TRUTH BE TOLD

DO WOMEN SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER IN THE WORKPLACE?

Image credit: LINKEDIN SALES SOLUTIONS on Unsplash.

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

A brilliant and dear friend, Dr Devi Rajab, once many years ago, wrote an article for her column, Devi’s Diary, titled Sadly, sisters are not doing it for one another.

The Fullbright scholar, now a retired university professor and a columnist for a leading newspaper in Durban, South Africa, she opens her article remembering a scene from the movie Out of Africa in which Baroness Karen Blixen kneels before the high commissioner, pleading that when she leaves Africa he should let the local people continue to use the tract of land on which she allows them to live and grow crops. “We took their land and now they have nowhere to live.”

In this “powerful gesture of subservience” Baroness Blixen refuses to get up while the high commissioner refuses to budge. It is his wife who comes to her rescue, assuring her that she will make sure that her plea is met. This is the act of sisterhood Dr. Rajab says that many of us aspire to. But do we? She goes on to identify incidents in women’s professional journeys when sisterhood is elusive. And as professional women many of us can attest to times when women in varied workplaces missed their opportunities to be mentors and champions of excellent, highly qualified women experiencing workplace barriers.

We know that gender imbalance has been the norm, favouring men in workplaces for centuries. Even as recently as the 1970s here in Canada, women were asked to resign when they became pregnant; or they were overlooked for promotion with the excuse that women would get married and get pregnant and have to leave their jobs. As female teachers in Ontario at that time, we were extremely fortunate that we had the powerful Federation of Women Teachers of Ontario (FWTAO) as the union representing women teachers. The executives were focused, bright, determined women who did not let up in their fight for human rights. They won us the right to maternity leave! Just 17 weeks of paid leave, but precious time in which we could stay home with our babies and bond.

The outstanding FWTAO continued to fight for women’s human rights right through to the 90s when, due to various pressures, they folded and joined the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO.)

Added to the burden of reluctant sisterhood, many highly educated women experience added prejudices against race, mother tongue, place of origin, culture, religion and in many cases, they face bully superiors. I have written in this space in the past citing data on how highly credentialled South Asian professionals (multi-gendered) with masters and doctorate degrees are being paid much less than white Canadians; in many cases they are not even selected to compete for advertised positions for which they are qualified. We all know the artificial trap called “Canadian experience” that is used to shut out minorities.

But once highly credentialled new Canadians, racialized people, and other minorities do get into organizations, often in entry level jobs much lower than if their potential were recognized, would it not be serendipitous if they found a mentor in the organization who could see beyond race and barriers?

My philosophy has always been “lift as we climb” and I have met many professionals along the way (not always women) who follow the same philosophy. If you are fortunate enough to have had your credentials and potential recognized and are in positions of influence, why can you not recognize potential in other excellent workers and find the time to mentor them, teach them the ropes, coach them and encourage them? It is not about you, it is for the betterment of the service your organization provides, for the thriving of the organization that employs you, for the communities you serve, so that the service can continue to be excellent with outstanding professionals who can continue the stellar work that you are doing. 

Why separate yourself from marginalized people? Why not take the time to recognize their worth?

I did not know this but there is a phenomenon among women working in professional positions called the Queen Bee in which some senior level women distance themselves from junior women to be more accepted by their senior male peers. This bizarre behaviour is chronicled in an article titled, Don’t Underestimate the Power of Women Supporting Each Other at Work by Anne Welsh McNulty in The Harvard Business Review. Unfortunately, cut-throat behaviour is the reality in many large organizations.

Luckily, the opposite to this nasty behaviour can be found in many places where people in executive positions or in highly respected, highly credentialled careers, like medicine, find support through solidarity rather than being unsupportive of one another. Research in this area conducted by Daphne Pillay-Naidoo and Corlette Vermuelen titled Seeking Support through Solidarity: female leaders’ experiences of workplace solidarity in male-dominated professions found that

“The benefits of female solidarity within male-dominated workplaces were identified as career shaping mentorship, female recognition, female representation, and female support. The interventions that can be implemented to increase female solidarity within male-dominated workplaces were conceptualised as networking, transforming the company culture, socialisation and mentorship.”

Many professionals, (of all genders) experience insurmountable challenges, barriers placed in their way by prejudices or simple jealousies at work. And most times there may be no sisterhoods available to lift you up, to rescue you from oppression, to recognize that you are being held down by forces that you don’t even know about (who knew about Queen Bees?). Like my friend Devi says in her article, as women or racialized people or other forms of oppressed people, we have to be prepared to be strong and determined to fight a lone battle. And when we fight our lone professional battles and are strengthened and begin to experience successes, we need to be able to find empathy for people being oppressed at work like we were, and we need to take the high road, help other bright workers and we need to lift as we climb.

Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.