Imagine for a moment that your boss is Anna Wintour. You decide to send her an email to complain about a coworker’s behavior and instead of responding, she forwards that email to the person you complained about. Working for the fashion boss is a fruit of the imagination, but her masterstroke is not, because apparently that is how the British woman acts. Jeff Bezos is another of the kings of silent power by using the so-called “Bezos method of the question”. “If someone inside or outside the company sends him a complaint by email, he forwards the message to the person responsible, adding a single character: “?” Staff live in fear of receiving an email with a question mark from their demanding boss,” writes Dan Lyons in ‘Shut Up’.
“Not saying anything is the ultimate display of strength”
For her part, Angela Merkel made silence her virtue, because while her adversaries strutted and raised their voices, she remained silent. In this way, no one knew what was going on in his head. She “she understood that not saying anything is the ultimate display of strength and that when you have power, it is not necessary to respond to attacks. She just kept silent and let her opponents beat each other,” the author writes.
“Women suffer mansplaining at work up to six times a week”
In the work environment, guarding words with suspicion and strategy scores points, but of course, we cannot ignore the fact that this is the case when we talk about someone who enjoys privileges and who is the owner of power. That is why the place to which so many women are subjected in the office is especially painful, where their voice is (re)lowered and where it seems that they have to fight to be heard. According to one study, women suffer mansplaining at work up to six times a week, that is: more than 300 times a year. Almost two-thirds of them believe that men don’t even realize they are doing it, and two in five women say that in fact, they have told them that they are the ones who don’t let them talk.
Westend61//Getty Images
The privilege of silence
The habit of men speaking comes from before, since a study launched by sociologist Janice McCabe in 2020 indicates that university students speak 1.6 times more than women. Throughout history, women have been reprimanded for using their voice in an “inappropriate” way, something that is even worse in the workplace, where they are routinely underrepresented, questioned, interrupted, ignored, overlooked, scrutinized, condescending and questioning.
Why women have to talk
Why is it dangerous feminine silence? Responds Elissa Bassist, author of ‘Hysterical’. “When we don’t speak, we can’t say no, we aren’t assertive or we can’t communicate. This is when we lose our agency, autonomy, and sense of self. In our silence, we like ourselves less and get more angry with ourselves; We do not believe in ourselves nor do we trust our figure. If we cannot express how we feel, then we cannot manage our emotions. We can’t even be ourselves, because we change our personality for a calmer person. We burn faster. Silence also drives us crazy, literally: it makes us more anxious, depressed and suicidal,” she explains to ‘Elle’.
“My silence almost killed me”
“I don’t want to be dramatic, but silencing ourselves is self-injury: my silence almost killed me. Mine manifested itself physically in migraines, persistent stomach pain, repetitive stress injuries… Study after study, as I quote in ‘Hysterical’, the silence of women is related to repression, illness, pain, diseases related to heart, cancer and death. Therefore, speak as if your life depends on it, because it does,” she says.
Issarawat Tattong//Getty Images
The feminine silence
She says that when researching the book, she discovered that women are punished or penalized at work for negotiating too much, for acting assertively, for not adhering to gender stereotypes, for being fun and for saying no. Such sanctions include lower performance reviews, fewer promotions, being less liked and respected, and being seen as having lower status and as less capable leaders.
“Although women talk less than men, they are perceived to talk too much”
He warns that there are many double standards at work, since studies indicate that although women talk less than men, it is perceived that they talk too much, which affects those who are considered competent. “People perceive cis executives who talk more as more competent, but cis female executives who talk more as less competent. Regarding ability, when men joke in a business presentation, other people see them as more capable as leaders and give them higher performance ratings, but when women joke, others see them as less capable as leaders. lead and are given lower performance ratings,” he says.
“Silence as a survival weapon does not work”
In a world accustomed to shouting, for minorities and women, silence could often seem like the best, the only and safest option, but silence as a survival weapon does not work. “Ultimately, silence is a double standard for women, an eternal enigma that condemns us if we remain silent or if we speak, warns Bassist.
2024-01-21 07:12:45
#women #silenced
