What Is Benevolent Sexism?

How do you deal with the kind of sexism that’s veiled in politeness?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily and this and this is stuff
Mom never told you, And today I am really stoked
for the conversation we're going to have around a term

(00:26):
that I actually have to admit. As much as I
read about, think about, and write about women's issues and feminism,
I had only recently stumbled upon this term benevolent sexism.
So I think what's funny is that the initials of
it are b s, because that's exactly what it is,
total b s. And I'm excited to talk through what

(00:50):
the heck benevolent sexism actually is, what it looks like.
And I think of it almost as like sexism light
diet sexism. Yeah, totally diet sexism, because it seems palatable,
it seems harmless, it seems like almost politeness. But sometimes
we have to uh, as women especially but as men

(01:14):
and women recognize and call out the harmful sexism that
is benevolent sexistem So this really became on my radar,
became more of my collective consciousness around this issue. With
Vice President Mike Pence, you may recall a few months
ago there was an article popping up about his policy

(01:36):
around not dining with women in his office alone. Okay,
can I just say how creepy that is? That was
the cree And in college I had a professor who
had a policy where he would not have office hours
alone with a female student, and so he would have
male students in his office alone, no problem. But if

(01:58):
you were a female student in the office hours, like
in the library or the coffee shop, and it's not
me to be so strange, like you can't be alone
with me because I'm a female, a female student of yours,
Like we have to go to a public place otherwise,
what Well, that's the thing, right, And what came out
of that kerfuffle with with the Veep's office is that

(02:19):
there's a lot of offices here in Washington, d C.
But also I'm sure we're on college campuses where that's
become a policy, well intended to keep women safe, well
intended to keep people from talking about rumors about what
it might mean if a woman's alone with her boss

(02:39):
or with her professor. But that's actually not good, not good.
It's not good because it prevents women from being in
first of all, treated as equals, which is really people,
and second of all of being um having the same
access to v I P. S. So if the v

(02:59):
I he in your office, your boss, you're elected official,
who you're serving, can't be alone with you, can't have
dinner with you, and in his case it was unless
his wife was present. Um, then what does that mean
about the relationship building that can happen that's essential to
women's career success? And I think I think you really
hit the nail on the head and that, like, think
about all of the access that you get when you're

(03:21):
able to have that one on one time with your boss,
with the decision maker, with somebody important, right like if
you were I think that women are kind of excluded
from a lot of that in other ways to where
it's like, oh, the men in the office are going
to go to you know, a strip club or something
like that. Like I think there there was a big
example of that recently, I think with Uber where they
went to a a I think it was a strip
club and the women in the office came but felt,

(03:44):
you know, very uncomfortable, made complaints and that if you
are you know, how many ways can Uber get that wrong? Honestly?
How many headlines do is ub have to have before
they just call it a day. We'll find out we're
keeping our running list. If Lift wants to call us
and sponsor the podcast, I would gladly accept that call
because is uber needs to shape up or ship out exactly.
So let's let's break this down a little bit because, um,

(04:07):
you know, we're going to talk about the intricacies of
why this can get even more complicated. But the ironic
part about benevolent sexism is that the people who perpetuated
are some are often doing so with women's best interests
at heart, and so it can it can feel well
intended and yet totally dehumanizing for women. So it actually

(04:27):
this term benevolent sexism was coined in with a study
done by Peter Glick and Susan Fisk. There were a
paper on this concept that they called ambivalent sexism, and
in that paper they defined two kinds of sexism. Hostile
sexism is what most of us think of when we
think about sexism. Angry explicitly negative attitudes towards women. So

(04:51):
this angry menimist you know, men's rights style, uh sexism,
that's pretty overt. But the kind of guy you find
on the internet who like clearly hates women, like has
a problem with women because they're women, um, which is
a whole different category than what we're talking about today.
And in the paper they went on to say, quote,
we define benevolent sexism as a set of interrelated attitudes

(05:16):
towards women that are sexist in terms of viewing women
stereotypically and in restricted roles, but that are subjectively positive
in feeling or in feeling and tone for the perceiver,
and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as pro
social like helping or intimacy seeking like self disclosure, meaning

(05:42):
they basically are are taking care of women, right, So
these are behaviors like, well, I don't you know, women
need my protection, Women need my caring and support and
to be caring and supportive and protective of women, We're
not going to ask you to join us at the
golf club after work for this meeting, because that's no

(06:03):
place for you, no place for a little lady, no
place for a little lady, a little lass like you.
And it's like that verbal pat on the head that
is so dismissive and so dehumanizing and has real ramifications.
It does, and I think it's you know, when I
was reading the research for this episode, I was really
sort of struck by the way it operates along a
similar access of like race, where everyone knows that, like,

(06:26):
there are racists out there who are you know, they hate,
they hate people of color. They they you know, have
these negative attitudes about people of color. But then there's
another kind of racism where it's like, oh, Latino women
are so fiery, or black people are great dancers, right,
like where it's like proci feeling but actually sold told,
routed in sort of ugly race related stereotyps exactly, And

(06:50):
it's easy to have happen. It's easy for for people
to fall into that trap. So I think it's important
for us to be able to recognize it. And also
that intersection of a net ent sexism and racism that
came up in the research It's wild, which blew my
mind was this idea of like men need to protect women.
This is like way back hopefully not a thing anymore.

(07:11):
I'm sure it is in some places, but um, that
idea of like, we white men need to protect our
women from scary you know, black men in the neighborhood,
right And it's funny. It's it's not funny, it's horrifying
how much of our sort of cultural norms are built
into this idea that, like, you know, black men and
white women living together, we must protect white women, we

(07:32):
must protect white womanhood at all costs, even if, like
ultimately it's actually bad for the woman. And I also
think what's so fascinating about the fact that this is
sort of rooted at a kind of race according to
the study racism, is that it totally erases black womanhood
from the mix. Right, And so if all, if this
entire cultural norm is based around white men protecting white

(07:52):
women from black men like whereen and totally erased from
the mix, yeah, which is unfortunately common. I think the
more stations around race and gender and man, we've got
a lot more to talk about on that. There's like
seventeen other episodes in there. We should just like we
should have a couple episodes on intersectional feminism one oh
one mo wait forward, but well we'll we'll go there

(08:14):
and and listeners let us know if that's something you
want to hear more about as well, because it will
be part of every conversation. I think that prision I
have I love I want to bring attention to this
op ed penned by a dude named Clarence Page that
was titled When Politeness Closes career Doors to Women, which

(08:36):
really unpacked the troubling nature of Pence's dinner policy. And
I think put at, you know, put in clear terms
just how challenging and troubling and negative even these seemingly
positive twists on sexism can actually be. He said, quote,
people do talk. I'd agree, like they've talked about definitely
you and your boss hanging out so low. But how

(08:58):
much should we care? Efforts to avoid the possibility of
gossip should not require the certainty of unfairness, right which
I that was so clear? He said. Listen, treating any
employee differently on account of gender is probably illegal under
the civil rights laws that Congress has passed. And yet
here's Pen's basically overtly stating, here's how we treat women

(09:19):
explicitly differently. And so there's no girls allowed policy anywhere.
It's like, not okay, And that's obvious. And I think
what's so striking about this this piece is that it
really drives home the fact that ultimately it is hurting women,
right like, even if it's even if I think what
things like this. What's important to keep in mind is
that intentions are great, but they don't really matter. And

(09:40):
so even if you are well intentioned, you're doing this
because you don't want, you know, people to gossip about
your relationship and like all of that. Even if you're
doing it with good intentions, you're actually you know, not
treating your you know, a woman like an equal. And
I think that's what we're asking for exactly. So we
have to look at the outcomes, even when the intention
their pure, we have to look at the outcomes. I

(10:02):
think that's true in your office policy, in our public policy,
in our own personal policy, and being willing to be
open minded when you're proceeding with the best of intentions,
but get feedback that says, hey, this is how this
actually affects me as a woman in your office. I
feel left out these conversations totally. UM. I have an
interesting example which is like very sort of small scale,

(10:24):
I think, but I was just reading it. UM. I
love reading advice columns and like advice blogs, and there
was really it's my like I could like Dear Polly
and a shout out to Slate, UM my favorite one.
I like that one. I could read them forever. They're
so good. But there was one that is, there're all women,

(10:45):
They're all women. We need to do an episode on that.
I'm discribbling sound advice. Are there any advice columns written
by men? That's a good question, um, But yeah, So
it's a woman writing in and she says that she
works on the top floor of her buildinging and that
you know, usually in the elevator it's a mix of
men and women. It's a very crowded elevator, and that
one of her co workers is always going out of

(11:06):
his way to make sure the women get off the
elevator first. But actually this tends to create kind of
like confusing and like awkward, you know, just logistical situations
where people are moving out of the way and getting
off the elevator, and he doesn't do it for the men.
And basically she's like, I know that he's doing it
because it's a polite. He thinks it's a polite thing
to do, but it's actually like yeah, he thinks, but

(11:30):
it is actually like creating a kind of using an
awkward situation for everybody else. And basically she's like, oh,
it will be different if he did it for everybody,
men and women. But I don't think that, you know,
this dumb kind of gender throwback thing should be like
making everybody's elevator time more complicated and more difficult. And
it's interesting, it's interesting how so many of these little

(11:51):
things are rooted in trying to be nice to like
delicate women. What do you think about opening doors for women?
What do you think about it? Well, I somehow I
read this studies somewhere that when women hold doors open
for men, men feel negative about it. I don't know
where it was, so I try to track it down
and then put it in the notes. But I think
that popped up on my radar a couple of months ago,

(12:13):
and I just did that today on my way here. Yeah,
so actually it was fascinating. So I was leaving lunch
at this like grab and go type Mediterranean place and
a man was holding the door open in front of
me because he was coming in. I was leaving, but
this man, another man, man number two, was in front

(12:34):
of me, also leaving. This one guy holding the door open.
He's clearly standing there with the door open. There's a
guy in front of me leaving, and the guy in
front of me pushed the other door, went to push
the other door open. Why didn't want the other guy
to hold the door open for him? Funny enough, that
door that he just went to push was locked. So

(12:56):
I'm watching this all go down, and the guy was
holding the door open just as this little smirk on
his face. The other guy attempts to go in his
own way and open his own damn door. And then
I walked past. You know, I leave as well, and
I say thank you to the guy. So it's like,
I know a lot of women who like are offended
by the door opening, and this is what it goes

(13:18):
back to being treated different, right, So hold the damn
door open for men and women, and you're not perpetuating
benevolence sex as them, because we don't want to be
treated different. Exactly. I'm not a little fragilating, right, I
can open a door, so, like I was curious to
get your cakes. So for me, my my policy on
door opening. And I get that this is a very
out there policy. I don't like it when anybody opens

(13:40):
the door for me because I feel like, you know
that feeling that you get when I feel like it's
like they want you to be like, thank you, oversized way.
Also like my number is exchanged for that. Yeah. I
also hate it when you're walking kind of slow and
someone's holding the door and like you're supposed to like
kind of huffle to get there faster, door open, when

(14:00):
I have to wait a second, even if someone's like
two steps, I don't mind it, but I'm always in
my mind it's like right now, or at least like
that's it. There's a performative aspect that works even if
you're not going any faster. You have to like pretend,
and then the other person feels it is a weird.
It's a weird thing, a weird society thing, and I

(14:22):
feel like I've tried to like opt out of a
little bit. Yeah, that's so good. I mean, just go
extra slow. And then it crosses that threshold into how
long I'm willing to wait, and that's awkward where it's,
oh my god, Okay, what the hell are you talking about?
We're talking about envolent sexes. The actually you know it
now would be a good time to take a break,
and then when we come back, we'll talk about how

(14:43):
benevolent sexism is actually linked to heightened levels of violence
against women in general. So we'll be right back after
a word from our sponsors. All right, So we're talking
through benevolent sexism and how even though it looks like

(15:06):
the nicest form of being a misogynist so sweet, it's
still it's still sexism. Sweet, sexism is still in fact sexism.
So I found that this this report here that we
came across from the Harvard Business School on Gender and
Work really shown a light on how very not innocuous

(15:27):
benevolent sexism can be. Right. And so again we're sort
of talking about it in terms of being this like
nice form of sexism that's sort of rooted in wanting
to protect women, but it's actually, according to the study,
been linked to you know, violence against women. So, according
to a report for the Harvard Business School's Gender and
Work Conference, countries with more benevolent sexism also tend to

(15:48):
have more overt hostile sexism. In addition, places where people
hold more benevolently sexist beliefs to out fewer women in
government and business leadership roles. Furthermore, women who buy in
the benevolent sex them because a bit more hostility toward
women who buck gender roles that I find really compelling totally.
So again you're thinking of this as like being really nice,

(16:08):
but actually it's a sign of something is amiss, right
that people that you're in a society, or people have
negative views about women, and women are being treated not
just sort of benevolently in a sexist way, but overtly
in a sexist way. And that's again like hostility towards women.
Are just outright treating women badly, but their linked you
know the words. It looks like it's not such a
bad thing. But anyone who's like and this is I

(16:30):
find at the end of that quote, because the idea
that women who buy into benevolent sexism can perpetuate these
negative stereotypes to totally totally resonates with me. Because still,
I mean, my most feminist friends will say, Oh, these
are just the boys playing video games. Is just what
boys do. This is what comes of being you know,

(16:51):
they're playing seven hours of shoot them up video games.
Solid that's just what you get with with guys and
living with guys. Or my friend and and former roommate
would be like, oh, I can't reach that. Can you
help me? It's just a little old me here, I
need a handy. I'm big, strong, handyman. And I'm not
saying like that's not true for you, but the idea

(17:14):
of connecting your gender to these underlying rates or the
man's gender to these preconceived notions of what comes with
that can be really like beyond annoying. It can be
really messed up, and it can actually, I think, create
the sense of learned helplessness totally totally. And I think

(17:34):
that like because I heard a little bit of myself
in that like impression of your roommate that you were
doing because I have this, I have this thing where
I hate bugs until if there's a bug in the
mix or not going around it, I like, I mean
I like bugs to just live and let live. Yeah,
I'm not saying yeah exactly, I don't want them in
my house. So when I see one, I'm I couldn't

(17:56):
retreat into this like I don't have to do this
because I'm a girl, right right, and know what's it's
better to say like I don't have to I'm not
going to do this because me bridget as an individual
and not cooled bugs when you connect it with like
the gender, like oh can you kill this bug? Because
I'm simply a meek, healthless woman who can handle a bug, right, Like,
that's a different thing. And so I think it takes reminders,

(18:18):
like I have to remind myself that like it's about,
you know, individuals and letting individual giving individuals the freedom
to you know, express who they are on their own terms, right,
and not sort of making it about you know, matter
of course men are gonna play video games because all
men do that, Right of course women are going to
do X y Z because that's how women are. It's
just an oversimplification that is dehumanizing, you know. But this brilliantly,

(18:41):
and I think is maybe the woman who first raised
my awareness on benevolent sexism is our pal Liz Playing,
a friend of the show. She's amazing. You might know
her from her great work on teen Ish, her show
for vox Um, and her long history of reporting with
Mike Um. But recently she sat down with the amazing

(19:05):
uh Dylan Marin of Seriously TV and she shot it down.
She broke down the whole misconception of benevolent sexism being
benign by just saying, and I thought she put this
so simply and so perfectly. You know, we as women
don't want to be treated differently. We want to be

(19:26):
treated equally, and we need to remember that, and we
need to focus on the outcomes of difference, right when
when otherness yields negative outcomes that shut women out, that
put women in a box, or putting men in a box,
And that's an unfair, outdated, frankly stereotype. And I think

(19:46):
it goes so it goes back so well to what
you were just saying about sort of, you know, the
freedom to express. Individuals need to be able to express
themselves regardless of gender. And like when you make it
about you know, all women do this or all men
do that, those are the kinds of things that make
it hard for people to get out of these gender boxes.
So if you want to have a society where you know,

(20:06):
I mean, I think it's positive for men to write like,
I think that men are often often kind of imprisoned
by this idea that men have to be this way
or that way the same way that women are. And
so I think if you want a society where that
is not the case, is we have to keep this
in mind. And it is tough, Like I think that
we all need a reminder we fall into that. And
I think you know, my my best friends and I

(20:28):
and the Boo and I have gotten more comfortable challenging
each other's assumptions by saying, well, what do you mean
by that? You know? Or I thought, you know, gender
wasn't a restriction, you know what I mean? Like, there's
I'm looking at some of these underlying beliefs behind benevolent sexism,
and one of them is I love women. And I

(20:51):
love women sounds like an innocuous feminist thing to say.
It sounds like something my feminist friends might say, like, oh,
I hate working with men. I just want to with
all women. And you're like, wow, that's not okay. It
doesn't help when we say all women are or all
men are, whether you're saying negative or positive there. I
I dislike that aspect of benevolent sexism, that I love

(21:14):
women thing so much, like I've I feel like I
have seen that sort of like and it does. It
does sound nice, but I mean, like I love women,
although I like women are a brand that you can
be a fan of, right like I I yeah, exactly.
And it's like the idea that you can say like, oh,

(21:37):
I love women, and that that means that you can't
like you know, have hostility to women or not respect
to me. It's kind of related to this idea. Like
a couple of months ago, UM that filmmaker Nate Parker
that he was involved in the entire thing about his past, um,
you know, sexual abuse of a classmate, and when he
was called out at it, he was like, I love women.

(21:57):
I have I have daughters, right like I have a
you know, I have a sister. Like this idea that like,
as men, if you have some sort of close personal
relationship with a daughter, your wife, your mom, that luck
quote unquote love of women exactly means that you can't
have hostile you know, add and I hate it like
I saw it um quite a while ago during the

(22:19):
GUP debates, and one of those throwaway questions that they
were asked was if you could pick one woman to
go on the twenty dollar bill, who would you pick?
And so many of them were like, oh, my wife,
my daughter, And I remember thinking like, it's not I
know that you mean it in a complimentary way, but
like the fact that you can't name another notable woman
other than like someone in your own family is troubling,

(22:40):
does not make it seem like you love women. Or
like respect women's contributors exactly, and you know our country exactly, America,
you know pez Well, I think that's I think that's
a really good point. I'm also starting to feel self
conscious about this because I have in the past ben
chaw lenge by you know, mixed gender audiences that I'm

(23:03):
working with on combating unconscious bias. Let's say that's one
of my signature talks that I give at companies, and
recently was working with an I T company in the
finance and defense industries. Cybersecurity meets finance meets gender, right,
so they were that was the topic of the game.
That's a lot already. So I'm looking on the audience

(23:24):
and it's like mostly male, mostly pale, mostly above the
age of fifty. And here's Emily from to give us
a little chat about combating unconscious gender bias. And I
remember thinking I had to defend myself by saying things
like I love men, I have brothers, I you know,
I have a boyfriend, to make it like more that

(23:44):
I'm I'm not. Yeah, And now I'm unpacking that and
thinking that is messed up and like, but it's interesting
that you felt like you had to like you had
to credential yourself in that way. I'm I'm maybe talking
about under bias. I don't hate men, right, And to
be fair, I didn't open with that that was like

(24:05):
in the Q and A portion, But I just think
we remember afterwards talking with people about Hannah Rosen from
the Atlantic and her great research and her great ted talk,
which you know, her book was called The End of Men,
which is maybe the most hyperbolic title ever, but she
talks about how unconscious bias is troubling for men and
little boys, especially for whom we have like a learning

(24:28):
crisis in our school systems right now. Blah blah blah.
I was trying to make myself clear that feminism is
good for everyone, but I did. I had that. You know,
this benevolent kind of of sexism can feel like a
kind of a throwaway shortcut of proving yourself totallys woke
when you are just cutting corners in a way that

(24:49):
totally totally and I think that I just want to
underscore that point that like this is something that we all,
like I struggled with, that you struggled with. I think
it's something and that's like the trip of a gender
that's say, was like raise or other things that we
deal with, right, Like we are constantly unpacking, constantly confronting,
even in ourselves. And so I went through a phase
where I was really into like arguing with dudes on Twitter,

(25:11):
and I remember it was it was a holiday weekend
when I got into a long hour's long argument about
Ghostbusters and I kept feeling like them, um and you know,
I sort of felt myself. I felt like I was
coming off as a quote unquote shrill feminist, and so
I kept sort of feeling like I needed to be like,

(25:32):
you know, ying qualifying it and like making myself seem
very jovial, very you know, like oh I'm one of
the boys, Like I'm not one of those angry femin Yeah, relatable.
That's b S. I shouldn't have to, you know, I
shouldn't have to fall back on this like lazy understanding
of gender and talking about gender just to like credential

(25:52):
myself as not as like not one of these threatening,
you know people who hates man exactly. I didn't want
to be a black woman exactly. I think that's that's
good to to acknowledge. And I mean I hope that
everyone here at sminting knows that we when we say
we want to be treated like equals and humans, that

(26:15):
includes all of our flaws and all of our weaknesses
and all of our stumbles. And I think the more
like honest and canon we can be about that, I mean,
you know, we're imperfect humans, and so let's let's figure
this out. So so I hope that we can sort
of all get better together, we can all boss up

(26:36):
and feminist. Yeah, don't you see the more you know,
star going across the screen, do do do? Do? I
love it that I'm getting nostalgic for, like my CBS
station twenty five years ago. So we're going to talk
about some ways that you can actually combat this kind
of sexism after this quick break. So we're just talking

(27:05):
about all the ways that benevolent sexism rears. Its ugly
but well meaning, but also ugly and troubling. It's politely
ugly head and so we wanted to just talk through
a couple of ways that you can combat this because
it's something that we all, I think, deal with. So
the first is call it out, so you know, when
someone makes an assumption about you rooted in your gender,

(27:27):
don't be afraid to pause and point that out. And
so one of the ways that I see this play
out a lot is um when you're doing like organizing
work and having meetings and things like that, someone has
to be note taker. And so usually it'll be like,
you know, if you've ever been in a situation like that,
and always like, oh, well, the assumption is that the
woman is going to have good handwriting, she's going to

(27:47):
be a good active listener and be a great note taker.
And so, you know, we had a policy where when
someone asked a woman to be a note taker, we
explicitly expected a man to be like, no, we always
make women take notes, and that's not cool, and so
as a man, I'm gonna take notes, so don't be
afraid to call it out. I once saw like a

(28:08):
really hilarious thing on Twitter where someone was in like
high school working on a group project and a guy
had been like, take notes on this, and then the
woman had been like the female students, and then when
she turned the notebook around, it just said, I'm not
your goddamn secretary. Oh man, oh my god, please listeners,
please do that and tell me how it goes. Let's

(28:30):
take a photo of that and like you're surreptitious notes.
I love this, So there's just reminds you that Bustle
article too. I'm like seven ways to respond to benevolent sexism,
which will include in the notes here. She says, when
you're given quote women's work, I know that it's okay
to say now, right. So when someone says, oh, girls

(28:51):
are good at this, right, you you ladies take care
of this? What do your party planning committee? Right? Just
like the office, all the women or the party, it's
okay to say no. Um. What's so interesting about that
is they've actually done studies that show that. Um, And
I wish I had done research around this. But but
you're imperfectly perfect. In the workplace, women are sort of

(29:12):
shouldered with the extra responsibility of these kinds of things.
So what's like carrying on top of your job planning
the party, you know, getting the card for Linda on
accounting and making sure everyone signs the bringing cupcakes, all
of those little you know, um, I forget that the
expression for it, but all those other little kind of
non work related maintenance things. They usually it's fault to women.
So it's like being expected to do another job for

(29:34):
free on top of your job, which is absurd, and
it's not bad to want to do that. It's bad
to assign that work unconsciously based on gender exactly. And
so I think another strategy here is to flip this gript?
So what do you mean by that? I love, because
it's really about you know, call when you call something
like this out, you might want to say, listen, boss

(29:55):
or colleague or whomever. Would you say that to Jack
and Joe and Jason and all the guys in the
office just the same, Like, flip the script and ask them,
you know, is this exactly? How is this what you
would say if I were a guy? And so giving
yourself that litmus test too too, when you're sort of
unpacking you know, was that am I being a benevolent sexist? Here?

(30:17):
I'm trying to be nice? But is am I mothering
women in my office? And I am I treating women differently?
Or my treating them as respected peers and equals? Ask
yourself would I say the same thing to a room
full of men? And I think those are tough questions
to ask, because are it's it's not simple, it's not
really simple, But I think, um, those are ways to

(30:38):
be more mindful about what can be unconscious and seemingly benevolent,
and yeah, just and just being willing to recognize that
all of ourselves looking inward and sort of being willing
to be self reflective, because again, gender stuff is this
big trip of you know, with mind fields and trip
wires everywhere, and of course we're all gonna, like, you know,

(31:00):
have this kind of stuff play out in our own
down minds, and so just being willing to recognize it
and being willing to get comfortable with being uncomfortable a
little bit can produce some really great outcomes. The last
strategy that I really like here is um, you know,
letting someone know that it's not okay when they're protecting
you from bad news or information or whatever it might be.

(31:21):
Sometimes in the office, especially when a project is not
going well or clients not happy, there's this this trend
that is all imbued within with the benevolent sexism, which is, oh,
I didn't want to tell you that you're you know,
your client project is really going off the rails here,
because I don't want you to worry your little head

(31:42):
off about that. I don't I don't want you to like,
you know, don't sweat it. I I I'm hoarding this
information or this bad news to protect you, sweet lady,
and you have to say, listen, that's not okay because
flip the script and you know, use that technique, call
it out, use that techn and then say that I

(32:02):
in order to do my job as the respected professional
that I want to be here, you need to be
willing to share even bad news with me, right, and
a kind of mean like like the idea that like
you don't need someone else to fight your battles, Like
you don't need like you're capable human and that like
someone doesn't have to protect you from you know, information
that you need or whatever it is that you need,

(32:24):
right the same way that you don't need if you're
an able bodied adult, you don't need someone open a
door for you, like you know, you don't need someone
to protect you from like something that's going to be
bad or negative. And those unconscious assumptions that you need
protecting or caring for can really dismiss women totally full
you know, people that we are. Um. I find that
a lot of the companies I work with have men

(32:48):
who are afraid to give criticism to their subordinate women.
So they're male managers, they've got women on the staff,
and they have to tell, you know, the woman why
her presentation went off the rails or why her attires
inappropriate for the office setting. And they're like, nope, I
can't do this. I'm so not doing this. So then

(33:08):
and then women don't get they don't get the professional
development they need, they don't get the feedback they need.
And then it's like and then they're afraid. They're afraid
of stumbling into the trip wires. That is you know,
this is this is exactly what we're talking about. Imagine
if you were that that male boss who was freaked
out about, you know, having this candid conversation with a
cry in my office, right, and then that that female's

(33:30):
employee goes on thinking that what she's doing is fine,
that this has not been like giving this feedback that
could actually be helpful to her, and you're actually, in
the long term doing her a great dissertace, right, Like
if you'd pulled her aside and said, hey, here is
some constructive criticism on your thing. I know you can
handle it. I want to be straight up with you, right,
you're giving you're doing her a favorite by being honest
and treating her the way that you would any other employee.

(33:51):
But by not, by not giving her that respect that
you would any other employee, you're actually making her you know,
you're doing chivalry can be a real a service like
it's an attempt at chivalry and being a gentleman for
a sweet little lady. And it's unhelpful. So go forth,
women of Sminty and call it out. Flip the script. No,

(34:13):
it's okay to say no to women's work. Know that
you can be assertive about, you know, saying that I
need to hear the bad news or the or the
feedback that you have for me. And you know, let's
make sure that we bring men along for the ride
in educating one another about this seemingly nice form of sexism,

(34:34):
you know, even when it means calling out our gal
pals and our guy friends who are exhibiting these underlying
beliefs about women or men based on general alone. Let's
get better together, people, Let's get better together. I want
to bump a stick. Awesome, Well, thank you so much
for tuning in for another episode, and we want to

(34:56):
hear from you. I want to know if benevolent sexist
it is something that you've seen in your office, in
your workplace, in your kitchen table conversations, whatever it might
look like. And is this something that you've struggled with
like Bridget and I, have you found yourself accidentally falling back?

(35:16):
I'm thinking this is woman's work or this is man's work.
I can't do this and you know, trying to be
nice but instead finding yourself holding limiting beliefs based on
gender alone. Is this a real issue? Do you want
to hear from you? We want to hear how envelope
sexism has played out in your life. Um, do you
think it's a real thing? How's it going? Unpacking it?
Let us know? Shoot us an email at mom Stuff

(35:39):
at how stuff works dot com. You can tweet us
at Mom's Stuff podcast on Twitter. And if you end
up doing some subversive note taking your meeting, not so
I have to get fired, but also send us a
picture where stuff mom ever told you on Instagram to

(36:01):
say for