Soft-misogyny and its Impact on the Workplace

Abracadabra

Early on in my career I sat in a school meeting. Midway through the meeting the Head of School called a short five minute break. Everyone but myself, the Head of School, and another male colleague remained at the table. The Head turned, looked at my colleague and commented, “Well I guess it’s just you and me then Bob.”

In an instant the magic wand of soft-misogyny had been waved over my physical presence and I became invisible. I was annoyed and ruminated on the event as a modern allegory for the ways in which women are made invisible, through lack of upward mobility, through lack of equitable pay, through lack of opportunity. But the Head was a ‘good guy’: a person I respected, even admired. It was then I realized that qualified women are often unintentionally erased by men who think that they are champions of women.

Here, in order to make the invisible visible, I work to provide insight into the ways in which people engage in what I call soft-misogyny or misogyny without cognition — and the ways in which that impacts the female experience. Women are not simply denied top leadership opportunities at the culmination of a long career, but rather such opportunities seem to disappear at various points along their trajectories. When women do elevate to leadership they face challenges embedded within…