Tales from the city: Fighting off sexist jokes - Women's Agenda

Tales from the city: Fighting off sexist jokes

The Power Playbook’s Rose Herceg reports from whichever city she finds herself in about the stories she sees in boardrooms, business lunches and dinners across Australia (and sometimes the world).

Time: Thursday 4pm
Place: Sydney boardroom, Australia Square
Players in the meeting: Lawyers, bankers and entrepreneurs

The scene: A group of professionals sitting around a large table: eight men and two women. One man starts telling an incredibly lewd joke that any woman would find pretty offensive. It’s hard to believe that a bloke would say such a thing in 2012. A few of the other men in the room laugh, most look uncomfortable, and the two women are mortified but no one says anything. One of the women leaves the room in disgust and the other stays put, not sure what to do.

Power play do-over? (If either woman could turn back the clock and have that moment all over again)

Humour is the most effective (and most powerful) way of diffusing a tense situation. The woman who stayed in the room could have saved both herself, and the woman who left by saying (with a wry smile on her face) something like…. “Rose has just ducked out to find you a wittier sense of humour. We keep a few in the storeroom for people like you. It won’t take but a minute”

It would have soothed the room. Cut the tension and told the perpetrator of said joke that it is highly inappropriate, that these women are no shrinking violets, aren’t going to fold and have seen it all before.
It would have been the smart move, and incredibly powerful too.

Next week we listen in on a job interview to fill a CEO gig in advertising…

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