The (Difficult) Women Times

Image by Werner Heiber

A major news outlet recently considered the question: did women ruin the workplace? And now, other outlets like Vanity Fair have responded in a clever, jestful manner, calling out the discriminatory claims in the original NYTimes article. When major media gives attention to questions rooted in misogynistic rhetoric rather than good faith, only a brief response is needed.

Women didn’t ruin the workplace. They ruined misogyny and mediocrity. They interrupted the status quo. Their arrival ruined and disrupted systems of patriarchal control and undermining as they surpassed their peers despite centuries of adversity.

Furthermore, high achieving and high-performing scapegoated women and whistleblowers from marginalized groups uplifted the workplace and exposed predators, bigots, and subpar performers who could get away with their lack of skills based on their gender or privilege alone. Their excellence exposed who had real merit and who was there because of nepotism and unwarranted privilege.

Women enhanced the workplace as they called out (and continue to call out) sexual and verbal harassment, risked retaliation after standing up to workplace violations, and endured bullying from leaders who feel threatened by their assets and skill sets as they climbed the corporate ladder. Historically, women had their ideas stolen, their bodies objectified, their achievements and efforts devalued yet copied and siphoned to benefit men. Even women who were not in the workplace or were simultaneously mothers and wives contributed to the immense unpaid domestic and childrearing labor that made the careers of their husbands possible in the first place.

Now, are there some women, particularly narcissistic women, who also bully other women in the workplace due to envy? Are there women who make the workplace a harder place for overqualified yet underrepresented groups of women who naturally surpass them? Absolutely – but that is a different question entirely, and one that is not even touched upon in misogynistic articles considering bizarre claims of “feminine vices.”

We can look at this question through an intersectional lens, but we have to push against generalizations that hold an entire gender responsible for the actual vices of the privileged sex who have historically held more power in the workplace.

It should go without saying that both women and men who weaponize any unwarranted privilege, bigotry, or bias to harm the marginalized and bully those whose natural talents and skills threaten them are reprehensible. These types of toxic people are not included in this response.

Women with empathy as a whole, however, should never be blamed for holding perpetrators accountable and making the workplace a safer and more diverse space for all women, and heightening the standard for excellence and merit.