A forum on sexism and challenges women face in the workplace with women bloggers, entrepreneurs, feminists and journalists talking about their experiences and the subtle and notsosubtle task they believe women must navigate to succeed. Good afternoon everyone. My name is michael ulric organ e director of ny nyu washington d. Pixma pleasurable to me today to the auditorium for todays event. Nyu washington d. C. At the American Association of University Women represent a series of Panel Conversations to october 2017 around aauw stand up to sexism campaign. Please join us online or in person for this discussion series to learn more about how to fight gender bias in your own thoughts at your workplace enter your activism. This is a second panel in the series entitled the f word, how to be a feminist in the workplace. Todays discussion will focus on the challenges women face while navigating the feminism at work. Its my pleasure to welcome page robinette, college and University Relations manager who enters the panel. [applause] great. Thanks, michael. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our second discussion, our second panel series from both nyu washington d. C. And aauw. As michael said the second panel is titled the afford, how to be a feminist in the workplace. The f word when referring to hear is a little different than what you might be thinking when referring to feminism. I embarrassed to say that i didnt admit to myself that i was a feminist until my sophomore year of high school. Which is shocking considering the amount of time that actually spent on the Basketball Court trying to prove myself or to 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 actually brought and aauw Student Organization to campus to fight for womens inequality. Now working for aauw, a womens advocacy organization, i have the honor of fighting for womens rights every single day. Other women i know are not so lucky. Aauw created our hashtag stand up to sexism campaign to encourage both women and allies to stand against sexism and share how and why they do that in their local communities. Here is a video that has helped aauw spread this important message. I think this page is set. Dont be so emotional. Women are not natural leaders women are naturally stick you should smile more. Lets face it, women have heard it all, especially in the workplace. Aauw is Research Report barriers and buys com them the status of women in leadership explains that gendered micro questions like these contribute directly to the gender leadership gap. Even seemingly small sexist comments hurt womens confidence and devalue womens work. And every sexism doesnt stand alone. It often comes coupled with ableism, racism, ageism, sizes and, transphobia, homophobia, religious, religious discrimination, you name it. So what can we do as a society can make womens professional lives better. How can we combat sexism at work and beyond . Aauw exists for women to push past sexism on campus, in the local communities, and in the workplace. One of the hurdles of addressing sexism is first identifying it and then starting a conversation to stop it. Being a feminist and being a professional are not mutually exclusive. Our experts on our panel today are going to share some insight into how everyone, regardless of the gender identity can be a part of the change. And now it is my honor to introduce the amazing and incredible panel that weve assembled for today pickup going to start first with our moderator for the afternoon, general manager of telemundo washington d. C. And richmond, virginia. [applause] thank you. Next we have jennifer dziura, writer and founder of getbullish. Com, and if i set for career minded feminists. [applause] next we have avis jonesdeweever, author and founder, ceo of the Exceptional Leadership institute for women. [applause] next we have patricia lavoie, activist, blogger and civil engineer. And last but not least we had suzannah weiss, a freelance writer. [applause] thank you everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. Its a pleasure to be representing telemundo and to be of such an established panel pixel good afternoon. We also appreciate everyone thats doing as the alive string of watching on cspan. So welcome. Its wonderful to see such an amazing interest in this very important and critical topic. So really lets get right down to it. Being a feminist in the workplace today, one of the main challenges of being a feminist in the workplace is dealing with the daily occurrences of sexism. As we just said, sexism and workplace can take many forms, coupled with able ism, racism, ageism, sizes and, transphobia, homophobia and more. Its important remember that sexism and discrimination can look different to each one of us as we are all from different intersectional identities. However, we all really do want the workplace to be a more accepting place there today will be discussing the challenges that each of us face in the workplace from micro aggressions to harassment and how really to overcome them. So susanna, produced are with you. You. Youve written prolifically on gender issues, sex and relationships in womens health. Youve covered many topics relevant to this panel. A first office but workplace sexism in context could you please explain a little more about gendered micro aggressio aggressions . Microaggression is something that is not a very noticeable or obvious form of oppression, but in the workplace it might be Something Like using phrases like i. T. Guys, when the Tech Industry giving out only mail shirts, Little Things to make women feel excluded. Or microaggression can be anything, but it could be a racial microaggression, but a gendered microaggression would be a small action that people do all the time without realizing it that make women feel like they are lesser. Or nonbinary people or other cross gender. From the way you just set it, its something that immediately i can tell you happens maybe three times today. Is that right . Something that happens where unconsciously unaware i would say. Right . Yes. As a feminist writer with a degree in Civil Engineering can you tell us about how you incorporated your feminist latina and stem identities are sometimes known as the minis to or feminist feminist which a prt ever heard. But you learn something new everyday. Its going to become a thing after this. To be sincere i never personally had a problem with merging all three. I always felt there was no way that it could put aside my latino identity, my identity as a professional in engineering and my identity as a feminist. I always wanted to incorporate all those things into my activism. I did have a hard time finding a place that i think i understood what that meant of what that looked like. When it came time to joint activist circles it was either this is a feminist thing, or this is an enchanting thing, but this is for latinos pics i have to kind of create an car that my own space. I started doing it with my own blog and writing about those intersections. Never kind of belittling what are the other people is always like these are all the things that an adequate to talk about it as happens to be altogether all the time. Little by little it became more accepted. I feel heavily identified most with feminist circles because i find those are the places that really except other identities, allow me to talk about or express them and to be my full self. Great. Do you find that youre often having to choose one space for another . I know you said you have identified your own space, but when you go into the work or you might have a male dominant population, you have to choose what space to walk in . It does happen often. I would like if i would say im am all the time all three unashamed. I think when it comes to my workplace its very hard for me to just be like a fallout latina feminist and talk about racism and micro aggressions and all these things that i would perhaps talk about in feminist circles pics i try to focus more on stem issues, talk about statistics, women in stem, talk about peoples, and stem. I try to use numbers. Some people love numbers. I love numbers and its a way to kind of a little bit of that, a little bit of my latina and feminist activism into the stem world. And likewise of happened i made in this circle. I have to think about how i speak, the late was that he is and was get peoples attention its really all that matters. Its part of the an activist. I feel like if i am not making an effort to get my audience to get invested to get interested in my message of what im tried to teach them not doing a good job. I think it makes for dynamic conversation in the fact 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. So congratulations on that. I will move over to avis. You are diversity equity and inclusion solutionists. And a career strategist. You have build your career helping women achieve their personal goals as well as, im psycho professional goals as well as personal ones. It doesnt appear that much of the demand for mens career strategist. Certainly [inaudible] this profession would look much more different i would imagine for men clients. What does the need for your profession . In other words, helping women. What does that say about sexism in a place . It says it is in fact, institutionalized. It is normalcy. And it has a lot to do with we talked about micro aggressions, a lot to do with the reality of unconscious bias and have that proliferate our culture. Really when people think of the word leader, most people, the image they have in their mind unfortunately is a man. More specifically its typically a white male. When the talk about women being able to pierce through that preexisting cultural paradigm and be able to assert themselves and be respected as leaders in the workplace, it takes more maneuvering and more advanced thought than what men have to put into it. Its this extra burden i would say that women bear when it comes to being able to either navigate their way to leadership or just navigate their way in maledominated professions productive or skills associate with that that unfortunate women have to take on this extra burden to learn and be able to be good at in order to be able to achieve the positions that they are wellqualified for and deserve to be in in the first place. Jennifer, as a business on any feminist base, looks like you operate an almost an entirely female world. All of your employees, conference attendees, your consumers, fans are mostly all women. Do you still encounter sexism in that area . I would like to say what a great pleasure that is, and the first decade of my crew was not like that. So existing i in the world madep almost entirely of women at least professionally is fantastic. I enjoy it a lot. Its refreshing like a cool feminist beverage. Couldnt be better. Never heard that. Thats great. One thing i really enjoy about it, for instance, there have been a lot of writings about how women apologize too much. Stop saying sorry. Theres a Chrome Extension you can get the changes im sorry to Something Else like millennials are snake people or something. Changes it so we dont apologize for much. Its like women, are the apologizing too much . That everybody is doing to pick canadian apologist a lot and is not a problem as long as a state in candidate. Its like a problem when one canadian comes to an office in america and are the only one apologizing because not everyone is in the same system. If everybody is apologizing i feel like theres so much language to engage in, culturally doesnt have a little meaning. When you say like have a good day, you know thats not really, you know . There so many sorts of niceties that we engage in that are not intended to get a little meaning. When im working in an office with my two employees, its an office warehouse. By Company Sells whereupon the advocates each other, physically getting things out of boxes sometimes and bumping up your its constant like sorry sorry sorry. What is doing to pick it super not a public or when you sister it doesnt mean like i feel like i dont deserve space in the world. Like ive done something wrong, im a bad person, low selfconfidence. No. Saying sorry is a social signal that says i would like to keep getting along with you awesomely. You know . Thats all it says. When you say thank you to somebody because youre just given my for product that you need to say thank you, no, but its nice. Like everyone can sometimes have come to buy a donor age when the person you bought the donor from you keep saying thank you to each other like four times. Nobody has low selfconfidence. Its a social signal your sending that says i want this transaction to go smoothly and i like this workplace to be pleasant and everything is good. I feel like obviously not all goods are the same but nevertheless, an allfemale workplace, i do find that aspect may be conforms to what you might expect. I enjoyed that. I do have to do business with men sometimes pick it does happen. Occasionally men comin come inte office and there like its working it. Yeah, its like 74. Im not going to wear a sweater in the summer in my own office. Im not doing that. Its nice to have kind of a comma i default. In my online store i have a funny anecdote. We sell womens socks as i didnt bother to say womens in front of the sock and i started so if you mens socks all the shipping, Holiday Shopping like women to buy gifts for men. Some people just like mens socks. Thats cool. I started getting mail customers by the socks estimate if they did never agenda on them they must be mens socks. And he got a Customer Service in the from some guys that i bought on the socks and some of them are womens socks. And i was like what makes you think they wouldnt be . Like you just bought socks for a feminist web store. I dont know. So process the return. Women are the default where i am editor like a little bit of that in a is a nice thing. I had to say i agree with that and i think the competition usually sways to my women hold women back. While youre right, i do that. I say thank you, im sorry, im sorry, and unsorted and i get told you dont have to apologize. Its not a weakness. Its just a soldier way of getting along much easier. Men should learn. I agree. But my question to you, for the purpose of i guess identifying things that we women can stop doing to each other, do you find in your female space there are things that we are doing to each other subconsciously or not . That we should be doing, holding each other back and not really knowing we are doing it . I think i just candidate of an anecdote about the last time i tried about business being with a dude . I do have an anecdote. This happened. One thing thats nice but being in the famous workplace is i do business with men but i dont need. Theres a huge difference between im going to do Job Interview and only need this jb to move my career forward. Or like this come once to be my client, lets have lunch. I was having coffee with a guy about you want me to come teach a class in london. That would be a cool opportunity, sounds nice. Ill skip to the good part. He asked me a bunch of pointed questions about where my child was. That happened. Its the coffee beating. Theres so many places a child could be like a onehour meeting. Just so many perfectly safe places. Anyway, and so that was very strange. After that and a bunch of other bizarre kind of personal questions he then went on to say, i love working with mothers. Anytime someone says, sounds like it set up to be a compliment but by definition is going to be a stereotype. Like i love working with, Identity Group nothing could can come from that. Stop talking. I was waiting for turkeys like i love working with mothers. And i was like, please tell me why you love heres the answer. Because they expect so little and they are so grateful. How to be a feminist in the workplace, of course, the f word, how or why its outwardly identifying. No, why is it that we identify ourselves as feminists, this is so taboo in todays workplace. Its a must frowned upon. Why do you feel its like that. Only because so often ive worked in maledominated fields were most of my meetings are devoid of any other women but myself. Also devoid of any other peoples color. I found myself afraid to use the word feminist around my coworker but i think i probably went years without saying it and being very cautious about the word i would use when i had to travel for presentation or panel or anything. It was always like i would talk about women in engineering. I got tired of feeling like i was walking on eggshells. I had to question why is it that i was scared. I started realizing i was just worried they would see me as militant, angry, i thought i would be treated differently, i thought for sure if they thought i was a feminist then shes probably talking about us. They think i talk about them all the time. I had to almost get this inner strength to say 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 word into conversation. I would be like this weekend im going to go to a feminist conference. They would say oh, are you and i would say yes i am. It was kind of like i would try to be, they would say i would say i think your wife would really enjoy it. You should tell her about it. I would get a lot of side i or size or concerned looked and it eventually just became that i was the feminist in the office and i was okay with it. It felt freeing to finally feel like this was who i am. I did find they were a lot more careful around me after ice came out as a feminist. It was like this big deal. I remember thinking about it the night before thinking im going to use the word feminist in a sentence at my office. After that, it changed something. They 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 and they were like i know, okay, i know. I apologize. I would like you should. It was just that scolding look all the time. Not that i want to become everybodys teacher but it felt very powerful. I think youre gaining