How Men’s Emotions Are Preventing Gender Equality at Work - Pacific Standard
The most upsetting thing about these findings, perhaps, is the number of men who will see them as a personal attack rather than a professional opportunity. “What makes it difficult is that the men who are most in denial about sexism are sometimes the least likely to admit that they feel threatened by women in the workplace,” Sheppard says, referring to the study participants she worked with. I’m inclined to agree about the many men who need this message most. Every time I write about sexism, my inbox and Twitter mentions fill with men defending themselves against a phantom assault on their characters that I never made. The comments sections on articles that gently ask men to acknowledge their own complicity in workplace inequality brim with men’s defensive and highly emotional commentary: They personally have never witnessed such a thing, and therefore, it must be a lady’s flight of fancy, empirical data be damned. Men must come to terms with the fact that they feel professionally threatened by women not just so workplaces are less hostile to women, but because it seems like an awful lot of work to feel endangered all the time.
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