It includes the founder of get bullish. Com and freelance writer Susanna White who has written on the topic for womens magazines. [applause] thank you michael. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our second discussion. The second panel is titled how to be a feminist in the workplace. What we are referring to here is a little different than what you might be thinking. We are referring to feminism. I am embarrassed to say that i didnt admit to myself that i was a feminist until my sophomore year of high school. That is shocking considering the amount of time that i actually spent on the Basketball Court trying to prove myself and others that i was just as good as the guys. Like many women, i was afraid of labeling myself as a feminist for fear of being judged. Years later, i came to my senses and i realized the importance of feminism, specifically intersectional feminism. In college i ended up majoring in womens studies and i actually brought in aauw Student Organization to campus to fight for womens equality. Now, working for aauw, a womans advocacy organization, i have the honor of fighting for womens rights every saturday. Other women i know are not so lucky. They can encourage women and allies to stand against sexism and share how and why they do that in their local community. Here is a video that has helped aauw spread this important message. [inaudible] [inaudible] dont be so emotional. The women arent natural leaders. You should smile more. Leslets face it, women have hed it all, especially in the workplace. Aauws report barriers and bias and the status of women in leadership explains that gender micro aggression like these contribute to the gender leadership gap. Even seemingly small sexist comments hurt womens confidence and the value womens work. Every day six sexism doesnt stand alone. It also comes with racism ageism, homophobias engine religious dissemination and how can we get better in combat this at work. A8 w exist to help women push past sexism. One of the hurdles of addressing sexism is first identifying it and starting a conversation to stop it. Being a feminist and being a professional are not mutually exclusive. Our experts on our panel are going to share insight into how everyone, regardless of gender identity can be a part of the change. Now it is my honor to introduce the amazing incredible panel weve assembled for today. I will start with the moderator for the afternoon, nicole is the general manager of telemundo washington d. C. In richmond virginia. [applause] think you. Next we have jennifer, writer and founder of get bullish. Com for career minded feminists. Next we have doctor weaver, author and founder ceo of the Exceptional Leadership institute for women. [applause] next we have patricia, activist, feminist and civil engineer. Last but not least we have Susanna White, a freelance writer. Thank you everyone. Nicole. Thank you all for being here. Its such a pleasure to be representing telemundo and to be with such an established panel. Good afternoon. We also appreciate everyone joining us live stream and watching on cspan. Welcome. It is wonderful to see such amazing interest in this very important and critical topic. Lets get right down to it. Being a feminist in the workplace today, one of the main challenges of being a feminist is dealing with the daily occurrences of sexism. As we just said, sexism in the workplace can take many forms coupled with able is him, racism, ageism, sizes him, trans phobia and homophobia. Its important to remember that sexism and discrimination can look different to each one of us as we are all from different identities. However, we do want the workplace to be more accepting. Today we will accept the challenges that each of us face in the workplace from micro aggressions to harassment and how to overcome them. Susanna, i want to start with you. Youve written prolifically on gender issues, sex and relationships and womens health. Youve covered topics relevant to this panel but to help us but workplace sexism in context, could you explain a little more about gendered micro aggressions. Sure. A micro aggression is something that is not very noticeable or obvious form of oppression, but in the workplace it might be Something Like using phrases like it guys or in the Tech Industry i saw giving out just mail shirts which are Little Things that make women feel excluded or it can be anything but it could be a racial micro aggression, but it gendered micro aggression would be a small action that people do all the time without realizing it that make women feel they are lesser or non binary people. I would say without us even noticing. Something i can tell you happened at least three times a day. Something that happens and we are unaware. As a feminist writer with a degree in civil engineering, can you tell us how youve incorporated your feminist latina identities. I never personally had a problem with merging all three. I always felt there was no way i could put aside my latina identity, my identity as a professional in engineering and my identity as a feminist. I always wanted to incorporate all those three things into my activism so i did have a hard time finding a place that understood what that meant or what that looked like. When it came time to join activist circles, it was either this is a feminist thing or this is an engineering thing or this is for latinos. I had to create and carveout my own space. I started doing that with my own blog and writing about those intersections. Never belittling one of the other. It was always like this is all of the things that i am and im going to talk about it and what happens me all the time. Little by little he became more accepted. I still heavily identify mostly with feminist sectors that are intersectional because those are the place that accept my other identities and allow me to talk about it and to be my full self. Thats great. You find you are often having to chose one space or another . I know you have identified your own space, but when you go into the work we might have a male dominant population, do you have to choose what space to walk in . It does happen often. I would lie if i said im all the time all three unashamed, i think when it comes to my workplace, its very hard for me to just be a full out latina feminist and talk about racism and micro aggressions in all of these things that i would perhaps talk about in feminist circles so i try to focus more on stem issues. I talk about statistics and women in stem and race in stem. I try to use numbers. It is a way to kind of bring a little bit of that, a little bit of my latina and feminist activism into the stem world. Likewise, it happens in other circles. I have to think about how i speak in the language i use and what will get peoples attention. Its part of being an activist. I feel if im not making an effort to get my audience invested and interested in my message that im not doing a good job. I think it makes for a dynamic conversation in the fact that you have so many pools to choose from. I think its an art to be able to pull together who you need to be at that moment to heighten or further your agenda. Congratulations on that. Ill move over to doctor avis. You are diversity, equity and inclusion specialist and a career strategist. You have built your career helping women achieve goals and personal goals. It doesnt appear theres much of a demand for mens career strategist. This profession will look different for men clients. What does the need for your profession, helping women, what does that say about institutionalized sexism in the workplace. It says that it is institutionalized. Its normalcy. It has a lot to do with micro aggressions and the reality of unconscious bias and how that proliferates our culture. Really, when people think of the word leader, most people, the image they have undermined is a man and more typically a white male. When we talk about piercing through that paradigm and asserting themselves and being respected as leaders in the workplace, it takes a little bit more maneuvering and more advanced thought and what men have to put into it. Its this extra burden that women bear when it comes to being able to navigate their way to leadership or just navigate their way in maledominated professions. There are different skills associated that women have to take on this extra burden to learn in order to be able to achieve positions that they are well qualified for and deserve to be in in the first place. Jennifer as a business owner, it looks like you operate in almost an entirely female world. Do you still encounter sexism in that area. First i would like to say what a great pleasure that is. The first decade of my career was not like that. Existing in a career made up of almost all women is fantastic. I enjoy it. Its refreshing like a cool feminist beverage. It couldnt be better. One thing i really enjoy about it, for instance there have been a lot written about how women apologize too much. We should stop apologizing so much. And changes it so we dont apologize too much. Do we apologize too much . Canadians apologize a lot but its not a problem when they stay in canada. Its only a problem when one nadine comes to america and is apologizing here. Theres so much thats just culturally that doesnt have a literal meaning. When you say have a good day, you know, there are so many niceties that we engage in that are not intended for literal meaning. I feel like when im working in an office with two employees, its an Office Warehouse so we are bumping up against each other physically getting things out of boxes and bumping up and its constantly sorry, sorry, sorry and everyones doing it. Its not a problem. When you say sorry it doesnt mean like i feel like i dont deserve space in the world like ive done something wrong or im a bad person with low selfconfidence, saying sorry is a social signal that says i would like to keep getting along with you. Thats all it says. Sometimes when you say thank you because youve just given the money for product, do you need to say thank you . No, but its nice. You buy a doughnut in you and the person that you bought a doughnut from, you each say thank you like four times. Nobody has low confidence. Its just a social signal that says i want this transaction to go smoothly and i would like this workplace to be pleasant and everything is good. I do feel like obviously, not all women are the same but nevertheless, in an all female workplace, i do find that aspect maybe conforms to what you might expect. I do have to do business with men sometimes, it does happen. Occasionally men come into the office and the like wow, its warm in here. Im not going to wear a sweater in my own office. Its nice to have a centering, women are the default here. In fact, in my online store, kind of a funny anecdote, we sell womens socks. I didnt bother to say women in front of the socks. Then i started selling a few mens socks and women could buy thing for men. In any case i started getting mail customers buying the socks and just assuming that if they didnt have a gender they must be mens socks. I got customerservice emails and a guy was like i bought all the socks and they were womens socks. I was like what makes you think they wouldnt be. You just bought socks from a feminist web store. Just process the return. Women are the default and i feel a little bit in the world is a nice thing. I have to agree with all that, and i think the conversation usually sways to how women hold women back. While you are right, i do that too. I say thank you or ill say im sorry. No, you dont have to get apologize. Thats a great way of saying it. Its not a weakness. Its just a social way of getting along much easier. My question to you is, for the purpose of identifying things that women can stop doing to each other, do you find in your female space there are things we are doing to each other subconsciously or not . Things that we shouldnt be doing, that were holding each other back and not really even knowing that were doing it. Can i tell you an antidote about the last time i tried to have a business meeting with a dude. One thing thats nice about being in a feminist workplace is that i do business with men but i dont need it. Theres a difference between them going into a Job Interview and i need this job and this guy wants to be my client, lets have lunch or Something Like that. I was having coffee with a guy about coming to teach a class in london and i thought that would be a cool opportunity and so ill just skip to the good part, he asked me a bunch of pointed questions about where my child was. Yep, that happened. I would like this is a coffee meeting. Theres so many places a child could be for a one hour meeting. So many perfectly safe places. Anyway, that was very strange and so after that and a bunch of other bizarre personal questions, he went on to say, i love working with mothers. It sounds like it set up to be a compliment but by definition it will be a stereotype. I love working with identity groups. No, nothing good can come from that. Stop talking. Im just waiting for it. I love working with mothers and i was like please, tell me why. Heres the answer because they expect so little and theyre so grateful. I cant even begin to comment on that comment. The emphasis is made for tv, we will just move on for that. Thank you for the example which is very true in our everyday lives. I will open us up for the next couple questions for the panel. The title of this is the f word, how to be a feminist in the workplace. Of course the f word, notwithstanding the last story is here to say feminist, how or why it is identifying, why is it that when we identify ourselves as feminists, its almost frowned upon if you say youre a feminist. Why do you feel its like that. I work in maledominated fields were most of my meetings are devoid of any other women but myself. I found myself very afraid to use the word feminist around my coworkers. I think i probably went years without saying it. I was being very cautious about the word i would use when i have to travel for presentation or panel so as like i have to talk about women and engineering or something. I got tired of feeling like i was walking on eggshells and i had to question why is it that im scared. I started realizing i was worried they would see me as angry, i thought i would be treated differently, i thought for sure, if shes a feminist and shes probably talking about us, believe me, they think i talk about them all the time, so i had to get this inner strength to be like i dont care what you think about me, i dont care what you think i do in my activism, i dont care that you read my writing because im not saying anything you dont experience every day because a lot of it is coming from your mouth. So little by little i learned how to weave that kind of word into conversation. I would say this weekend im gonna go to a feminist conference and they would say oh, are you, and i would say yes i am. It was, i would say i kind of i think your wife would really enjoy it. You should tell her about it. I would definitely get a lot of side i and size and concerned looks, and eventually it just became, thats just the feminist in the office and i was absolutely okay with it. It felt freeing to finally be like this is who i am, and i did find they were a lot more careful around me after i came out as a feminist. It was like this big deal. I remember thinking about it the night before thinking on many use the word feminist in a sense today in my office. After that, i changed something. There definitely thought about their actions a lot more. When they would Say Something sexist in front of me, i just had to look at them. They were like i know, okay, i apologize. I was like yeah, you should. It was just kind of like that scolding look all the time. Not that i wanted to become everybodys feminist in the office. I think youre gaining respect in the beginning when youre not sure if you want to come out and say Something Like that, what does it mean for them and what does it mean for me, but ultimately heightening awareness in the office is exactly what we want. I congratulate you on your effort. I want to ask what your expense with that has been as well. I think people are so afraid to call themselves a feminist because a lot of people dont know what feminism means. When i said it people will say but you seem pretty feminine where whats your problem with men, and so, if peoples image of a feminist is somebody who hates men and is out to get everyone, then of course theyre not going to like it if you say youre a feminist so part of it is educating people that feminism means you believe in equality and yes that does mean man will have to give up some of their privilege so you dont have to water down and say not all men are against women, we shouldnt have to do that because sexism exists even if its not all men, but we shouldnt have to cushion our language, but we should, we need more awareness that feminism is about equality and things arent equal now and once they can see that things arent equal, theyre not looking to become female supremacists or something, theyre just looking to have an even playing field. Doctor eva, on a very random note, have you ever been asked to plan a Holiday Party or get a cake or something with birthday cards in an office environment. I havent but its not that much of an unusual thing. A number of women do experience that as if they are the office mommy role that they are expected to fill, and its important to make sure people respect you as the professional that you are, to have that be the default burden of the requisite woman or only woman in the office shows once again the pervasiveness of institutionalized sexism in the culture and though theres nothing wrong if one wants to do that and its your voluntary choice to do that once in a while, really its very disappointing to see office cultures were that is the expectation. And the norm. Exactly. Some note birthday cakes. Going back to you as a business owner, in your space it looks like you operate in an almost entirely female environment. Outside of the problems that we discussed, how do you think moving forward. Are you looking to implement men in this to create a reverse silence as we are talking about making everything equal, if you will . How do you feel about that . How do you see that . Does there need to be more space for men . I dont know how to take that question. At the time that i was hiring, i would consider mail applicants as i was legally bound to do, but yes, i feel like so much of the rest of the world is not the way my faith is, i feel like things are good. Actually, the conference that i run so far has been in the neighborhood of 55 people. I run a small conference for feminists who are interested in careers and entrepreneurship. It has occurred to me, there comes a certain size where i think i will open that conference and say sure, come at it if you really want to attend a conference on this topic for men, but i thi