By Sharanya Gopinathan
An accident at work led a man and a woman to confirm, in their own way, what many of us have suspected for ages.
The two, Martin Schneider and Nicole Pieri, used to share an inbox. Martin Schneider noticed that the responses he was getting from clients were consistently rude and unhelpful, which is when he realised that his email signature had been switched with Nicole’s. He posted on Twitter about the experience, and how it was a huge eye-opener for him.
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839912361012178946
Once he noticed, this happened:
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839913478383157249
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839913863596343297
The two decided to conduct a sort of social experiment, where they exchanged email signatures for two weeks.
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839915081269981184
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839915562457260032
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839915562457260032
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839916442573230081
https://twitter.com/SchneidRemarks/status/839917707080368132
Yeah, pretty much. This was an interesting casual social experiment (and the thread led to several interesting discussion on privilege, sexism and race), but it didn’t come as a huge shocker to most women. Studies have shown that there are biases in hiring even in supposedly neutral fields like science and academia, and the various arenas and kinds of sexism that women face in the workplace are almost too numerous to list out. Several female authors, including J.K. Rowling, choose to publish their work under gender neutral pen names because of the knowledge that their books are less likely to be read if they’re published with a female-sounding name.
Check out Nicole’s telling of the story here. She says of the experience with working with sexist bosses, “I never did figure out why [I received such harsh treatment from my boss]. Instead, I quit and started my own business writing blog posts and web copy as a freelancer. In an office of one, I can finally put my walls down.”