Why women get complained about more than men. (Or: the story of how I was reported to my manager. Twice.)

Humans are notoriously good at spotting patterns. We see the face of Jesus in our morning toast, or a yawning face from the doors and windows of the house across the street. In the twilight, our brains make sense of the blurry shape of a dressing gown on the back of the door and suddenly it becomes an old man, staring at you as you sleep. I should specify that humans are extremely mind-bogglingly good at spotting faces that aren’t there. But that wasn’t my point. My point is – patterns. Sometimes we see patterns that aren’t there at all. But sometimes we spot patterns that we are afraid might be real.

There are a number of different psychological biases. Bear with me. Without getting too technical, one of them is confirmation bias; we take great care listening to information that fits the story we already know. Basically, we spot a pattern and we want to prove it through any evidence possible. Sometimes confirmation bias leads us to deliberately misconstrue what someone is telling us because we want so dearly to believe something we believe to be true. There’s also the availability heuristic – someone might say, “I’ve seen so many theories that the world is flat – so maybe it is?”. There’s also my favourite of the unconscious biases – the fundamental attribution error. Dan was late to the meeting again – you put this down to the fact that he is a disorganised person. A bad person. But when you’re late twice, well, isn’t that because there’s a very good reason for it?

People don’t want to feel bad, and definitely don’t want to associate with things or people they consider to be ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. They also want to follow the crowd; nobody wants to be the only one who thinks something different. We call this conformity bias, or ‘groupthink’; the desire for harmony means we may collectively overlook the truth or avoid critical reasoning. This consequently forms an ‘outgroup’ – those who do not think the same. We press down hard on people who disagree, or we perceive as being on ’the other side’ so we can bring everyone to a single consensus.

As I said – we like patterns, us humans. Some humans falsely believe there is legitimacy if many people think something is right – we could call this another form of conformity bias. You may have heard this described as ‘herd mentality’ – where you assume something is true because you’ve heard it from a number of different people. It’s talked about in terms that sound scientific and beyond your comprehension, and because so many people are saying it or repeating the same thing you just can’t fathom it not being true. It becomes fact. Did you believe in the tooth fairy because your classmates did?

In both cases of groupthink and herd mentality there is an aspect of being part of a group, or matching your behaviours to people we either feel we belong with or aspire to be part of. Humans crave social contact and we don’t want to be rejected for being different, so we create our own bubbles with micro cultures and beliefs. We normalise opinions and make them part of our pack identity. We feel uncomfortable when people don’t conform to our expectations of what we believe is correct or right, or even moral.

So, people might change the truth to fit what they’d prefer to be true – whether they realise it, or not. It’s why there are climate change deniers and Trump supporters. It’s why they separate the world into things that are bad and things that are good. It’s why we create debates out of things that aren’t debates – this is what you may hear referred to as a false dichotomy; believing, incorrectly, that there are only two options, two sides. There is a deep-rooted need by many people to legitimise feelings as right, and ignore any evidence that doesn’t confirm what they want to know.

There’s also affinity bias. You already know this one. You meet someone – they, too, went to your school. They like anime and ridiculous socks, and laugh at the same things as you. You immediately like them. It’s a job interview, and before you ask any questions you know they’ve got the job; based entirely off their apparent similarity to you, they are a ‘good fit’. This is the reason that so much of the technology industry is white and male. Did you know there are more men called Jeff in Amazon’s senior management than women? Whether those two sentences are connected, only a lawyer can say.

The follow-on from this of course is where we feel that immediate affinity to someone and so we set the bar high; we expect them to behave as we might. This is called the ‘halo effect’. We exaggerate their accomplishments as if they were ours. And when they don’t behave in the way we wanted or expected, we feel deeply affronted, embarrassed – and we are angry. We simmer. Sometimes, we even manage them out of their job. Just because we made assumptions about what they’d be like, based entirely on their humour, mannerisms, and excellent taste in socks, and hired them into a job with expectations they could never meet.

Bias. It’s everywhere. It’s what makes us suspicious of what we don’t know, and drawn towards what we do. Black lives are put at risk because the police have an affinity to those they see as more like them. They see a black man break the law, and that’s the confirmation they need to prove that black men are criminals. It requires quite a lot of mental strength and energy to catch yourself on bias, and when you’re not taught to confront the bias that you have been systematically taught – well, that’s a breeding ground for ostracisation and bigotry.

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, patterns.

I’ve recently spotted a pattern. I have a number of peers doing the same job as me, but I am treated differently. It’s difficult to say what sets us apart other than I am a woman and they are not. I’d love this to not be the case, but sadly, I can’t see any other reason. I am not perfect – but neither are my peers. Somehow, my accomplishments are undervalued and mistakes overvalued when I am compared to my male equals.

I’ll explain a bit more. In the past two weeks, I have had two separate people complain directly to my manager about me – without first opening any kind of dialogue with me to resolve things. In one case, I firmly asserted that a colleague was correct and that we needed to move on from a point. A third party overheard and remarked how well I’d handled the situation. Despite receiving overwhelming positive feedback for how I dealt with the situation, someone fired off an angry email to my manager complaining that I was rude and refused to listen to them.

In the second, I declined to respond to an email request for a meeting – I’m loathe to put in meetings just for meetings’ sake. It’s something that a number of my (predominantly male) colleagues do. We just don’t have limitless time. If they want a meeting, they can put one in the diary. It isn’t unusual for things to fall through the diary when you’re busy. I didn’t reply to an email. And this was then escalated to my manager, via another manager. One missed email. The interesting part of this one is that my male colleagues miss emails all the time and it isn’t a big deal; someone sends a follow-up. They have excuses made for them; they’re probably busy. They are let off the hook – but I’m not.

I think the challenging part of this is that there is a legitimate complaint here – I did, in fact, decline to reply to something, and I wholly accept the criticism. What I don’t accept is that the attitude towards me is so lacking in respect that the response to me missing one email would be to escalate to my manager – when this simply wouldn’t happen to my male colleagues. In this situation, I am assumed to be bad; my mistakes exaggerated. My male colleagues never have to defend themselves in cases like this because, well, they’re just not seen as bad. Things have to be really, really bad for someone to report it to their manager. And at that point, I am being treated in the same way as someone who is severely underperforming – my missing one email is on par with a male colleague refusing to attend any meetings for a prolonged period of time.

In both cases, my gender absolutely plays a role. I was going to suggest that my gender might have an impact on behaviour, but that would be softening something that feels crystal clear. As women, society expects us to be submissive, to be friendly, and to bend over backwards to please everyone. My male colleagues aren’t rude; they are bold. My male colleagues aren’t ignoring people; they are busy. None of my male peers have had the same accusations made at them despite demonstrating similar behaviours. We might call this attribution bias; women have criticism levied against them that men don’t, based entirely on systemic sexism and unconscious assumptions that people have about women. And assumptions about women’s power, or lack of it. What makes my blood boil is how quickly people will escalate to my manager – no attempts to repair the relationship with me. Just immediately pressing the nuclear button on a professional relationship. Why? Because I said no to something? Because they want to indirectly use power by going to my white male manager – to what, put me in my place? Because they feel my male peers have more power than I do?

In the second scenario, and I won’t go into too much detail but, there was an element of fundamental attribution – the problem is me, not the situation. Instead of not replying because I’m busy, it’s because I’m bad. I miss an email? I’m bad. And if I’m bad, the only route is to complain to someone more senior – instead of the much less extreme “Hey are you okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while!”. I have shared this experience with two male colleagues of mine and needless to say, they were both surprised and horrified that this kind of thing happens, and even shared examples where they’d missed multiple emails with not even a hint of an escalation to their manager. I felt one emotion quite keenly from them: guilt.

Punching down on women seems to be a pattern here. Do as I say, or I will undermine you. Let me be clear – do my male colleagues get complained about? Of course. But do they get complained about, bitched about, as much as me and my female colleagues? Do they have assumptions made about their competence or effectiveness based on hearsay or their gender? Do they come with assumed levels of technical knowledge or competence that might “outweigh” their perceived rudeness or aloofness? No. Have I been asked before if someone can “talk to a man” about a technical problem that I can actually solve for them? Yes. My male colleagues have never endured the subconscious rage and shame that comes from being seen as difficult or bad, just for being exactly the same but a different gender.

So I guess I’m saying – next time you’re faced with a situation where you aren’t getting what you need from a colleague, please don’t just escalate it to their manager. Why? Because you might be playing into the hands of systemic oppression. How about, instead of pressing the nuclear button, assume the best of someone and have a quiet word with them. Repair the friendship. Don’t look for confirmation they’re the bad one. Don’t be like a climate change denier.