Labor / Employment, On The Job, Women's Issues

On The Subject Of Women: Why Neil Gorsuch's Off-Handed Comments Are A Problem

Casual comments reinforcing negative gender stereotypes don’t help anyone.

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Neil Gorsuch Judge Neil M GorsuchA few months ago, a famous-for-the-wrong-reasons male football player told some grade-school female students to be quiet as good advice for women. When I read the story, I wanted to know who at this school thought a professional football player was a good person to give a speech about anything other than football (or being a student athlete, I’ll give them that). I have been feeling women are under attack since the whole “woman runs for president” situation, and a candidate’s statement about grabbing genitalia not being seen as a bad thing.

Then I caught wind of a new controversy. Earlier this week, we had (conflicting) accounts about how our latest Supreme Court nominee thinks women like to game the system for maternity leave.

The momma lawyers online group that I am a member of was torn. Maybe we are made callous by years of practice in a profession that tends to be particularly hard on women. But I had a moment where I felt I had enough. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually birthed a human, and I have had a budget since I was in middle school. But I cannot think of anything that would be more ignorant than quitting your job after having a child. Did you know projections say that a child born today will cost half a million dollars for college tuition?

One of the things that bothers me and intrigues me most about employment law is how people make assumptions about whole groups of people that are just bizarre and divorced from reality, and how these assumptions play out in the workplace. On the subject of the comments attributed to Neil Gorsuch, I thought: of course, when a woman has a super-expensive life event like childbirth, her first thought is how can I leave my source of income and “game” the system.

Stereotypes abound about employees based on random characteristics that impact their ability to be productive members of the workforce. And all they succeed in doing is impacting wages negatively and increasing unemployment unnecessarily for some groups. And in wasting valuable talent.

I talk about gender the most here, and likely due to demographics, I see gender-related complaints more than anything else. And they create some of the most bizarre assumptions.

Such as:

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  • When I was pregnant, I was told to enjoy my “vacation” of maternity leave. For the record, giving birth and then dealing with the aftermath is the furthest thing from a vacation you can imagine
  • A male manager told me women all want to work part-time. I was working as a full-time attorney.
  • A male executive, with a female executive on hand to co-sign, assured me that women don’t want demanding jobs because their family comes first.
  • I’ve heard a few times that single women are better employees than married women.
  • In a case, I witnessed a manager say that [in his industry] women don’t want management positions.
  • And, this same gem of a manager was certain that male employees won’t listen to female managers in [several industries] so his company had a hard time promoting women.

Here’s a secret that I have learned from years of working with many different people in many different settings: people are people. Their race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. If they want to be a great employee, they will be. If they don’t, they won’t. And there is no greater or lesser likelihood based on some random characteristic. If you are sitting here being afraid that some random fact of your existence has doomed you in your chosen career, please let that belief go. We are who we want to be. Nothing more, nothing less.

While I think that Jameis Winston may be beyond saving on the issue of stereotypes about women, the position allegedly taken by Neil Gorsuch is truly disappointing. As a judge, he has had many opportunities to learn that these types of stereotypes are wrong, both in the cases he has handled and in the female clerks who have worked for him. However, if exposure was enough to resolve misogyny, misogyny would have been eradicated a long time ago because everyone has a mother or someone who is a woman that they feel some tenderness towards. Simple “exposure” doesn’t remedy it (or any other bias, for the record).

With employers, dealing with issues of gender discrimination is a mixed bag. One of the biggest issues I’ve seen is women can buy into these stereotypes as much as men do. And these stereotypes play out in bad ways, even with the best intentions (i.e., the male supervisor who mentors female employee and gets the reputation of a ladies man). But ultimately, employers need to treat their employees in a way that makes sense for the organization and that standardizes as much as possible. Here are a few policies that come to mind where gender matters, but should not be the determining factor:

  1. If you grant “maternity” leave, you should just grant paternity leave. Men are parents too.
  2. Treat temporary disabilities like temporary disabilities (and yes, pregnancy is a temporary disability).
  3. Be consistent and fact-based about what makes an employee a valuable or “star” employee. Is it sales volume? Is it new business? Make it clear and concise, and connected to the bottom line. Fuzzy “standards” and “review criteria” always hurt women and employees of color. And never effectively correspond to the employee’s actual value for the bottom line.

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A little-known secret is that harassment and discrimination are costly and hurt the bottom line. We go to work to work. Not to be told how women aren’t working hard enough because they keep the human population going. I don’t know Neil Gorsuch or Jameis Winston. But I hope both of them think long and hard about how off-handed comments reinforcing negative gender stereotypes don’t help anyone listening, or their reputation in popular lore.

Earlier: Does Judge Gorsuch Have Backwards Thoughts On Working Women And Pregnancy?

beth-robinsonBeth Robinson lives in Denver and is a business law attorney and employment law guru. She practices at Fortis Law Partners. You can reach her at employmentlawgurubr@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter at @HLSinDenver.

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