Why are there so few women in surgery, managing law firms or running companies? Sexism & sexual harassment have a lot to answer for - Women's Agenda

Why are there so few women in surgery, managing law firms or running companies? Sexism & sexual harassment have a lot to answer for

On Monday I wrote about my experience of sexual harassment in a law firm. It wasn’t pre-meditated; I hadn’t written about it previously and didn’t think I ever would. Why? Because my experience was not definitive and the consequences weren’t disastrous. It didn’t ruin my life or my career. I wasn’t physically assaulted. I was young enough and well-enough supported outside the workplace that it didn’t ‘matter’.

The public discussion about sexual harassment in surgery made me reconsider. Did my experience really not “matter”? Despite being relatively inconsequential does it not illustrate, to some extent, why women still remain absent from senior roles in the legal profession?

Did my experience not contribute, in some way, to my understanding that a law firm was not an environment in which I would necessarily thrive? Is that because I wasn’t good enough to thrive in a large firm? Perhaps. Is it also because the culture was not conducive to a person like me thriving? Perhaps.

My decision to leave law was more complex than being asked to sleep with a partner. It was, however, informed, in a not significant way, not by merely being exposed to sexual harassment or your garden variety workplace harassment, but by the expectation that would be tolerated. I remember telling my parents, who had always emphasised the importance of manners and appropriate conduct, how astonished I was to discover grown-up professional adults behaving with so little regard for courtesy.

Was my decision to exit law a great loss to the profession. Of course not. But the dynamic that led to it is troubling because my experience is less extraordinary than it is completely ordinary. And the law has a well-evidenced problem retaining females.

Last night I quickly tallied up my colleagues and friends from university, school and law firms. The pool of extraordinarily talented women I know who were eager and poised to develop legal careers has shrunk inexplicably.

But it’s not inexplicable and the story isn’t confined to law. Last night I read two private messages that simultaneously broke my heart and boiled my blood.

One lawyer described being a first-time new mum back at work struggling with “leaking and engorged breasts” that many new mums can relate to. The senior partner started sending her emails with images of big-breasted women. She left soon afterwards.

A former pilot emailed about how difficult it was for her to muster the courage to complain of being harassed at age 23. Her manager said the complaint would ruin her career. Watching it being thrown in the bin was an “awful awful” moment.

Today Fairfax Media published an anonymous letter from a senior surgeon who writes that sexism humiliates her in surgery every day.

“Just because my unit head smiles as he notes that my boots make me look like a dominatrix, does not render it any less humiliating. All it does is knock me down in front of my peers and undermines my credibility. I am left to be embarrassed, then angry and at times hopeless. But I am driven to go on, to pick myself up, to pretend it doesn’t bother me and to try twice as hard as before to be taken seriously.”

The fact this is how a woman who has succeeded in surgery feels is frightening. Imagine the experience of those women who haven’t succeeded – by choice or otherwise?

“I am cognisant that my story is not everyone’s but that does not diminish its validity and like those other women who have come forward this week, it is a story that deserves to be heard; by you, our College and our President and by those who think I should just “toughen up Princess”.

That message and these stories need to be heard. Not just by the Royal College of Surgeons but by managing partners of law firms, by CEOs, by every single person who is in a leadership position in a field or industry in which women remain a minority.

There is a reason women remain in the minority and unless you believe the reason is that women are inherently less capable than men, this message needs to be considered. If you are unwilling to consider this message, you are contributing to the problem.

As the female surgeon indicates, ignoring, dismissing or belittling this message perpetuates the problem.

“Each time you laugh at the joke, or sigh, or think I’m being a bit precious to take offence, you belittle me a little more and you keep me from expecting or indeed insisting, on more; more from my colleagues, from my hospital and from my College,” she writes.

“But most of all you stop me wanting more for myself, as I acquiesce to futility in the quest for equality.”

I believe that provides the alarming context to Dr McMullin’s initial comment this week. I genuinely wondered how a successful senior surgeon could possibly conclude that accepting sexual harassment was ever preferable than speaking up. The piece today shed further light. Spending years trying to speak up and being systematically ignored or dismissed is obviously exhausting. The fact that a senior surgeon would even contemplate accepting harassment is telling.

But Dr McMullin has given herself and other surgeons a voice.

So often people argue that women “choose” not to become partners or surgeons or CEOs. That the pay gap doesn’t really exist – it’s just that women aren’t up for the bigger, more demanding jobs. Let’s not fool ourselves. The reality is the bigger jobs still aren’t up for women. 

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