When work becomes a masculinity contest
The workplace culture at Parliament House is under intense scrutiny after the revelations prompted by Brittany Higgins’ experiences as a staff member bringing forth an allegation of rape in the workplace, while the wider experiences of women in Australian politics is being highlighted in Annabel Crabb’s Ms Represented which aired its first episode yesterday. In today’s analysis, Leonora Risse (@Leonora_Risse) of RMIT, the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard (@wapppHKS), and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia (@WLIAus) discusses toxic workplaces as sites for contests of masculinity, and how that negatively impacts on women and others who do not conform to these norms, with a particular focus on Australia’s political spheres.
Australians are grappling with a mounting number of revelations of denigration, harassment and alleged sexual advances and assault against women, including allegedly within the walls of the most powerful institutions of our country and perpetrated by cabinet ministers themselves.
Politics in Australia is a highly masculinised workplace, creating an environment where women are unlikely to be valued or treated with respect. Photo credit: "1:6 Men in Suits" by shaun wong is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
These revelations accompany ongoing accounts of predatory behaviour by men against women in the corporate world. And a case of a highly accomplished woman, in esteemed a position of leadership, enduring career-ending bullying and public humiliation by the Prime Minister himself.
And they come on the back of the Australian Human Rights Commissioner’s finding that two out of every five women in Australia had experienced sexual harassment in their workplace during the past five years.
Harassment and assault against women sit on a broader spectrum of denigration and disrespect towards women. It is most starkly captured by Australia’s chilling rates of intimate partner violence, but ripples through all domains of society wherever women are systemically sidelined, undermined, and denied the same opportunities and treatment as men.
This can happen not just overtly, but in a myriad of implicit ways, such as the seemingly innocuous habit of men talking over women in meetings, stigmatised assumptions surrounding women with children, and the higher hurdles that women need to fulfil to reach the same recognition as their male counterparts.
And it strikes even more sharply among Australia’s First Nations women and other women from under-represented or disadvantaged backgrounds.
Australia’s male breadwinner norm powers on
Although Australians like to celebrate the notion of a ‘fair go’ for everyone, survey data on Australians’ attitudes shows that we are still far from envisioning an even playing field for men and women.
Is it better for men to be the breadwinners in the household and for women look after the home and children? Around 20% of men and 16% of women in Australia say yes. Do men make better political leaders than women? Around 15% of men and 8% of women think so. And in the context of a heterosexual couple, around 8% of both men and women agree that it is bad for a relationship if the woman earns more money than the man.
These attitudes cut across all occupations, including those with responsibility for the career opportunities of others. For example, looking at managers, 12% of male managers agree that men make better political leaders, while 14% endorse the male breadwinner model of society.
Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, and it is understandable that some people gain a sense of certainty, identity and purpose by fulfilling socially-endorsed templates of behaviour, which is what gender norms provide. But research shows that traditional attitudes that equate men with positions of authority, dominance and breadwinning are linked to a higher likelihood of aggression, violence and disrespectful attitudes towards women. These attitudes are not just harmful to women. Research shows they lead to worse health outcomes for men themselves, with men who strongly identify with the male breadwinner identity at higher incidence of risk-taking behaviours, depressive symptoms and suicide ideation.
Overturning the male breadwinner norm can come at a grave cost to women’s health and safety. A recent Australian study found that when women start earning more than their male partner, the incidence of emotional abuse rises by 20 per cent and the incidence of physical violence rises by 35 per cent.
Given the risks associated with disrupting gender norms, women’s agreement with the statement that “it is better for the man to earn the income” might not reflect their belief that this is how society should be. It could reflect their acceptance that this power imbalance is, regrettably, the ‘safest’ arrangement to adhere to in current societal conditions.
These findings tell us that creating a safer, more inclusive and respectful society for all women and girls is not just about breaking down barriers to women: it’s about promoting and rewarding healthier ideals of masculinity for men to aspire to.
While policies in the gender equality space have largely focused on initiatives empowering women to step into traditionally male domains, such as encouraging more women into STEM industries and leadership roles, it has been less ambitious about challenging the traditional masculinity norms that guide many men’s aspirations and sense of identity.
One vivid way to tackle this is to shine a spotlight on the multitude of ways that our everyday workplaces, both large and small, encourage and legitimise gender norms and a culture of traditional masculinity, even without realising it. Parliament included.
Workplaces as playpens for power
One way to make sense of how workplaces can feed a culture of the marginalisation and denigration of women is to firstly recognise the ways that workplaces – instead of being the place where we all come together to productively undertake our job duties – can be used by some as a competitive arena for power, status and conquest.
Their primary goal is not to “do their job” as per their job description. Their work site, instead, becomes their playpen for another quest.
A quest to scale the career ladder, surpass rivals, and claim and assert authority in the form of seniority of status, privilege and power. And it’s a personal quest that is commonly incentivised, legitimised and rewarded by workplace culture itself. Look around at how many workplaces heartily embrace systems of promotions, hierarchies, competitive rankings and special entitlements for seniority, as mechanisms to incentivise performance.
But there’s a catch. Most workplaces have been engineered by men. This meaning that the rules of this workplace culture are defined by traits that are culturally associated with masculinity. This has given rise to the phenomenon of ‘work as a site for masculinity contests’. It’s a reality identified by researchers Jennifer Berdahl, Marianne Cooper, Peter Glick, Robert Livingston and Joan Williams in their study of thousands of workers in organisations across the US and Canada.
There are four key characteristics of ‘masculinity contests’ culture. Consider how this applies to contemporary workplaces and broader institutional culture around us.
1. Show no weakness
A hyper-competitive workplace culture, designed around the traits associated with traditional masculinity, is a work culture that rewards workers for displaying bold confidence and suppressing any signs of weakness. It’s a culture that embraces anger and aggression, but shuns any other types of emotion and vulnerability such as uncertainty or fear. This upholds the traditional identity of masculinity as one that demands physical toughness and treats any other dimensions of emotion, ambivalence or risk aversion as a weakness.
2. Show physical strength and endurance
It’s no coincidence that CEOs are typically taller than average population height. And that extreme physical obstacles courses like Tough Mudder have become so popular in corporate culture.
This is a culture that equates capability with physical stature, strength, and stamina. In corporate workplaces, such endurance can be demonstrated through working excessively long work hours, incentivised and rewarded through overtime rates and bonuses, and normalised through the expectation that workers will “soldier on” late into the night and sacrifice their weekends to get the job done. This is despite such behaviour being incompatible with work-family balance and hazardous for a worker’s own physical and mental health. It’s an expectation that glaringly sidelines any workers who have family and caring responsibilities, community roles, disabilities or health limitations.
3. Work comes first
A worker’s commitment to their job and loyalty to the organisation are expected to take priority above all else, including family and caring roles. Taking leave or interrupting your work schedule to attend to other commitments, including family needs, is perceived as a less than 100% commitment to your career. It means that the rules of this game are hard to abide by if you are a worker with caring, parental or other community responsibilities.
4. Win at all costs
Tactics to advance yourself, at the expense of others, are legitimised by the system. Rather than reward teamwork and collaboration to achieve shared goals, this is a culture that thrives on the currency of rivalry, victory and defeat. This ‘win at all costs’ mentality – and the implicit rewards and entitlements afforded to those who attain power in this hierarchical culture – means that disrespectful, toxic and even illegal behaviour becomes permissible and, ultimately, pays off. Pranking your colleagues, and other forms of workplace games, become a permissible part of workplace culture. There is no productivity dividend to be gained from such activities – it’s simply a means of displaying one-upmanship masculinity.
A culture premised on the pursuit and attainment of power, as the reward for competitive success, can fuel such a sense of entitlement among those who achieve that power that it overshadows any consideration for the dignity and the rights of others. Bullying, hostility, harassment, humiliation and denigration of others become the levers by which power and status is attained and preserved. This can clearly set the scene for sexual harassment and/or assault, where the perpetrator of assault holds higher authority and seniority than their victim, to take place.
Traits of ‘masculinity contests’ are all around us
Once the signs of this masculinity contest culture are pointed out to us, it becomes clear just how many organisations and institutions are steeped in it. Especially politics.
The architecture of Australia’s Parliamentary chambers is intentionally built to facilitate adversarial combat and herald power. Beyond the building design, consider how the culture of excessively long hours, incompatibility with family life, ferocious party loyalty and tactics for power has long been lauded as hallmarks of “political life”. Now consider how these features serve another purpose: levers for masculinity contests.
Beyond politics, characteristics of masculinity contests that are evident in virtually all pockets of society including corporate culture, schools, universities, the media, technology, emergency services, sports and religion.
Research proves that organisations that display strong signs of ‘masculinity contest culture’ are not functional or productive. Jennifer Berdahl and her co-authors have identified that these organisations tend to have higher rates of harassment and physical intimidation, burnout, turnover, illness and depression, among both male and female employees. Apart from the obvious toll on wellbeing, such problems generate direct costs to the organisation in the form of turnover costs and harassment lawsuits, as well as forgone gains in productivity, growth and innovation. These workplaces also tend to be less supportive of work/life balance policies, meaning they are limiting the pool of the potential talent that they attract.
Unsurprisingly, Berdahl’s research also detects that such workplaces tend to have leaders with toxic tendencies, including a quest to protect and preserve their own egos.
A culture which revolves around norms of masculinity has the effect of excluding – by default – at least half of the population from being able to partake in the ‘rules of the game’. This is clearly manifested by the wealth of ways in which women – and anyone who does not belong to the dominant culture, ethnic, socioeconomic and demographic group of the cohort in power – experience bias, barriers and under-representation, especially in positions of influence and decision-making.
So, what can be done differently?
Understanding the signs and risks of ‘masculinity contest culture’ can guide us towards ways of doing things differently, for the betterment of all involved. But we can’t just talk about dismantling traditional masculinity norms – we need to know what to replace it with. And to replace it with something meaningful that both men and women can aspire to.
Research points towards the ways that current workplace practices can evolve beyond this culture premised on traditional masculinity norms, to become more inclusive, respectful, genuinely meritocratic and ultimately more productive.
Invest in creating a psychologically safe environment. This means a workplace where people feel genuinely accepted and respected, can trust their team members, can express their ideas and experiences, and are supported to take risks and put forward innovations.
Scrutinise existing practices for instances of masculinity contest culture in action. The onus needs to be placed on leaders to interrogate whether your organisation’s conventional practices and traditions generate productive outcomes and contribute to your organisation’s goals and values, or are simply “the way things have always been done”.
Modernise processes of job recruitments and promotions to be objectively based on a candidate’s demonstrated competency and capability instead of subjective assessments of confidence and charisma. This means using performance-based tasks and broadening your shortlist to be fully representative of your candidate pool. Instinctive assessment such as “he’s a good cultural fit” or “he reminds me of my younger self” are signals of affinity bias that sabotages meritocracy. De-biasing organisations to become genuinely meritocratic requires more than just hosting a diversity training workshop. It’s about redesigning processes in all performance evaluation and decision-making settings within the organisation to snuff out any opportunity for implicit bias to infiltrate the process.
Incentivise innovation through collaboration and consultative decision-making, using mechanisms such as team charters, job-sharing and co-chairing arrangements.
Expand responsibility and accountability for the implementation of gender equality policies, and the achievement of targets, across all parts of the organisation. This cannot solely lie in the domain of the Diversity and Inclusion team or the HR department. Progressing and enhancing workplace culture requires leaders, managers and employees to put their new knowledge and core values into action in their everyday work practices.
Appoint and elevate more leaders who are not a product of the traditional system of power and privilege. Leaders who bring experiences and perspectives that differ from “the way things have always been done” are more likely to see the blindspots of the current system and offer more promising visions for progressive change and inclusivity.
Understand that the inequitable treatment of women in the workplace – even something as seemingly ‘harmless’ as a sexist joke or derogatory comment about a person’s appearance – sits on a broader spectrum of disrespect against women.
Invest in initiatives that genuinely support men to embrace non-traditional roles, including paid and unpaid caring roles in the workforce, home and wider community. This requires, for example, not just offering paid parental leave for fathers, but re-shaping workplace culture to make it genuinely permissible for men to make use of these policies without stigma or penalty.
Recognise that gender is just one of the many mechanisms that perpetuate systems of power and privilege in our workplaces and wider society. Look out for other ways that workplace conventions and practices that are premised on the attributes and norms of the dominant social group in other ways, including on the basis of Indigeneity, culture and ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, language, migrant background and socioeconomic status.
When it comes to the pursuit more gender equitable workplaces and societal attitudes in Australia, there is no shortage of academic research, analysis and evidence-based knowledge on how to do things better. Australia has world-class agencies such as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Diversity Council Australia, ANROWS and Our Watch providing research-driven guidance. Australia’s Human Rights Commission has produced a suite of investigations into gender inequality across various sectors of society, including a practical recommendations to target sexual harassment in workplaces. And following recent revelations of the culture at Parliament House, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins is now bringing her expertise to an independent review of the culture of Parliamentary workplaces.
Understanding the depths of gender biases is complex, and sometimes a personal awakening only comes through lived experience. We all carry our own bundle of unconscious biases and are all continually learning. Our country’s leaders should be more than ready to dedicate effort to deepen their own understanding of the depths and pervasiveness of gender bias. The collective wisdom, research-based evidence and practical solutions are available for them to act on – it is a matter of political willpower and readiness to learn.
This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.
Posted by @SusanMaury