Think sexual harassment. The images flooding your head are probably of a lewd male boss mouthing corny innuendos, his eyes at breast level, or a female boss spouting double entendres to toy-boys in the conference room. That’s sexual harassment that makes noise. There’s a quieter kind, but in many ways more debilitating for the victim.
Some working women learn it the hard way that feminism can at times go horribly wrong. There’s little you can do when the older, and obviously more powerful, female boss targets her ire at you just because you are younger, and probably prettier.
Aparna Nair was promised a “nice, friendly atmosphere” when she joined a leading BPO in Bangalore. “While the well-built guys were not pulled up for anything, the women and sissy types had it tough. I realised that women, especially the better looking ones, had it worse. The boss would sit in her room, cigarette in hand, two male cronies by her side, and summon the ‘victim’ for a session. In one instance a girl in a Kerala veshti was ‘teased’ about her menopause. ‘Men-no-pause now, eh?’ she was asked. Another time, this boss told a young male colleague to take me for a client meeting and introduce me as his mother!” Meetings at work, Nair says, were discussions about colleagues’ sex lives. “Most of us were horrified but didn’t know how to react. One girl who got engaged to a colleague eventually resigned because she couldn’t take all this graphic speculation on her sex life.”
Leela Rao, HR manager with a financial firm, recalls nasty treatment during her rookie days. “I’ve seen my woman boss get along famously with the opposite sex. The boss’s nastiness knew no bounds when I got pregnant. She — unmarried and on the obese side — would sneer at my figure and say things like, ‘Soon you won’t have this body.’ She would also smoke despite me being in the same room, with an airy ‘sorry’ thrown my way, knowing that I was pregnant. She would talk of sex randomly, and once made fun of some girl for not knowing about a certain sexual position.” This kind of cruelty, Rao says, feels crueler from someone of your own sex.
Projecting a tough image
But why aren’t the male bosses treating their younger, smart male subordinates this way? Nair feels it could be because female bosses might have worked very hard to get where they have, and want to appear tough. Rao thinks it is hormonal. “Female bosses who are doing well are mostly doing so at the expense of their family/personal life. In our patriarchal society, men have more support from their families and are considered winners in such situations. Workaholic men are more accepted and therefore more comfortable than workaholic women.”
Women being the emotional sex suffer more age-related and other insecurities. If not watchful, it slips into their professional lives, and manifests in harsh ways. The victims too are bitter as they are usually at the start of their career, and feel helpless. There’s little to sue over this, and you don’t want to appear silly by drawing attention to it either. Media professional Mishti Dey quit her job because she “couldn’t stomach it anymore. I didn’t want to admit that my boss was the reason I quit, not even to my parents, as I didn’t want others to think of me as weak.”
Rao remembers, “One woman actually quit citing the boss as reason. Then this boss looked rattled and asked the rest of us if we thought her a horror. We said no. Mostly we tried to stay out of her way. Also, she usually victimised one girl at a time, the girl who looked good that day or had a boyfriend. At the time of such exquisite brutality to one, the rest of us got away. It was like a human sacrifice ritual we performed for survival — feed the beast!”
Insulted and isolated
What about a line of defence against the dark acts? “The idea was to build a wall around yourself and appear detached. This wasn’t always possible. No one likes being hit below the belt, and often, many cried. Criticism of work is okay but not personal comments. My resolve was to stick on — why should one individual be the reason for you leaving an organisation? But now, I wish I had, especially when I pop a BP pill — a result of all that stress,” Nair says.
Another reason why this kind of harassment is debilitating is because men rarely understand why their spouses or girlfriends take it so personally. It is not that men adopt a patronising attitude, Rao says. “It is just that they do not get it, period. All they see is a bossy type of female, not too feminine but getting the work done. After all, no one is at a workplace to make friends, we are all there to do a job and do it well. In that context, perhaps such a boss is an asset. The quick staff turnover should alert someone, however.”
Power does not agree with everyone — it can go to the head and hormones get in the way. But this gender-based behaviour leaves frustrating choices for the victim: Quit, put on a brave face and suffer in sullen silence, crib endlessly to friends, or get frustrated, even as your spouse/boyfriend just doesn’t get what the problem really is. Sadly, most opt for the first option.
(Names changed on request)
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