Gender in the Workplace: What has it to do with Men

No! This is not a blog on POSH.

But yes, it is meant for men.

Over the years the term gender has become common in our everyday lexicon, but men still view it like a proverbial banana peel on their path. They avoid it, they step over it or past it. Sometimes they even wonder whether it will rear up like a snake. But whatever they do, they are always careful not to step on it. They have a primal fear that if they do, they will invariably slip!

When I first started talking about gender with men, doctors all, from different states in India, about 25 years ago, there was a confusion about what the term meant. Doctors dealt with the body, and they all assumed that gender was the same as sex. Gender differences for them were all the difference between women and men. From mustaches and breasts to why women were better mothers and men stronger and braver. In those days, the many forms that mark our interactions with officaldom, the term ‘gender’ was used when it wanted the person filling it in to indicate their sex. In the intervening years we have come a long way and most people now are familiar with the differences. But what has also become confusing is that gender is now thought to only pertain to women and sometimes feminism. And many men are wary of feminism and feminists. Ergo they are wary of gender.

The easy association of gender with women is mostly because ‘gender equality’ emerged as a slogan for the women’s movement over the world. But gender can easily exist without equality, and in most cases it does. Gender exists for women, and it equally exists for men. Gender exists for everyone; it exists for all of us.

What then is this omnipresent gender?

Gender starts from birth. It is the clothing of expectations that society puts on the girls or boys; from the moment they are born. As the mother, grandmother or even the nurse holds the newly born infant, the smile, or the cooing sounds of appreciation that the infant receives are tempered by the holders’ expectations. The smile could be longer or the coo and gurgle softer depending upon the ‘sex’ of the child. This difference is not because child is of a particular ‘sex,’ but due to differences in the holders’ expectations. This is gender! And soon, the child is dressed in different clothes, taught different things, and often fed differently depending upon whether it is a daughter or a son. Girls tend to be treated in similar ways, and boys in similar but different ways. And lo and behold, soon girls feel and respond differently than boys. Through the families and later through friends, neighbours, teachers and classmates, society smoothly transmits its social ‘meme’ of gender into the biological ‘gene’ of sex. And infant girls become ‘gendered’ women while infant boys become ‘gendered’ men. So, no matter how hard we try to run away from it, all of us men are unfortunately ‘gendered.’ Most people are comfortable with this process of gendering , but those among us who are gender non-conforming have to struggle.   

Gender influences not only our own thoughts, feelings, actions, and responses but also our expectations of and from others. You can take a small test here and see how we all have been influenced.

Gender enters the workplace.

Earlier the home was considered a man’s castle and the workplace was the man’s world. Girls played with dolls, learnt to cook, stitch, and knit and were trained to be homemakers, dutiful wives, and doting mothers. Some women went to work, and they were expected to either be teachers, typists, secretaries, receptionists telephone operators. But not all women were either expected to or allowed to work. Not so long-ago women from ‘good homes,’ or from a certain castes and religions, did not go to work, and even if they did, they often stopped working as soon as they got married. My mother worked as a schoolteacher before she was married, stopped working immediately after she got married. She later rejoined work, but that was only after my father died. Economic necessity and women’s own aspirations have now led to many more women being in the formal workspace, and in professions and positions where there simply were not any women before.

In some ways women have now invaded the ‘man’s world.’ And this causes many disruptions. In many cases new workplace protocols have been developed to manage these. But there are many more subtle disruptions in the head, of both women and men. This animated video depicts some of the difficulties that come about when a woman joins as a colleague. This film is made from the woman’s perspective, but it is easy to understand that the men too are not ‘aware’ of what to do.

When a woman enters a workplace, she comes in because she has the requisite qualifications and competencies to do the expected job. But she has colleagues, supervisors, and subordinates, and many of them could be men. Each of these relationships comes with both formal and informal parameters. Gender as we all know is about roles that are expected, and which are fulfilled by women and men. But gender is also about relationships. Men are trained to deal with women in the informal or private space as mother, sister, cousin, girlfriend, wife and in fewer cases as a friend. In the formal space they are primarily trained to deal with women as teachers.  With women in the workplace, men are suddenly accosted with women in a far wider range of roles and relationships, and they can be thoroughly confused in terms of what to expect and how to relate.

Some years ago, I was conducting a workshop on gender with middle managers of a financial institution. The gender audit of the institution had indicated that there were far fewer women in managerial positions and hence this workshop. The male managers’ gripe was that women do not opt for transfers and promotions and in many cases, they were not found to be ‘manager material’. Women would rarely stay back for the many decision-making meetings that took place after office hours, they immediately put their pens down at closing time, and would sometimes come late to work. Their commitment seemed far less than that of men. And then there would be maternity breaks and because of the increasingly generous breaks, there would be competency issues once she came back and in time a much younger man would become her reporting officer. Even the most sympathetic and well-meaning manager found it difficult to balance the interests of women’s equality with that of efficiency and bottom line.

Once I was in a conversation on gender equality with a senior manager in a Fortune 500 company, who proudly told me that he was completely gender sensitive and all decisions at home were taken jointly with his wife. In discussion I learnt that he had met his wife at their common workplace, both were engineers and MBAs. One of them changed their company after marriage so that their career growth could continue unimpeded, and finally when they decided after discussion to have a baby, they also jointly decided that his wife should stop working to raise their child. Each decision, he stressed, was jointly taken and his wife was an equal stakeholder. This story could be quite common in India, because the data indicates that many women drop off from the workforce, after entering it, even among professionals. Marriage and maternity are among the common causes. It was ‘the woman’s decision’ is often a common refrain. The larger question is why is it so? Don’t the men, the husband and to be father, have any role or responsibility behind this eventuality?

Reorienting male expectations

During Covid times, I remember a tweet from a leading industrialist. The tweet mentioned his helplessness in the face of a complaint from the wife of one among his thousands of employees. She wrote him an email asking him to stop ‘work from home’ and get her husband back to the office. She was unable to serve his demands and run the household and manage the children all at the same time. The industrialist did not think her problem was his or his companies’ problem. And that is a big problem! When we expect staffers or managers to be present day or night for work-related matters, we often forget that it can seriously affect other people, and the other roles they have to play in their lives These could include their roles and responsibilities as a father or a husband. Satisfying the needs of the workplace at any time beyond predictable hours means some of the roles and relationships of the home can get disrupted. When bosses have these expectations from male subordinates, the men willingly sacrifice any family obligations they may have. It is not so easy for women, and they willingly pass up the official call.  

Many organisations have ‘Annual Day’ celebrations. Invariably it is the women who are there on the stage compering and handing over the prizes to the guest of honour who presents them to the awardee. At office meetings and picnics it is often women who make the arrangements for refreshments if those roles have not been assigned to the office support staff. In some ways these informal roles in the office space mimic ‘gendered’ roles from home. Men are eager to designate these roles to women and women are more than willing to do these. The workplace may have many more spaces and opportunities where ‘gendered’ expectations are replicated both by women and men. Men stay back for meetings after office hours because they do not need to hurry home to cook. Similarly, it is quite possible that their role in getting the children ready for school before coming to the office does not take precedence over their need to be present for an early morning meeting.

Making the workplace equally familiar and comfortable for women requires more than just a woman with the right qualifications. It needs men to create a new workplace environment where women and men can both have greater work-life balance. To expect team members to function ‘beyond the call of duty’ can be unfair to women, at least in the present circumstances. Since men have been gendered to think that their world is outside the home, this call is easily answered. With women it often cannot be so, and that is not their problem. As a society gearing for change, women not only need to be trained and hired to join the workplace, but men, bosses, peers, and subordinates need to adjust their own ways to make the workplace and home productive and fun. We all need new lessons in adjusting  with and celebrating the unfamiliar.

I have been conducting training programmes with men in different industries and professions for over two decades.