Have you ever experienced sexism at work? Have you ever witnessed it?
Sexism is prevalent in our male-dominated industry and often goes unchallenged. But women should not have to go through it, and the unions should do something about it.
What is sexism?
Sexism is a set of bigoted attitudes that reinforces the inferior and constricted position in society that women have occupied for centuries, especially working-class women. It is serious, and it encourages a division between working-class women and men. In the workplace, it takes many forms.
Some examples are:
- Sexist jokes. Have you been asked to make the tea simply because you’re the only woman in the room? It’s not that anyone thinks a woman’s place is strictly in the home these days; the jokes are ‘funny’ because we all know a woman’s role is more than housework. But sometimes it would be nice to make the tea without any reference to gender. In a workplace of equals, why should it be an issue?
- Sexually inappropriate comments. There are some men, particularly if they are in a superior grade (which men often are), who only relate to their female colleagues through flirting. Some think they have the right to make comments like ‘been keeping you up has he?’ if you come into work looking dishevelled. Again, this can be funny up to a point, but why can’t we just talk to each other like two human beings?
- Not being respected in our jobs. Does it ever feel like you have to work so much harder to prove you can do your job than your male counterpart? Do you feel you get treated with less respect than male colleagues? It can be hard for the few women who make it into supervisors’ or controllers’ grades to get respect.
- Bitching about women who need to have a flexible working arrangement or who have medical restrictions because of health problems or pregnancy. Employers often treat women in these situations really badly, and the last thing they need is workmates adding to the stress.
How do we respond?
Hopefully, in most workplaces now, a racist joke would be met with outrage. But sexism is ‘just a bit of banter’, which we laugh along with in case we get accused of ‘having no sense of humour’.
Similarly, if women want to be talked to as an equal, rather than ‘flirted with’, we get accusations of being prudish.
These accusations silence us from standing up to sexist attitudes. You can feel like you are treading a balance between keeping on-side and having a laugh with your colleagues and not taking unwanted comments. It shouldn’t have to feel like that.
Sexism affects us on an individual level. Some are more affected by it than others. If we don’t like it, we can feel there is ‘something wrong’ with us.
Comments about personal subjects eg. our sexual behaviour, can be personally upsetting, which makes it hard to stand up to
What can we do?
Women affected by a sexist culture should have the confidence to stand up to it. But this is not easy, especially when women often feel like we’re on our own.
A motion to RMT women’s conference from Off The Rails supporters offers a few ideas on how to challenge sexism at work.
- Carry out a survey of women’s experiences. This will hopefully break down the feeling that we are the only ones.
- Run workshops on challenging sexism. Once we have found that we’re not alone, hopefully we will feel confident to come forward with a collective voice against this. We can learn from each other.
- Run a national campaign. It will be easier for individuals to challenge sexism if there is a campaign from their national union behind them.
- Train union reps and members on the importance of standing up to sexism at work. Fighting sexism should not be a battle just for the women affected, who can often be a minority in a workplace. It would be great to create a culture where every worker understands and takes up these issues. But even union reps can sometimes be guilty of sexist behaviour - or of letting it go unchallenged - sending out the wrong message in a workplace.
Really, this is just about workers standing together to stamp out prejudice and ideas that divide us. It is sad to say that this doesn’t already happen.
Our bosses can exploit these prejudices and divisions to weaken us and attack all our rights.
But maybe we can start to make a difference.