What should I do about my sexist supervisor?
I work in an all-male research team headed up by a brilliant scientist, well-liked by most people in our division. But his sense of humor is really off-color to me, and there have been occasions when we’ve interacted with women in our field and he’s said things that have made them visibly uncomfortable. He’s made fun of the #metoo movement, talks about how women in our division look, and has hit on colleagues at conferences in front of me on more than one occasion.
I don’t expect to stay in his research team for more than a year longer, but I’ll need his support to land on my feet somewhere else. I’m worried that if I approach him he’ll penalize me in some way. I’ve talked with one other person on my team who shares my concerns and has been there longer, and he’s told me about a research assistant whose career prospects suffered in subtle ways because he tried to speak up. How should I proceed?
This is a complicated and frustrating situation. You can see how your supervisor’s comments are harming women in your division, and it sounds like his sexism is making you uncomfortable as well. But as someone new to the field, you’re at an automatic disadvantage– your supervisor has more power than you, both through his connections within the institution and through his control over your future. The problem, then, is how you can balance your moral responsibility to your research community with your own best interests, knowing that you have a lot to lose, and that change will be hard to create.
If you want to make a complaint, the best way to protect your future opportunities is to try to remain anonymous. Use whatever resources you have to even out the power imbalance between you and your supervisor. Look for allies– is there another faculty/staff member who you trust to take this seriously? It may be worth asking around to find out if similar complaints have come up before and how they were handled, to get a sense of who is, and isn’t, likely to be on your side. With an ally, you can figure out how best to present the situation, gather any evidence you believe you need, and take the complaint anonymously to someone who has the power to take action against your boss. That might be the chair of your department/head of your division, the Title IX office (if your research team is part of a university), or a similar office designed to handle incidents of discrimination. If you’re really concerned about your anonymity, you could even wait until you’ve secured a position somewhere else to make the complaint.
That would be a reasonable response to the situation, and would uphold your responsibility to the women in your field while protecting your future. However, it may be worth taking more of a risk, and publicly defending your claim. It’s important to consider that your decision here will have an impact beyond this one supervisor. If you speak up, you make it easier for others to speak up, and harder for your department to ignore any poor behavior by people in power. And, you demonstrate to anyone who has felt unsafe because of your boss that they have allies. If you don’t speak up publicly, you participate in normalizing your supervisor’s behavior, making it harder for anyone else to raise an objection, especially if the behavior is directed towards them. So while it may prove impossible to bring consequences for this particular researcher’s actions, your complaint could be a move towards changing the culture, affecting everyone who hears about it. You should absolutely still find allies and administrative support– you don’t want your boss to dismiss you like the research assistant you heard about. Plus, it sounds like he will probably retaliate, and if he does, you want as many people as possible to see that and defend you.
Whatever you decide to do, this will unfortunately not be the last time you face entrenched discrimination at work. It makes sense to consider, realistically, how your choice will affect your ongoing relationships in the research world, for better or for worse. How do you want your colleagues to think of you? What kind of workplace do you want to be part of?
The responsibility to change the culture can’t, and doesn’t, all fall on you. But it is something you can choose to take on.