Harrassment

[20nil]

Just want wondered if anyone hadn’t experienced sexual harassment or bullying? My complelety unscientific polls among female colleagues suggest that it is rife. I’m mid 40s and have experienced this at every level of my career. I was hoping things had improved, but it doesn’t seem so. Very depressing

I think there are lots of sexist structures and assumptions that my male colleagues are quite blind to though.

Yes, I'd completely agree with this. I've never been harassed or subjected to sexually inappropriate behaviour, but I have encountered plenty of sexist attitudes. One that drives me mad is that my husband is a teacher, and, for whatever reason, academic/teacher seems to be quite a common pairing. People always assume that for my male colleagues whose wives are teachers, this is a 'nice little job' that is easily portable and so convenient because they can do all the childcare because of course they work so little. For my husband, though, it's treated like an actual and important job, and because he works for quite a 'fancy' school, people comment on how obviously I couldn't expect him to move. No one has ever suggested that it'll be great if we have children because he can do all the childcare, ever. Obviously what I want is for people to value and respect all teachers much more highly than they do, but it drives me mad that it seems to only be seen as a proper job if a man does it.

I've noticed this too and, yes, it's odd that academic/teacher seems like a common pairing!!

I'm a permanent academic at an RG university. My DH is a contract researcher. He is always being sent job or fellowship opportunities from the other end of the country or the other side of the world and no-one seems to respect the fact that DH can't/won't move because of my career.

I've noticed this too and, yes, it's odd that academic/teacher seems like a common pairing!!

Yes, I don't know why! DH wasn't actually a teacher when we first got together. I've also noticed that more than once my colleagues have expressed sympathy because they assume that he has a PhD (he doesn't, but he teaches the same subject as I work in so people often assume we met as students) and didn't get an academic job so went into teaching - again, I get the sense that this (in this case fictional!) scenario is seen as somehow sadder or less appropriate for a man...

Totally agree about sexist structures and assumptions that even right on men don’t seem to notice. At the moment there’s a lot of talk about improving childcare in my institution. Great idea, but the clear assumption is that this will be of benefit to women. No sense that men should have equal responsibility for it or even that this is far from a panacea. It’s not as though the careers of women without children are held back, is it?

Careers of women without children are held back .... (although of course not for childcare reasons).

There are clearly double standards about childcare. If a woman wants to leave the office early to get kids from school, then she is often pushed onto a part-time contract. Yet it's typically considered fine for men to leave the office early routinely to get children as they are "working from home".

He is always being sent job or fellowship opportunities from the other end of the country or the other side of the world and no-one seems to respect the fact that DH can't/won't move because of my career.

Tbf, they might not be assuming you'll move anywhere. Long-distance stints apart from partner are common in academia, esp for temp research contracts.

It's different if you have DC, as then they're probably assuming either that you will move or that you'll lone-parent while he's away.

User, that was my poor attempt at sarcasm. We all know that women with or without children are held back. This is why I worry about the emphasis on childcare above other measures to tackle gender inequality. It reinforces a lot of unhelpful ideas about gender roles and provides a handy but misleading ‘explanation’ for structural inequality.

He is always being sent job or fellowship opportunities from the other end of the country or the other side of the world and no-one seems to respect the fact that DH can't/won't move because of my career.

I actually worry much more about people making judgements about personal life and suppressing job opportunities.

It has happened to me and my partner that we were not approached for (senior) jobs, because it was assumed that we would not be willing to live apart i.e. assumptions were made about our personal life as we are both academics. In fact, we would be willing to live apart if the right opportunity presented itself.

And it is well-known that people make far more assumptions about women's personal lives than men's.

The colleagues who send DH these "opportunities" know full well he absolutely wouldn't live away from me. I think the assumption is that I'd up-sticks and move.

It's different if you have DC, as then they're probably assuming either that you will move or that you'll lone-parent while he's away

Exactly, but that's still the same thing. Assuming the female partner will either move or will parent alone while their DH goes off to the other side of the world for his work. No, I wouldn't be willing to do either of those things.

game If these colleagues have already been told that your DP wouldn't live apart from you, then fair enough. I wouldn't ever make that assumption without being explicitly told, though - it wouldn't be the norm.

Tbh, I also often forget details of people's personal lives unless I know them very well... if I recall someone doesn't have a permanent post, I may well send on a job ad in their area with no thought to whether they have partner, kids, etc. It may benefit a colleague if not themselves.

As user said, I'd rather forward a job ad that turned out to be useless than hold back from sending a job ad that would have been perfect for someone.

I think you do need enough arrogance to think your ideas are worth others' time

Hmmm, I don't think this is arrogance either - I think my ideas make a contribution to a more general collaborative forwarding of work in my field. It's what Newton said (I think): "If I have seen so far, it's because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

I work hard to make sure that my work is worthy of other people spending time - listening at a conference, reading my books & essays.

I think the trick is to take your work seriously, but not to take oneself too seriously. Although sometimes I suspect this is why I'm mansplained by ale post-docs, or overlooked for certain things, even though I'm senior and a bit of an overachiever (quietly, by pulling in grants & publishing a lot). But in person I can be quite frivolous.

I haven’t experienced anything I would describe as harassment in academia, or when I worked in industry. I’m in Engineering. We had an academic from Law come and investigate an accusation of gender bias (which I believe was unfounded) in our department and the stories she told made our hair stand on end. Her first question to me was “which of your colleagues would you avoid being alone in a lift with?” Which got the honest answer that there were none that I would think twice about. She refused to believe me. So it’s clear to me (now) that we are fortunate in my discipline.

I have never experienced any harassment at work (outside of work is a different story..) And I completely agree about the double standards. My DH is a professor and on the few occasions he has taken our kids in to work (once changing a nappy on his desk!) he was congratulated for being so hands on. I know that women doing that in our dept would get quite a different reception!

I've never been harassed, but a colleague of mine was (elsewhere) & is quite affected by it, I think.

But the gender bias is structural. It's a career structured for men with wives at home.

I don't have either wife or husband - no-one to smooth the domestic way at all, and it makes me cranky sometimes that I'm expected to "compete" with male colleagues who have wives doing "lesser" jobs and looking after all the domestic stuff. (I rarely meet male colleagues with wives have more high-powered careers, although I work with a lot of women - how they manage is that they are superwomen!).

But the assumption is as a single childless woman ("socially infertile" is how I describe myself) I have it easy. That's not the case. And I'm paid 15% lower than my male colleagues ....

So it’s clear to me (now) that we are fortunate in my discipline.

I've heard a lot of harassment stories from engineers, including some from chemical engineers. Is your department exceptional or do you think that the stories I've heard (Cambridge etc) are the exceptions?

When I said discipline, that was more referring to my department (which we don’t strictly have in my university) I can’t talk for all departments. Maybe it’s just us, but I’ve been in chem eng a long time and haven’t heard it talked about in academia. I suppose it just takes a few bad men to sour a particular department, or a workplace. I don’t know the Cambridge department these days (I’m not sure what the etc code stands for here) so I can’t comment. Maybe I am so scary that it doesn’t happen to me. No female student or colleague has ever raised a concern about harassment from a male member of staff.

I do totally agree that academia is designed for married men in 1957.