(Image sent to me courtesy of Renee Siegel)
A Familiar Story
Where to start on this post. I don’t know. So many things.
Truth is - I’ve thought about this post for several years. I have a lot to say. This issue isn’t new. As I have spoken up a lot on equality and issues that matter in the last few years, I’ve also experienced a lot more pushback, too.
So here we go…let’s dive in! Consider this one big important pie to the face. With a point. Plus, a pie callback is coming. Promise!
Scarcity
There are few domains where women are the defacto standard. We’ve never been the status quo - except perhaps in the domain of motherhood.
That means in so many arenas, we’ve been underrepresented in positions of power and authority. For all women and especially women of color. Because when absolute numbers are low, it’s beyond hard to achieve racial diversity and representation. Women have in many arenas fought over scraps thrown their way. And in some of those places, it means some people treat it as a Highlander situation - there can be ONLY one. That’s an awful narrative. Yet, that reality of small, slow wins, few and far between, where only one woman after years of being absent in powerful positions at the table, pits women against each other.
It’s a catfight brought about by a scarcity and fear mentality. And it’s exacerbated by the slow gains women have made in many areas. The real issue isn’t women by themselves. Really. It’s behavior propped up by a system that fails us. Until we start failing ourselves. And in my experience, that’s an issue.
And it’s not new. I’ve experienced the systematic leadership deficit many places.
In tech, I was often the only or one of two women in a department. The same was true for comedy lineups and sometimes improv. I joke that at one startup all the I.T. guys had a nickname - the IT guys! The sales dudes had a nickname - the money men! And then the women got a nickname: Kathy! Funny because it’s true.
Yes, my humor has helped me navigate a lot.
You meet two kinds of women: women who embrace each other and collaborate because of circumstances AND the second group - women who fight hard to be accepted into the status quo. So much so, that when the status quo is threatened, they become enforcers for a status quo that never valued them in the first place. Yet, THEY played that game and won by a degrading and slim margin. They got theirs. So how dare you speak up and threaten that!
I get it. It’s hard. Women have been hurt. Women of color, especially, silenced. So many talented women fighting a system that devalues them. That finds excuses to not include them in an expanded circle of prosperity.
I spent 15 years in tech leading marketing and communications teams of mostly men. Hard? Yes. Because if there’s one thing men loooooooooove it’s having an educated, funny woman boss! Hey, we need some levity here!
I have always believed in collaboration. I mean ‘yes and, right?!’
Not for all.
Yes, there are many women who do and they are amazing. We lift each other up because we know how hard it can be. We see each other across the room and we’re instantly sisters in silent knowing. A nod of respect.
We can’t look at a few women who made it and say, “See, there’s women succeeding so what’s the problem?” That’s problematic extrapolation. Period. Do the math. How many women:
In exec ranks / senior management / C-suite
Get VC money and investment commensurate with male founders
Get equal pay / opportunity
Get the same stage access / time (share of stage / pay) as speakers, comedians, etc.
And on and on
Yes, we’ve made progress. No question. And yet, there are systemic barriers that still exist. We need to keep pushing through. Thankfully, there are women opening doors for other women as the best of who we are.
My Journey
Sadly, I’ve met too many white women in my journey who came out of the same or similar male-dominated spaces I did that now uphold the systems they had to surmount. They sacrificed everything. They “MADE” it to the inner sanctum of leadership. Thus, they’ll defend it with everything they got - even at the expense of other women and people of color.
Yes, they worked hard. We all did. Yet…not all of us forget that.
Yes, many men have a problematic view. They created these status quo systems to work for THEM - so let’s give them credit for that. The largest problem is the sea of apathetic white men who are politically ‘neutral’ because “I don’t want to get involved.” That is privilege because legislation does not threaten their rights. This group is a large one and, rightly galvanized, could be the swing in this country’s trajectory towards equality.
And yes, there have been men who are more than complicit - they have said and done things that cause damage. I have dealt with them too.
Yet, privileged white women who fought like hell to get accepted by the status quo are a big problem because they defend it. And this is a post about the truth.
Women who somehow made it into this world of powerful men feel they must prove themselves over and over again as being watchdogs for that power. No one asked them to; they want the approval that comes from proving their loyalty without having been asked. Their livelihoods come from male sponsors. They got male sponsors; screw others who didn’t. ‘Don’t mess with my stuff’ is the mantra. For them, other women rising threatens their status. They are used to paucity and to there only being a few women at the very small table men let them sit at.
A Few Examples
I think it’s important to anchor this in a few examples because they are emblematic when it comes to women’s lack of support for - and actual harm of - other women. As always, these happen many places. You’ve seen it. It’s ubiquitous.
“How Dare You Challenge The Rules Now!”
I spoke up in a group of speakers about comments such as “If women and POC wanted to be more represented as keynoters, they’d just work harder. It’s not the job of organizers to plan for diversity.” I’ve heard this many times and many places. It sadly isn’t a referendum on any one place. That’s how pervasive this narrative is.
At the core of this is a problematic belief: that planning for diversity means lowered expectations for some speakers. THAT belief is false. It’s not accurate and never has been. And there is real damage done when that belief is propagated (here in my experience mostly by white men and upheld by white women). Because saying it over and over again validates it. And if you say this, you are denying the very real experiences many people have. You are feeding a false story: they’re just not working hard enough. That justifies power and unconscious bias that props up the status quo. Speaking is a matter of reps - the more women and POC are part of the standard, the better they get IF that’s even an issue. There is plenty of talent that never gets heard because of bias - explicit or unconscious - that undermines opportunity and visibility.
I spoke up in the group and posted on my FB wall - no names, no locations, no event names, no identifying information. I spoke up at the event and one white women speaker who has “got hers” and who has penetrated the inner circle got in my face and protected the white man benefactor who said it. Then she went to my FB wall and screamed at me for telling the truth (no names of speakers - I said statements I’d heard at many places and why they were problematic. Wasn’t about the people). Yes. I tried to speak up at the place where this was said - and white women and men tripped over themselves to defend the powerful white speaker who said these things. People who spoke up were labeled “unkind” by another white woman. I spoke up in the fb group before all this when similar things were posted - in both cases where women of color specifically had been talked over, patronized and treated poorly by men. And it was white women to the men’s defense. Again, comments flowed to protect the people in power. Talk about blindspots. It happens everywhere - in companies and organizations across the country and world.
Intent is not impact. I cannot decipher intent here. That’s not the point. The point is these false narratives have detrimental impact to people who already don’t have the same privilege that people who say these things have. It has negative impact. That is why people like me step up.
In this case, this specific white woman speaker who holds herself out as a liberal didn’t just disagree with us. She had to mount a campaign to protect her interests. A number of us were ostracized. She did it to score political points with the white, wealthy and privileged powers that be, and ensure her place in the status quo. After all, she sacrificed to get there so how dare anyone challenge that?! She became an enforcer for the status quo. A few months later, black people spoke up in this group and challenged the power structure in that group because all the top contributors were white. This same watchdog told black people if they didn’t like it, they could leave. Her words: How dare they take from the group and only ‘criticize?’ This woman and people like her defend the status quo at every turn. Hey, she got hers, right?
Now the white male speaker who said this was clearly wrong. No excuses. Yet, it was a white woman who became the self-designated political enforcing arm. She rallied the troops to form a protective circle around the privileged. That bubble keeps those in power from hearing the truth. And by throwing people out for speaking up - they showed how very unsafe it was to challenge anything.
And I have balls. Truth is my currency. What about those who are less assertive?
That’s just one example.
“You Must Have Done Something”
In my experience women often don’t believe women when there are cases we should look out for. Until it hits them.
There are the women that attribute the event to the woman - SHE must have done something. It’s a variation of ‘blame the victim’ which thrives on women’s insecurities and misogyny they’ve had to swallow their whole lives.
I spoke up about an experience at a conference with an organizer who was problematic (name withheld in my article - the post was about the bias in speaking and how women are treated - less pay, no pay, few women and people of color on stages). Some women came to me privately to support me. See, it’s never just one woman. They had similar experiences. A dozen women came to me and told me they had the same experience. They did the math and they knew speaking up would cost them. So they didn’t. They didn’t say anything publicly; yet, they didn’t publicly make my life hard. Respect.
Then, one woman in particular who was very ambitious to be a speaker at an event where women are not treated well came to me to hear my story and I think she already knew. In her mind, she was dealing with cognitive dissonance and wanted to justify a decision she already made. She asked me. I told her upon her request.
No one gave her advice. She solicited our stories. Then decided not just to ignore us (all the women with similar stories); she actively negated us. UNTIL…
It happened to her. By her own admission in her social media posts, she said she ‘did not believe women’ UNTIL it happened to her. Because she believed she was different. Yes, she found out sadly that she was no different from those of us who had worked our asses off, delivered high ratings-presentations consistently and given everything asked for. Because we blame women. The thinking goes, “she must have done something to deserve it. I am different.” We blame women for speaking up and blame them when they don’t.
It’s a shit sandwich. And you try to pick the choice that does the greatest good and moves the needle for more people.
Speaking up for me is an act of empowerment. It’s a way to make some good come from those shit sandwiches!
So Here We Are
It’s not about me and it’s not about women: it’s about the systems and the scarcity.
When women fight over scraps and crumbs that men and far too few women in power decide to throw at us, it becomes a world of ‘not enough.’ It’s a deficit mentality that has been sadly reinforced by slow progress and too many barriers. That BS pipeline excuse of not enough talented women - garbage. There are talented women everywhere. And this ‘us v them’ stuff is a manufactured and fixable thing.
And sadly, there’s internalized misogyny. Hurt women hurt women. There are so many women who have been treated poorly that they go on to treat other women poorly. They worked hard, put up with shit and they armored up. Because it sucked.
Tough Love
I am sorry you were hurt. Yet…
Do you think my 15 years in tech and my over 20 years in comedy came without a welcome kit that included a ‘welcome to the club. Now fuck you’ letter? That’s probably the nicest thing that happened! My experience came with harassment, sexual harassment, unequal pay, petty bosses, harmful bosses, discrimination, macro- and micro-aggressions and I witnessed the gaslighting of many women / women of color. I experienced horrifying behavior and dealt with feckless, powerless HR.
Many of us did.
Women who speak up and tell the the truth take up space. Unapologetically. That’s scary to many women simply because women aren’t socialized to do that.
Women taking up space and owning their stories make some (thankfully not all) women uncomfortable - especially the ones who worked their asses off to fit in, to “make it,” and to squeeze into that inner sanctum of powerful men.
Now we’re challenging those rules.
I feel some compassion for these women. I was in these same situations. Yet, I chose to try to speak up and expand the pie. Easy? Not always as you can see from my experiences. Yet, it’s necessary.
My point - there is no excuse.
Most women refuse to pay that hurt forward. Instead, we channel that frustration into something meaningful, better and bigger than ourselves and move the needle for more people. That’s self-actualization and as one of my close male comedian friends calls me and this energy, “HBIC, head bitch in charge” energy. Give no shit to others, take no shit. Shit sandwiches turned into something better.
I am a ‘HBIC.’ You knew that already.
What Now? More Pies and Dudes, Fix Your Shit
Photo by Kavya P K on Unsplash
Things are changing, thankfully. Slowly, though.
So many amazing women ARE leaving companies to start their own and change the game for others - especially women of color - who deserve way more.
We also need men to step up and make change, to advocate for us, to speak up when they hear and see things and to help drive inclusion by bringing more people to the table. What are we on, patriarchy product launch version 5,000? Men, you created the patriarchy so you all need to take some big responsibility for changing it. Your product sucks!
Women need to take responsibility, too. We need to look out for each other.
The system has failed so many times. I won’t add to that by failing others. When we fail each other, we’ve failed ourselves. That means women having each other’s backs (all women), speaking up, lifting up like great emotional support bras.
There’s room for everyone. It doesn’t have to be a Highlander situation. Let’s expand that pie, eat the pie, throw the pie for comedic value.
So buck up, badass bitches, and let’s make, eat and throw more pies! More pies, less shit sandwiches! Rule of three applies so I was comedically obligated to mention it one last and third time.
Onward and upward,
Kathy, HBIC