I got a job in New York City a few years ago.
I was new to the American North; I still reeked of the South. Pillsbury
biscuits, Georgian peaches and Jiffy cornbread with a dollop of Daisy.
Chick-Fil-A, Bojangles’ and Piggly Wiggly. I was a Southern American, in many
ways. Cheerful, trusting, polite, Bible-wielding, slow-talkin’, Southern. South
of the Potomac, East of the Mississippi. Paisley print blouses, plastic
sunflowers hot glued on Payless Shoes open-toe rubber sandals. But I was all
right, I guess. Perhaps a bit wide-eyed, gap-tooth grinning, but I was all
right.
The job was with a news media outfit that covers Africa and the affairs
of the black Diaspora. It was fashionable, in every sense, that media company Funded by big-name multinationals, Third World
saviors, it sought to tackle malfeasance and corruption with heavy handed, not
always credible citizen reportage. The company had made its name among
particular Westerners and Fela-loving expatriate Africans, students of the
school of thought that says African governments need a total sociopolitical
upheaval to weed out the kleptocrats before anything substantial can be
planted, plug in the former student union grassroots activists who give a care
about the proletariat, slum dwellers, retired civil servants, and unemployed
twenty somethings. A single-handed crusade propelled by American dollars and
mercenary Africaphiles, this media company had recruited a handful of
passionate, impressionable youngsters with a compelling allegiance to Africa.
Aluta Continua! Help the motherland. We thought, or at least I did.
So I went to work. My title was a new one. Within that role, I initiated
new projects, helped revive slumbering ventures, planned and promoted the
awesomeness of the company — what we were doing and where we hoped to go. I
tuned in, excited about every single part of the job. Everything seemed fine in
the beginning.
I
went out with the boss one evening to hang out after work. I was still new to
the North, still new to the city. A Nigerian immigrant in his early 40s, the
boss had a hip rugged fashion aesthetic, quintessentially urban: distressed
brown jackets and boots, a hefty brown backpack. He was the rebel with a cause,
a card-carrying activist. Encrusted in the syrupy coos of his admirers, he has
fans on both sides of the Atlantic. He was charisma defined.
He’d
been nice to me thus far, a listening ear for my Southerner’s rants and
observations on northern culture. We walked around the street corner to a
swanky new spot with a shiny glass exterior and perfumed-scented, dimly lit
interior. Good living people in stiletto pumps and crisp blazers, leather and
lace, hung there. He led me to a couch in the corner where we sat down. I don’t
drink, so I didn’t order. We chit chatted pleasantly about school, guys,
Africa, Nigerians, our past, our future.
When
we get up to leave, he grabs my waist. He pulls me to his chest. He leans in
for a kiss. My stunned mind stops thinking. It shuts down; I hurry to turn it
back on. Easy, Chika. Don’t embarrass the man. Take it easy. I
slide out of his arms with a surprising calm. I’m just not interested. I say
his name for effect. It works. He gets the point, yet the perplexity in his
eyes remains. I never bring it up. It’s like it never happened. It never
happened again.
As time
goes on, I grew in confidence at work as I befriended my fellow colleagues and
further solidified my commitment to “the Africa cause” and to excel in my job
performance. I began expressing my opinions about the way things were done, and
offering suggestions on how I thought we could improve in production quality
and efficiency. The boss welcomed the suggestions, in the beginning, but only to
a certain extent.
Time after time, I begin to notice a pattern: he
seemed to have issues with women, especially expressive women with a backbone.
“She’s arrogant,” he would often say with a sneer and
a dismissive shrug whenever I would mention names of high-profile successful
women I admired. Whether it was author Chimamanda Adichie, or a well-known
female journalist, or a female politician, it seemed all successful women were
inherently arrogant to him.
Eventually,
my efforts at work never seem good enough. The boss is known to be hot-tempered
and I was often on the receiving end of his sarcastic remarks, his angst, his
frustration, and disapproval. Any gaps from my colleagues, anything they failed
to do, it was usually my fault. I was the office scapegoat. Some of my
colleagues noticed this. They’d throw me sympathetic glances or they’d simply
try to ignore the situation and keep their eyes glued to their computer
screens. After such occurred not once or twice or thrice but on multiple instances,
I soon became aware of the hierarchy. My male colleagues seldom received the
boss’s butchering complaints. I’d arrive to work and the boss would remain
silent to my greetings. My male colleagues would arrive and the boss would say
hey what’s up man and crack jokes with them and have a jolly good time. He had
a propensity to engage in sex jokes with my male colleagues, the kind of lewd
comedy high school boys often entertain.
My
female colleagues usually fulfilled the boss’s wishes without much objection,
but on the whole, it looked to me like the guys were coasting.In my role at
work, I was frequently undermined. He’d constantly override decisions I had
already made with his prior authorization. He’d demean my work in the presence
of others. He’d sometimes shut down my attempts to join the staff in their
friendly, office banter. He rarely expressed gratitude about my initiatives and
strategies that were clearly having a positive effect on the company.
“Do you really think you’re directing anything?” A
colleague once asked me.
The
situation deteriorated. I pushed myself harder, completing massive amounts of
work by staying late into the night when everyone else had gone home. Graveyard
shifting, early mornings. He began shouting at me in the workplace in front of
my colleagues. My cheerful, trusting, polite, Bible-wielding, slow-talkin’,
Southern mannerisms were dissipating. The city was taking its toll on me. I
felt like discarded mush. I planned my exit. Looked for another job.
one day he called me to meet him in the
office. In the meeting, he said the company is losing money, said he had to let
me go. Though I was the one who was suddenly unemployed, it was his emotions
and composure that began to unravel as I fought to keep the work I had produced
– works that were mine. The payment I was promised because I was not given
notice of my termination in advance, he didn’t pay me anywhere near half of it.
He lied and said I was never even employed, said I was just a contractor, a freelancer
or something like that. My work agreement had conveniently disappeared from
where I had placed it inside my work desk months ago. The intervention meeting
we were supposed to have where we were supposed to present our cases before two
or three mediators, well, that was conveniently cancelled. A male colleague and
a prominent columnist with the company intervened, but nothing much came out of
it. Perhaps, they – both guys – ended up siding with the boss.
Because
the boss had already depicted me as “one of those” power-hungry, erratic,
opinionated, overly assertive, selfish girls, one who eagerly challenged his
authority. That false image suited his chauvinistic motives.
“You like attention,” he once told me.
Wrong. I’m actually as shy as a kiwi bird.
“You’re a career woman,” he once told me. It came out
as a judgmental scoff. He’s a career man himself, but because it’s more
socially acceptable for men to devote much time and energy to their
professional lives, the term “career man” is seldom used.
In
the workplace, women often work twice as hard as their male colleagues, yet
still face the brunt of disapproval when things don’t go right, while male
colleagues seem to get by. We put in overtime – a 2013 study from the Ponemon
Institute revealed that women employees “work harder and longer” than men do.
Another 2013 study from Edith Cowan University and the University of New
England found that “women experience more rude and disrespectful behavior in
the workplace, but they tolerated it more.” We continuously strive to be
on the good side of the boss. Women seem to always be compensating for
something. Their womanhood?
Most of the women who worked at that company hardly
objected or posed a challenge to my former boss’s sugarcoated slurs and sly
insolence. But I had an opinion and I voiced it. My opinions, my free-willed
spirit and intolerance for nonsense cost me my job… for that I am grateful.
My former boss’s attitude toward women is not unique.
I had a conversation with a gentleman here in Nigeria
who said women in positions of power always become over-bearing, whereas men
know how to handle leadership and success with humility.
“It gets to their heads,” he said of women in
management roles.
Looking back, I realize that my
experience at that New York City-based media company was not atypical. I wrote
this piece “It Happened To Me” bolstered by the courage I summoned immediately
after reading a blog post a few days ago “The White Savior Industrial Complex
& Sexual Harassment of African Female Aid Workers” by Lesley Agams. Agams
vividly describes an assault by a male colleague while working as the Nigeria
country director for the renown Oxfam GB. After the assault, the man in
question handed her a contract termination letter. Many of my fellow women have
confided in me, sharing harrowing real-life tales of near-rape incidents in the
workplace, cases where they were told to sleep with the boss to get a
promotion, and aggressive intimidation by male supervisors.
And it’s not only the overtly patriarchal,
“man-is-the-head” types who are committing this abuse.
It’s
also the hash-tagging, progressive, left-winged liberals garbed in trendy
activist attire: thick soled boots and dashikis, plaid button-downs and worn
blue jeans with worn sneakers, or cropped blazers over cotton shirts without
neckties. These activists are too often propped up in a righteous spotlight.
They march on as darlings of the revolution, unexamined. Their act-ivism is
unstoppable… their acts, unstoppable.
I met one of these young self-titled human rights activist types. He was
among those arrested for protesting during the 2012 Occupy Nigeria rallies.
This guy picks and chooses his causes and apparently the advancement of women
is not one of them. In his mind, women’s rights are not important enough. After
I voiced my opposition to his foul groping and leering sexual advances on me,
he told me “women’s rights are not human rights.”
Even the Pan-African activist revolutionary himself,
Fela Kuti once sang, “When I say woman na mattress I no lie.”
Confiding in others about incidents of workplace
harassment and intimidation often backfires. Some employees get terminated.
Others stay in those toxic work environments after they are made to doubt their
own perceptions.
Relax, calm down, maybe it’s your imagination, it’s no
big deal, maybe you’re just stressed out, well you know you’re very pretty, he
didn’t mean it that way, dress more conservatively, forget about it, maybe you
led him on, well… ignore it, just pray about it, you can be very emotional,
you’re being dramatic, um…stop working late hours in the office, say no next
time, these things happen, you’re overreacting, are you sure?
Yes, I am sure.
Harassment is still harassment whether in the form of
intimidation in the workplace, sexual propositions or subtle or obvious
oppression.
In his 1,621-word editorial, Los Angeles-based
social commentator Yashar Ali compares the emotional manipulation and
harassment of women to gaslighting, a coined term referencing the
1944 feature movie in which Charles Boyer’s character employs wily strategies
to make his wife, played by Ingrid Bergman, believe she is crazy. Off the
Hollywood production sets, real life is full of cases where women, distressed
in the workplace, keep quiet for fear of being labeled troublesome. Or crazy.
They allow perpetrators to go free, especially when the perpetrator is a
popular man.
If we share our experiences collectively, we can break
down the wall of silence.
It’s time to tell our stories.
Chika Oduah is a journalist
presently based in Abuja, Nigeria.
Follow Chika Oduah on Twitter@chikaoduah