Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace

When we asked the BTSW Facebook group whether they'd ever been voice policed on the job, we got a ton of stories and responses. So many that we decided we needed to dedicate a whole episode just to those stories. So today is Part 2 of our conversation with the hosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries - the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Megan Figueroa is a linguist, writer, and research scientist, and Carrie Gillon is also a linguist and the language planner and researcher for the Squamish nation in British Columbia.

If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, go check it out. The Vocal Fries drop some truly amazing wisdom about the connections between voice and grammar policing and white supremacy and colonialism.

Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace is an independent podcast! Become a patron on Patreon and help support the show.

We usually ask folks to support our show on Patreon. Today, we wanted to suggest places to support crucial abortion services.

Planned Parenthood

Shout Your Abortion

National Abortion Federation

**NOTE: During this episode, we refer to Rachel Jeantel by her last name only. We wanted to clarify and use her full name here. Rachel Jeantel was a primary prosecution witness at Trayvon Martin's murder trial. Court officials claimed she was "hard to understand" and ultimately her testimony was dismissed as not credible.**

A couple months ago, Jeannie asked the BTSW Facebook group whether anyone had ever gotten criticized for how they speak or sound while at work. The response was overwhelming. So many listeners had stories about getting their voice or speech policed on the job.

Megan Figueroa and Carrie Gillon know about voice policing better than most - and the many ways it causes more harm than good. They're the cohosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. Plus, Carrie is a former professor of linguistics and the Language Planner and Researcher for the Squamish Nation, and Megan recently finished her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she's a Project Manager at a language development lab. Carrie and Megan go deep on the ways linguistic discrimination can harm women on the job and elsewhere, and why all of us who have taken joy in correcting someone for using the wrong "your" or "their" on Twitter maybe need to check ourselves.

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"BREAKING: Schwing quits the Northwest News Network. The reason? My male colleagues make tens of thousands of dollars more for the same work. And TBH, making this public scares the S-H-star-T out of me. "

That was a tweet reporter Emily Schwing sent in March 2019, after quitting her job with something called the Northwest News Network. That’s a collection of public radio stations in Washington and Idaho that do regional news reporting. (BTSW's old production partner, KUOW, is part of the Northwest News Network.)

We talked with Emily because she DID a tactic we actually talked about on the show - she quit a job because she felt like she was dealing with a gender pay gap. And then - even though she didn’t really want to go public about why she quit- she went public about why she quit.

And then something unexpected happened - her tweet went kinda viral. Local newspapers picked up the story. And suddenly Emily found herself wondering what was going to happen to her job prospects if future employers Googled her and found all this stuff about her complaining about being underpaid at her previous job.

FWIW: Emily has done some amazing work since March 2019 - with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and with the excellent podcasts Reveal and 70 Million.

Over the course of making this podcast, we have gotten a lot of messages from listeners asking for help, perspective, and advice on crappy work situations. Eula and Jeannie rounded up a bunch of those messages and brought in some deep expertise to help respond - in the form of the fantastic Keita Williams, founder and head of the elite accountability practice Success Bully. She brings insight and tons of tactics for sticky (wait! we mean sexist and racist) workplace dilemmas.

NOTE: This episode was originally recorded in The Before Times (2019), but disappointingly, the problems listeners wrote in about then - from self-proclaimed woke dude co-workers who come down harder on women to gendered pay gaps to leaders bragging about never taking a sick day - are still extremely relevant. Yes, bosses are still being stingy about sick time DURING A PANDEMIC. It's a real thing. Let's all take a moment to sigh in disappointment.

We have often talked *about* straight cis white dudes on this show. But the number of times we've talked *to* them on the show? Next to never. So we wanted to revisit this bonus episode from the Before Times with two of our favorite dudes, Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh, the co-hosts of the long-running daily podcast Too Beautiful To Live. We talked about allyship and their own evolving thoughts about racism and sexism on the job.

Luke also hosts Live Wire on public radio stations everywhere and Andrew also co-hosts the delightful podcasts Spotlessand After These Messages.

Earlier this week, longtime NPR host Audie Cornish announced she's quitting her job. Soon after, public media Twitter started re-asking questions it's been asking for a while now: why are so many people of color leaving public radio? Audie's co-host Ari Shapiro tweeted a thread about it, including re-tweeting a list from NPR podcast host Sam Sanders listing all the hosts from underestimated backgrounds who'd recently left NPR (that list is now outdated). Other folks pointed out that this pattern doesn't end at highly visible national hosts. All over the country, at your favorite NPR member station, people in management are very likely wondering why their staff isn't more diverse. Why it's "so hard" to hire and retain people of color in public radio newsrooms. It's with that context in mind that we decided to share this episode, where Eula (a part-time freelancer) and Jeannie (a full-time permanent employee) tell the story of the day they learned their podcast would no longer be produced by the Seattle NPR station KUOW, and what that meant for each of them.

Hella Black Hella Seattle

"People Don't Follow Money, They Follow Vision" - A look at 'public radio's latest existential drama'

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to be an effective ally or advocate for a co-worker, but when a situation arises that seems like you should be doing or saying something, you worry that you won’t do the most helpful thing? That your actions or words might actually make things worse for your co-worker? How do you know you’re actually helping? 

This is a dilemma that comes up a lot in emails from listeners. And in the Before Times, we talked to someone about exactly this question. 

Jeannie considers this guest a total expert in workplace advocacy and allyship....largely because she advocated for Jeannie when they worked together, and for a bunch of their colleagues. 

Her name is Phyllis Fletcher, an author and editor who lives here in Seattle. you've probably heard her name before - she's in Season 3 credits for providing expert editorial consulting.

Eula and Jeannie originally talked with Phyllis for bonus episode for Season 2. But her tactics feel more relevant than ever. So we wanted to make sure everyone can hear what she has to say.

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How did you two meet?

When it comes to this podcast, that's the question Eula and Jeannie get asked the most. And it's one of their favorite stories to tell. So on this episode, we're doing something a little different. We're having them tell the story of how they met and their friendship.

Big thanks to our Senior Producer Kyle Norris for suggesting we make this a podcast episode!

You're Not Uncool. Making Friends As An Adult Is Just Hard.

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

The Importance Of Work Friends

Some stuff broke, and we need a minute to regroup. We'll be back in two weeks!

In the meantime, if you miss us, there's a whole bunch of fresh bonus content on our Patreon for supporting members.

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"Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white guy". This was a tactic we heard in our Season 1 episode on Imposter Syndrome. If you haven't yet, give this episode a listen. It's our most downloaded episode, and the topic we are asked to speak the most about. For a while, it's felt as though lots of us couldn't get enough tactics to battle imposter syndrome within ourselves.

Then, our friends and all-around geniuses Jodi-Ann Burey and Ruchika Tulshyan co-wrote Stop Telling Women They Have imposter Syndrome, for the Harvard Business Review, followed by End Imposter Syndrome In Your Workplace (chock-full of tactics, btw!). And it got us thinking: Are we still cool with what we said about imposter syndrome in that old episode? That it is truly an individualissue we must each overcome, rather than a red flag about bigger, systemic biases and obstacles?

So we asked Jodi-Ann to listen to that old episode, poke holes in it, and tell us why she thinks imposter syndrome is bulls**t. Which is exactly what she did - in a delightful, hilarious, thought-provoking way.

GUEST: Jodi-Ann Burey is a disruptor, thinker, and writer - and her TEDx Seattle Talk on authenticity at work has been viewed more than a million times. Find her on instagram @jodiannburey. Her podcast is called Black Cancer.

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There's a phenomenon researchers have observed among many women in the workplace that they call "intentional invisibility". It happens because for many women, they are both aware that they must be visible at work to get ahead - own their ideas, speak up, use their voices - while also worrying that they'll be penalized for being too visible. For being too assertive, or too intimidating, or just...too much. (Decades of research on both racial and gender bias in American workplaces indicates this is a valid concern and a real danger, btw.) So these women choose the path of less potential conflict. They shrink themselves so they're not penalized for being too big. They intentionally choose invisibility.

Angela 'Merk' Nguyen has been told she's too much - at her job and even before that. But instead of shrinking and becoming invisible, she went in the opposite direction. She stayed visible. She spoke up to people in her personal life and professional life. And she tells Jeannie and Eula why - even though it wasn't easy to keep speaking up - she'll never go the invisibility route.

GUEST: Angela 'Merk' Nguyen is LV, or Little Voice, on the awesome podcast for tweens Ooh! You're In Trouble. For five seasons, she was the co-host and co-producer of the podcast Adult ISH. And soon, you'll hear her voice work all over kids' animated films! Follow her @ultraraduberfad on Instagram and Twitter.

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Even before the conservatorship, Britney Spears had to figure out how to navigate a stunningly sexist workplace. The kind of workplace where it was considered charming for a fully adult Ed McMahon to compliment your "pretty eyes" and ask if you have a boyfriend...when you're ten years old...and on national television.

Jeannie and Eula have a heart-to-heart about the public narrative around Britney Spears, and how we all had a hand in creating her toxic, sexist workplace - one that only got worse once she became a mom. And they talk about how to do better from here on out.

The documentary we discuss in this episode is Framing Britney Spears, available on Hulu. There's now a second documentary on Hulu too. It's called Controlling Britney Spears. We highly recommend you start with Framing Britney Spears.

Other stuff from this episode:

Mystery Show Episode 2: Britney

Britney's Astrological Birth Chart

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When Marisa Renee Lee's mother passed away, Marisa tried to do everything right. She continued to work hard at her job. She saved her asks for time off and support at work for when she really needed it. And she tried to make sure all the tasks that surround a loved one's illness and passing were completed in an efficient way. Her lesson: you can't project-manage and hustle your way out of grief. Even if everything around you is saying that's the way forward.

We wanted to talk with Marisa after learning about the book she's writing, Grief Is Love, and after discovering she's been thinking about something we both get nerdily excited about: a new national policy! Yessss!

Seriously, though, Marisa has been thinking through what a national grief policy might look like, and why the US needs one. She was Managing Director for the My Brother's Keeper Alliance and the Deputy Director of Private Sector Engagement for the Obama Administration, and she worked with now-President Biden during that time. She says if any President can create and pass a national grief policy, it's Biden. And she says now is the time to move on it.

We both get pretty real with Marisa about our own grief in this episode, and she gets real with us about what it means to grieve, what it means to be there for our grieving friends and co-workers, and why workplaces and other institutions have to get their shit together when it comes to meaningful grief support. The conversation gets heavy, but we love it because it's also funny and hopeful and goofy. We hope you love it too.

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A few months ago, we asked members of the BTSW Facebook group whether they were experiencing grief, and what they were grieving. We got dozens of answers - people were grieving their lives before the pandemic. Live music and theater. Child care. Friends, family, and partners. Jobs. Relationships. Those answers made something very clear - we are all grieving. Many of us are grieving multiple losses.

Then we heard from a group member who's also an Episcopal minister - Anjel Scarborough. She told us what grief actually looks like. How long it takes to process. And she helped us understand something else - that as a nation, and a culture, we are terrible at recognizing grief when it's right in front of us. We don't know how to support each other or ourselves. And yes, those blind spots when it comes to grief are rooted in patriarchy. So what do we do about all that? Anjel has some tactics for us.

If you are a young adult needing support due to a COVID loss, Anjel suggests contacting the COVID Grief Network.

Here are 4 additional resources she suggested:

Association for Mental Health & Wellness (links to many types of grief support groups)

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Hotline for referrals - 1-800-662-HELP

Center for Loss and Bereavement

The WARM Place (grief support for children)

And if you want to learn more about the physical toll grief can take, this NYT piece is a great overview.

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Even in the Before Times, the restaurant industry had problems. Seventy percent of its women and femme employees said they'd experienced sexual harassment on the job. The EEOC took in more harassment complaints from restaurant workers than any other workplace. And then there's the federal minimum wage for tipped workers - a whopping $2.13 per hour. Then Covid hit. Jeannie and Eula talk with a longtime server in Illinois about how her job changed with the pandemic, and how waiting tables during Covid has changed her.

We're baaaaaaack! Friends, we're so excited to bring you Season 3 of Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace. This season, we'll take a deep look at grief (surprise! The way we handle grief is sexist!), revisit imposter syndrome, discuss what it takes (and costs) to be your authentic self at work, and we look at what may be the most sexist workplace in America: restaurants.

We've missed you so much and can't wait to bring you this new season. The guests are brilliant, the tactics are fire, the facts are (as always) sad, and the jokes are (as always) pretty dorky. And if you want to help support us and get the inside scoop on upcoming episodes, become a patron of the show! https://www.patreon.com/btsw