye with chloroform, strangle him with a computer-cord and dispose of his body in a dark lake. But maybe some women take it to extremes. I heard the other day of a committed feminist who wanted even the office kettle sacked because it whistled at her when she went past the office pantry.

Meanwhile, they are ready to join #hashtagged movements against sexual exploitation and gender discrimination in the workplace. And have smart comebacks ready for stupid assumptions at the workplace. Like this one: Of course, women don’t work as hard as men. They just get it right the first time.

(He Said/She Said is a monthly column on gender issues — funny side up. The author ran away from a bank interview to join Advertising and then ran
away again to be a Travel Writer. Resulting in her novel ‘Runaway Writers’. Reach her at [e-mail])