Honest, Vulnerable, and Transparent Communications Can Be a Curse for Women

As we approach yet another end to Women’s History Month where organizations make a sincere concerted effort to raise awareness to the issues women face in the workplace with hope for continued change, I am skeptical. Not because I do not believe in the effort. Not because I have not heard story after story of women who have made history and are honored and respected highly for women’s suffrage progress they have made. Not because I do not believe in change. I do believe strongly in the effort that brings these stories to the public causing change. However, the reason I am skeptical is the same reason so many other women question the possibility of real change. Why, because we have been victims who feel defeated repeatedly and constantly reminded of the loss experienced. When you feel you have taken two steps forward and knocked five steps back every time that original wound opens and reminds us of the curse lived just because we are a woman.

I had to be quiet about the real reason I abruptly had to leave a 17-year career teaching a field of study I have consistently worked in for over three decades. Why, because that is what your expected to do when you are part of an effort to expose and elicit change in a long-standing culture that does not support women. I saw women come and go for years and heard stories of formal complaints being made that went nowhere. Thankfully, I am no longer bound to silence to protect the person, the team who calls women who stand up for what is right “troublemakers” to support the perpetrator and the employer who still allows misogynistic, microaggressions, disparate impact towards women to continue for decades.

Why, not continue the silence? I am defeated by the system I thought was in place to protect such injustices. Matter fact, I spent my whole career teaching and coaching managers and future leaders to do the right thing and support diversity, equity and inclusion for all in the workplace. A system I knew nothing about until I had to fight my way through it. The system involves the employer, legal community, and the departments responsible for seeking justice. The problem is, I am not confident being honest, vulnerable, and transparent will not continue to be a curse even now and in the future as I continue to share the truth. I was warned it will be a curse if I go public. I have already experience reluctance or regret when I share about my experience when topics arise that bring up those memories. Like last week when we had an excellent speaker panel who brought up women’s issues in the workplace and I shared in support of what they were saying. I later worried about what I said to the point that I couldn’t sleep that night and wrote the draft for this post. Instead, I write this post in hopes that I will at a minimum make another woman who has been silent living in her own misery feel she is not alone.

The curse for me that keeps on giving was initially the loss of a career that I absolutely loved because I still hear stories from students, that I made a positive difference in their lives. I was able to help students get internships in management literally overnight due to my business connections.  I consistently earned exceeds to meritorious on all my annual performance reviews. Until one late night after the start of the semester when I came home to a letter than my contract was not being renewed. I had two contract years. One when I started and then abruptly one issued right after the Dean learned about my prior report of inequity just six months before receiving this heartless cowardly communication sent in the mail while he was conveniently out of town and not available to discuss the day after when I questioned what prompted it. Unfortunately, I knew, my fellow faculty knew, heck the whole college knew what prompted that cold hearted letter…retaliation!

I did not just lose my job. I lost my sense of purpose, my dignity, my confidence, and some especially important aspects of my retirement that I had worked 17 years toward. Just last week I found out that while I thought I could work to obtain one of those retirement goals by rejoining the state to put in my last five years to get to 20. I was given a list of places I could work to get reciprocal retirement but found that advice was dead wrong. It is now impossible to achieve free healthcare for the rest of my life because of a decision I was forced to make to keep healthcare coverage for my family. I will never get free healthcare which I would currently be only three years away from had I not lost my job because I chose to retire and not just walk away. I earned that honor to retire but little did I know that affected reciprocity. I should not say never because I can if I put in another 20 years in addition to the almost twenty, I already worked.

This was all because my boss did not like that, I was part of a group of several colleagues who reported him to the EEO office for gender discrimination, sexual harassment, disparate impact and more. A group I reluctantly joined by the way because I was already feeling threatened with retaliation for reporting his predecessor for pay inequity after discovering a part-time instructor was making over 10k grand more than I was for teaching less than half the workload. I was teaching four courses every fall and spring with an overload every summer. He was teaching two classes in the fall, one in the spring and an overload in the summer. Overloads equal even more pay so conveniently his fourth course compared to my nine was moved to summer instead of spring where he added to that over 10k more than me. Is that fair? I think not! Is this so opposite of what I have been teaching and coaching for three decades? Absolutely, yes and I started questioning how hypocritical my career had been since the laws that are supposedly in place to protect employees are only available when you have the means to fight the employer.

The first pay inequity shared with me by the department head who later turned on me to support the dean and backstab other women at the university. We were all honest, vulnerable, and transparent with one purpose to bring about positive change and support fellow women and future hires. Matter of fact, after I had been burned, I wrote a four-page improvement plan to overcome the inequities and train the department chairs to minimize problems like this in the future, but it was completely ignored by all levels of management and the board locally and at the head office. The worse part of this whole experience for me was these actions are exactly what I instruct students and coach clients not to do in the workplace.

Unfortunately, I reluctantly gave up a few months ago after waging a long exhausting and emotionally draining protest by filing a complaint within the university that was managed inappropriately. Then when a new investigator took over, he purposely delayed the result past the statute of limitations. Even our state department of human rights never investigated the case due to COVID. I no longer blame the women who gave up before me. The system failed me the same way it did over the years.

Even though there are laws to protect women from gender discrimination, sexual harassment, pay inequity, it takes money and a lot of it to get past first base. When I initially started this process, I contacted attorneys within and outside the state. None of them would take the case on retainer. All of them wanted thousands of dollars up front or offered monthly payments. None of them would take the case and allow me to pay for services by the hour doing some of the work on my own. Even after the state department of labor failed me by not doing the investigation within the year period, they give themselves, I discovered that filing through the Human Rights Commission still requires a high paid attorney. The last straw was during discovery, while trying to defend myself, I was asked for several personal documents that had absolutely nothing to do with the case. They preferred to ask for medical records and tax filings instead of actual evidence that any of what I had claimed was true. The only reason I can think of to ask for these types of documents was to discredit me. A long-standing professional who had over fifty letters written about my performance, integrity, and commitment to the students and the university asking for the dean to reverse his decision. Did they ask for those? Did they even look at them? Did the internal EEO investigator pull them during their investigation? The answer is a big fat no because they do not care about the individual employee, the truth, or the future culture. They only cared about defending the Dean of the College of Business and Management who required his own female staff members to put up a large bust of a naked women with giant nipples in his office. He refused to acknowledge the bust and other sensual picture could be considered hostile workplace. Those of us who thought it was inappropriate for future AACSB auditors, students, and current staff were cursed because we were discriminating him, so he thought. He thought because it was an art piece his mother bought him, he should be free to hang it behind his desk and not in his family room at home.

I was honored this past summer as an Athena nominee for my leadership in the workplace, volunteer roles locally, through the state and nationally. That was my step forward but finding out last week he won again because I lost my free healthcare forever was my five steps back. Now the question is will I be rewarded or cursed for my honest, vulnerable, and transparent communication here today or will history repeat itself and reward the perpetrators, bystanders, and perpetuators of inappropriate workplace behavior instead. Time will tell and I truly hope Women’s History Month awareness and change will eventually prevail if not during my lifetime, hopefully during my granddaughters. Happy end of Women’s History Month today! May we all see meaningful change in the workplace between now and next year’s salute to women. Stay strong, healthy, and confident!