A cheerleader ant at work

Maria (19), student at the University of Warsaw, multiple-time Polish champion in Okinawan karate: I’m an only child. I've always been an active kid. My parents have said many times that as soon as I stood on my own two feet, instead of walking, I started running. At home, sport was always very important. From an early age, I went to watch various competitions with my dad – volleyball, tennis, boxing. Dad practised various forms of martial arts all his life. Once he even took part in the European kick-boxing championship. Unfortunately, he was involved in an accident later on and had to cut his career short. When I grew up, my parents signed me up for dance classes. I liked the music, but after a while dancing started to bore me. I felt that I was not very good at it. In my fourth year of primary school, I went to a summer camp. The theme was Japan. It was there that I encountered martial arts for the first time, and I liked it. As a girl I felt that it was something for me, that I would like to be able to defend myself.

Once the next school year began, Maria announced to her parents that she wanted to start karate. Despite their sympathy for sports, her parents turned out to be quite unenthusiastic about the idea.

Maria: Dad wanted to show me the world and inspire me with his passions. For him, it didn't matter if I was a boy or a girl. But he knew sports and martial arts were hard work and he was afraid for me and my health.

She was stubborn. She asked her parents for the money for her next dance lessons. When they brought her to the training centre, instead of going right into the dance hall, she turned left into the karate hall. She kept this a secret for a month. When the truth came out, her parents came to terms with her passion and she entered the (male) world of sports which made her feel as if she no longer fit in with all the ‘feminine stuff’.

– For many years I was the only girl in the gym when training. Only me and 30 guys of all ages, from 15 to 40 years old.

During the first few months, the boys treated her like a stranger in their well-organised world. They did not want to train with her for fear that they would hurt her. She knew what they were thinking: girls are weaker, more delicate, whinier. They also did not consider her a worthy opponent, because what's the challenge in fighting someone who is shorter, lighter and has long hair? She had to gradually get them used to her, show them that no one was forcing her to do anything and that she would survive any contact with them.

Maria: From the very beginning, I had to show that I had strength, I could learn the correct technique, fight and not cry at the sight of each new bruise. When entering the gym, you feel subconsciously that guys have more authority. Because he is a man, he is perceived as strong, stable, and goal-driven. You still have to prove your worth.

At the beginning of her training, Maria made friends with a guy who she still talks to now, and who admitted to her once that when she first arrived at the gym, him and his friends placed bets on how long she would last playing the sport. They gave her a few weeks, possibly two or three months. A lot of girls really did leave quickly, but she stayed.

Porcelain doll

At the age of 15-16, it was especially hard for her. She trained four or five times a week, devoted almost all her free time to it. Whilst she was training, her friends would instead go to shops, clubs and birthday parties.

Maria: I was seen as a bit of a freak. A lot of people said: “What's this you've come up with now, no boy will ever want you, what you are doing isn't the slightest bit feminine.” If I had gone to clubs and dated, or practised ballet – all right, I would have been a proper girl, sensitive, delicate, beautiful. But I practised karate, so I was a bruised tomboy who would never wear a dress or find a boyfriend. I was being pushed into the role of a porcelain doll so strongly by those around me that I started to doubt if I really wanted to do what I was doing.

A study from March 2019 by The Fawcett Society, a British organisation dedicated to campaigns for gender equality, shows that gender stereotypes passed down to children have a profound and negative life-long impact – not only on women, but also on men. More than half of those who were subject to stereotypes as children said that this limited their career choices, and 41% admitted that the instilled stereotypes damaged their personal relationships. More than half of the women affected by this problem (53%) believe that stereotypes had a negative impact on who became the care-giver in their family. Seven out of 10 younger women (18-34 years old) said their choice of profession was limited as a result. 69% of men under 35 said that stereotypes associated with gender in children have a detrimental effect on their perception of what it means to be a man or a woman. Men stated that the gender stereotypes they experienced negatively affected their relationships just as often as women.

Maria has a problem with dating to this day. There is an awkward silence whenever she meets guys and says she does karate. – I can feel their fear that if a woman has a strong character and can also defend herself physically, they are likely to get hit, so it's best to stay out of the way.

A year ago, after graduating from high school, Maria got a job as a receptionist in a good hotel in her hometown of Tricity. During one of her shifts, the manager came up to Maria and said that she looked like a 15-year-old and must therefore wear heavy makeup.

Maria: I know that in many positions you also work with your looks. But when a colleague came to work unshaven, he wasn't given any trouble. In the case of women, supervisors and everyone around them allow themselves to comment on their appearance and express their expectations freely. Sometimes I catch myself thinking: “How do I look, I'm going to a competition, I should paint my nails and put some make-up on”. I torment myself with these old patterns. Not shaving your legs once a week is not the end of the world. The world will not fall into ruin. Perhaps reading a book or playing would be a better use of time?

Scatterbrain

Karolina (42), holder of a post-doctoral degree in social sciences in the field of political science, wife and mother of a two-year-old son: A woman in science is either too old or too young for everything. She is never the right age. When an experienced professor speaks at a conference, others quietly comment: “the old woman is talking nonsense”. When you get your PhD at 30, they say: “this scatterbrain knows nothing about life”. I don't remember the age argument being used with my male colleagues. Nobody comments on their age and appearance.

Often it did not end with only – sometimes nice, she admits – comments: “You look beautiful in this dress, love suits you”. On the way to a conference, she sometimes heard from a professor: “So, this is how you prepare for your speech, instead of wearing a shorter skirt or a V-neck blouse and saying whatever”.

Karolina: I will never forget the two-day conference I attended with a friend of mine. In the morning at breakfast, we joined some male professors we knew. After exchanging morning pleasantries, one of them said aloud: “I slept badly, I could use a soothing pair of young breasts”.

They were speechless. They took their plates and moved to the farthest table.

Karolina: What was I supposed to say? It was openly sexist, a lack of basic manners. But it's hard to protest openly, especially when such a sentence is uttered by your supervisor or an important professor whom you rely on professionally.

In March 2020, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published a report based on data from 75 countries inhabited by 80 percent of the world population. The findings included: over 90 percent of men and 86 percent of women have prejudices against women in at least one important issue - economy, politics, education, and reproductive rights. Almost half of the respondents of both sexes believe, for example, that men are better political leaders, 40% are convinced that men manage businesses better, and another 40% think that men have more right to work when there are no jobs.

Iwonkas and Helenkas

Before her post-doctoral degree, Karolina felt even more than now that gender determines not only how her superiors and colleagues see her, but also what tasks they set for her.

Karolina: When foreign guests came to the university, the three of us – me and two other friends – were asked to take care of them. We knew English, we were nice, pretty, we presented ourselves well. We called it the cheerleader role. Nobody invited us to important scientific or substantive meetings or discussions. Only gentlemen attended these: the director, the dean, the professor.

There is an open belief in the scientific community that women perform better in so-called busywork. Need to write a report or prepare tables? This task is assigned to a woman. Need to write a new course outline? A woman, because she is considered more precise, more disciplined.

Karolina: These types of tasks take a lot of time, time which we later lack when conducting scientific work for which we earn points. This is also our own fault as women. We agree to such tasks, we are unable to say: “I'll share the work with my (male) colleague” or “I did it last time, let someone else do it this time.” Boys are brought up to be people who have the courage to dream and make dreams come true, and we are brought up as these polite ants with well-kept notebooks and colourful patterns.

She admits: We should negotiate: “I can do it, but in return get rid of another one of my duties, such as lecture hours, or give me a bonus”.

She learned to speak out loudly when she did her post-doctoral degree and became less dependent on the structure and other professors.

But it is not just professional dependence that makes the struggle more difficult. Karolina: All women at the university are Iwonka, Krysia, Basia or Helenka. This is how we are addressed – our first names are used in diminutive forms and our last names are omitted. It imposes a certain level of familiarity, infantilises, and at the same time highlights the lack of parity. She observed this at conferences: if there were three men and two women on the panel, the men were called Professor Kwiatkowski, Professor Nowak. And what about the women? Professor Iwona. Professor Krysia.

Karolina: I remember the official meeting at which there were male and female professors and ambassadors. One professor was introducing the people standing next to him to someone. He introduced the men using their titles and last names, and he called ambassador Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, “Miss Kasia”.

Imposter

Despite many years of experience in the industry, I often feel the so-called imposter syndrome. It is the belief (found mainly in women) that their success is not due to their own hard work and ability, coupled with the fear that their “deceit” will come to light.

Karolina: When a male or female journalist invites me to a broadcast, I sometimes think: “I don't know anything about this subject, I have to read ten more books to comment on it”. Then my other inner self speaks up and calls me out: “Girl, you've been doing this for 15 years!”

This syndrome irritates her even more when she sees that her colleagues do not hesitate to discuss and speak on any topic.

Media analyses show that the percentage of men and women speaking as experts in news programmes is even, but the situation changes dramatically in journalistic shows, where political and social events are commented on. Female commentators constitute only 7-19 percent of guests. After the last elections, the talking heads on major channels were also mostly male.

Karolina: On the one hand, it's a habit that only guys are invited to comment, because “it has always been like this”. On the other hand, this mechanism is based on “being pals”. I will invite someone whom I have invited before, whom I know, or whom a friend has recommended to me. Men hang out together. We women hang out, support and recommend each other too little. If we refuse two or three times, they will not call us for the fourth time. And they won't call another woman either, because they think she is probably also unavailable. I wish we had the same instincts as men, and unfortunately, we are often brought up to compete with other women.

She agrees with Madeleine Albright who said that there is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women. That is why she joined the project “Women in Polish Political Science”. The main outcome of the project was the creation of a public database of female researchers in the field of political science.

Karolina: Now no one can say: we do not invite women, because there are no experts in this field.

The research by Katherine B. Coffman from Harvard Business School shows, however, that women themselves can avoid certain professions and tasks because they lack confidence in their own abilities in areas where men are stereotypically better (e.g. mathematics). Also for this reason, women are often reluctant to share their ideas in discussions and ignore praise. Harvard experts are certain that this lack of self-confidence can lead to self-exclusion, such as resignation from prestigious positions. Their research shows that self-belief is key in making important decisions about choosing a university, career path or applying for a promotion. Similar observations are made by the authors of the report entitled “The digital key to professional future. Women on the labour market in the context of the economic crisis”: women resign from work in the technology industry because they lack self-confidence, and this belief strengthens the stereotype that it is a “male” industry.

A strong manager saves from oppression

Magdalena (35), journalist and reporter dealing with Eastern Europe: Men from Georgia, Ukraine and other Eastern countries often fall victim to stereotypes about women themselves. If I deal with these stereotypes skillfully, I can gain a lot in my own work.

In 2016, she went to Abkhazia to cover the world championship in football for previously unacknowledged countries. After arriving in Georgia, she got onto the bus and reached the Georgian-Abkhaz border. There, she had to prove her identity to armed soldiers. It turned out that she had forgotten to obtain the necessary visa. They refused her entry, ordered her to return to Georgia and obtain the documents there.

Magdalena: I said I didn't have time because I had to cover the championship, and if I went to Georgia, the championship would be over before my return. I sat down in the middle of the road with my luggage and said I was protesting.

To her amazement, the soldiers did not chase her away. For nine hours they brought food, called their supervisors, but on Sunday it was difficult for them to arrange anything. After a few hours, a big guy (the manager) called her, inspected her ID again, and allowed her to enter. He was so moved by her stubbornness that he delegated a subordinate to accompany her on her way to Sukhumi and find a good hotel.

Magdalena: Their vigilance was dulled by the fact that I am a woman, and in addition, a short, small, smiling blonde, which is rare in the Caucasus. If I were a big man and suddenly sat down in the middle of the road saying that I was protesting... I used the fact that they thought of me as a little, lost and clumsy blonde girl who doesn't know that you need to get documents. The strong Georgian-Abkhazian man felt it was his role to save me.

The situation was similar on the border between Ukraine and the so-called Donetsk People's Republic. A soldier asked her to write a statement in Russian: where she had come from, what she was there for, what she would be doing.

Magda: I speak Russian well, but I make spelling mistakes. I smiled and said I could write it, but my written Russian is so poor they would be reading it for two weeks and I didn't have that much time. The guy sat down and wrote all the papers for me. In such situations it helps me a lot being a woman. And I have no qualms about taking advantage of it from time to time. The main thing is to cover the story, that is, to do your job.

Some of the characters' names have been changed.

Author: Martyna Słowik

The article was published in "Wolna Sobota” of "Gazeta Wyborcza” from 1 August 2020.