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Zimbabwe Briefing Issue 41
Sisonke Msimang, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (SA Regional Office)
September 01, 2011

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The cost of silence

The choices available to women of my age, and of my educational background, represent a significant move forward in gender relations over the last two decades, but as we mark women's month, it is clear that the progress has been complicated by the continuing reality of sexism.

While for millions of black women in this country, change has been far too slow, there is a growing elite for whom the sky - or at least the glass ceiling right before the sky is the limit. In my daily life, I have kind of access to opportunities that my mother's generation could only have dreamed of: I drive, I vote, I travel, I do press interviews, I conduct strategy discussions, I deliberate, and most importantly, I lead.

But I saw a TED Talk by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, called Why we have too few women leaders, that reminded me of how far we still have to go. Sandberg makes the point that there is a positive correlation between success and likeability for men, while there is a negative correlation between success and likeability for women.

Sandberg's comments about gender, management and likeability, reminded me of an important personal experience that I had quietly tucked away. I describe it as an ugly incident that took place in a beautiful Eastern European city.

About a year ago, on a work trip, I was sexually harassed. It happened in the way that women are routinely harassed every day in the corporate world. What was more interesting than the way in which I was harassed (it was verbal and was not as violent as many incidents that women live through on a daily basis but it was humiliating nonetheless), was my response to it: I did nothing.

I was at a reception, talking with a small group of men who are colleagues but with whom I am not in frequent contact. And seemingly out of nowhere, came seven spiteful words, clearly intended to cut me down to size. "Cant you see that she's a woman?" It was said with a sneer and was intended as a 'joke.' It made everyone except the aggressor, uncomfortable, and it had its desired effect: I was particularly embarrassed, although I had done nothing to be ashamed of.

The fact that I am a woman, was being pointed out by an obnoxious man, to a bigger group of men, in order to say, 'look at her as an object. We are off-duty now, we are not colleagues, we are men, and she is a woman.' It was clearly done to put me in my place and it worked. I felt sick.

The male colleagues to whom this invitation had been extended, blinked in a bewildered fashion, not knowing how to respond. And in that moment, I was disabused of the notion that my job - my formal power as it were - will protect me from sexist abuse.

I deal with sexism every day; it is par for the course when you occupy the position I do. And it comes from many sources. Some of it is even mildly entertaining. When partner organization send representatives to meet me for the first time, they invariably shake the hand of the executive assistant (who is male), and greet him as Mr. Msimang, expectantly looking to me to get them their coffee. Each time, as we clarify, everyone laughs - they uncomfortably and Percy and I genuinely - and we move on. I have developed a tough skin.

But that incident threw me. If you took away the maleness of the harasser, you might be convinced that he had less 'power' than me. He earns less than I do and is probably less politically and socially connected than I am. But he harassed me with impunity, and despite my education, my assertiveness, my power and my knowledge of the law, I could not find the right words to defend myself.

The moment my radar picked up where this was going, I made a choice to find a more respectful conversation to participate in, in another corner of the room. I knew where it was headed and I certainly wasn't going to stick around for it. It was pretty clear why I was leaving, but I did not cause a fuss. I have regretted not making a stink, for the last year. And so of course for weeks after the incident, I was wracked with guilt over my (non) response. Why - given everything - did I keep quiet? The truth is complicated. Partly, I was responding to the fact that I am so insulated by my position of formal power (I am the 'boss' in my organisation), that this took me by complete surprise. Naïve, I know, but true. The obvious corollary is to race relations: just as making it to the top for black people in racist societies allows us to believe that racism has disappeared, even when its architecture is evident around us, many women in leadership positions begin to believe that sexism is not as rife as it really is.

Our positions protect us from sexism in its crudest forms, and because we have ascended in the hierarchy, we begin to believe that we are living proof that the system works. We remember sexism in our own lives, and ascribe it to the past: it used to be bad we think, but things have changed, otherwise I wouldn't be here. Indeed, because many of us have fought so hard for policy change, we have a self-serving interest in believing that sexism has diminished: aren't we the pioneers who have fought to eradicate it?

There is a way too, in which the more senior you get, the more you have to lose - the system rewards those who behave like alpha males. If you file charges, or cry foul, you become the shrill, anti-male, hysterical woman, who can't fight her own battles. If you are tough enough to take on men in the boardroom, the logic goes, then surely you can do a little bit of verbal rough and tumble. But of course the sparring must happen on the terms of the aggressor: you either participate in the sexual banter (which in my view is a non-option), or you allow yourself to become the object of crude sexual jokes (another non-option).

So perversely, the moment you become powerful enough to change the rules of the game, you are less likely to have the informal opportunities with which to challenge the narrative. And when you can engage power in this way, you often don't because of the powerful ways in which women are seduced into the likeability trap. To make a fuss about sexual harassment when you are at a certain level of seniority as a woman, when it is assumed that you are assertive enough to deal with it head on yourself, is to be seen in some ways as 'difficult,' or sensation-seeking.

Of course I know that it is not my fault and that there were compelling reasons for my silence. But I also know that had he been white, and had he spoken to me in equally offensive tones, about my race, I would have had no qualms about telling him where to get off. Indeed, my non-aggressive colleagues would have leapt to my defense. But we live in a society in which blatantly sexist men continue to operate with impunity, and in which there is a clear double standard: it is much less okay to be racist than it is to be sexist.

Martha Langelan, a sexual harassment expert puts it best: "A woman who engages in a clear, principled confrontation confounds not only the harasser's sexist expectations, but the entire social pattern of male dominance and power behind his decision to harass. Faced with sexist aggression . . . she makes it personally difficult for the harasser to continue his behavior; she also creates the beginnings of a new social structure, one in which harassment is no longer a cost-free game for men."

I let the team down. As a society it is important that if the advances that have been made are to be real, we raise the cost of harassment. Until we do, and in particular, until women with some measure of access to social power do, there are no guarantees that the next generation of women will be able to fight a different set of battles. I hope this Women's Month is a reminder that the road ahead requires all of us to contribute to social change.

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