Confronting Sexism in the Workplace
Gender equality is a fundamental human and essential to all societies. Despite efforts made to close inequality gaps, much work still needs to be done in order to achieve full gender equality, including in the US, where sexism can occur every day in a woman’s workplace. Raina Brands and Aneeta Rattan from the London Business School conducted a study on the relationship between a woman’s perceived centrality in social networks and the likelihood that a woman will confront colleagues who express gender biased beliefs. Centrality refers to an individual’s position in a network. Someone with many connections to others in a network would have a central position, whereas someone with only a few connections in that network would have a peripheral position. For this study, the researchers focused on a woman’s perception of their centrality in her advice network at the workplace. Connections were established between individuals in this network through the exchange of advice. Participants, who were all female, were presented with a scenario where a male colleague made a gender-biased comment and asked questions about confronting that colleague. Researchers then analyzed these responses with assessments of the participants’ centrality in their networks. They found that women who had central positions in their advice networks were more likely to confront gender bias coming from an individual outside their networks. They also found that this was the case even in settings outside the workplace or when confronting a workplace superior.
This study demonstrates the real-life effects of concepts of graph theory related to centrality and the ability to form ties. A woman who is deeply embedded in her advice network and shares many edges with her colleagues will feel more empowered to speak up against gender bias in the workplace. After all, she has built up trust with her colleagues and established strong ties with them through sharing and receiving of advice, so she will feel like she has a support group to fall back on after confronting another person for making a gender-biased comment. Additionally, since the woman is frequently asked to share her opinions and beliefs in her own network, she will feel more comfortable and less hesitant to speak up against sexism even when it comes from outside her network. By contrast, a woman with a peripheral position in her advice network will feel less supported. There may only be one or two people who go to her for advice, so she is not as accustomed to voicing her thoughts. Because of this, the woman may feel like no one cares about her feelings and no one will support her, so she will feel less empowered and less motivated to confront someone who makes a gender-biased comment.
Furthermore, a woman who has a central position in her advice network will perceive the confrontation of a gender-biased comment to be less risky than a woman who has a peripheral position. The woman in the central position shares many edges with other individuals in her network, so she has numerous opportunities to participate in social exchanges. Thus, each individual exchange has less value to this woman. Say that she confronts someone for making a sexist comment, but an individual that she shares an edge with disagrees with her decision to confront the other person. Maybe the woman and that individual argue over her decision and cannot settle the dispute, so their relationship turns negative and they stop going to each other for advice. For the woman, this is not a major issue because she has many other individuals with whom she has good social relations, so she can continue to go to these other individuals for advice. However, a woman with a peripheral position would deem this to be a high risk to consider in deciding whether or not to hold a confrontation. She does not have many opportunities for social exchanges to begin with, so if she alienates one of her connections in deciding to confront another colleague about a gender-biased comment, she may lose the only person she can approach for advice.
Clearly, this study reveals the need to actively include women in advice networks in the workplace to empower her, especially in the face of everyday sexism. More generally, it shows that it is not enough to simply have a diverse range of individuals present in social institutions such as work settings and schools. These institutions can hire, accept, or invite more members of marginalized groups like women and people of color to join their organizations, but does this diversity mean anything if they are located on the peripherals of the organization’s social networks? Society needs to do more to make marginalized communities feel included and feel like their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings matter to others, especially on the topic of discrimination. Only then can we close inequality gaps that still perpetuate all over the world.
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167220912621