He Said, She Documented: A Good Girl’s Guide to Self-Advocacy in the Workplace
Picture this – it’s a cold Monday morning. You wake up, bleary eyed, still exhausted from pulling a double shift. You reach for your phone and start scrolling through work emails.
One brand new email catches your eye. It’s your boss, who cc’d you on a message to your superiors. In this message, he has once again shared one of your ideas without mentioning the person it came from – you.
You shower angrily, fuming all the while. How could he keep doing this? What were you even missing all that sleep for, if all his talk of promoting you was nothing more than empty promises?
If any pieces of this anecdote resonate with you, first know that you are not alone. Sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination affect scores of working American women.
Unfair (and often illegal) treatment in the workplace affects our wallets, our families, and our mental health. Bullying and harassment can also destroy our self-confidence, making success feel like a distant and unattainable dream.
For those of you who don’t know, I have worked in the biomedical industry since I was a teenager. My dad was a cancer researcher, and my grandfather was a general surgeon. So pursuing a career in biomedicine was just a natural course of action for me.
However, my father and grandfather both had something I never will – a dick. And there are a lot of doors in biomedicine that only a dick can open.
Although I am just as capable as my male relatives, I will never achieve the same level of success in biomedicine. This is not because of a lack of effort on my part. Rather, many (if not all) women in STEM experience relentless harassment from male colleagues.
All the women I have known in STEM have experienced sexual harassment and bullying. And most of us have also experienced sexual assault in an office, lab, or fieldwork setting. I cannot tell you how many women I know who have signed NDAs.
The way that women are treated in STEM keeps us from positions of power within this industry. Because women are not in decision-making positions in biomedicine, we do not have the power that we need to improve women’s healthcare. And the problem is only getting worse.
As bad as my experiences in STEM have been, I know that these experiences occur across all industries in the United States.
I have heard stories of workplace abuse and/or assault from women in construction, fashion, education, retail, food service, and more. I have heard of this abuse from young interns, mid-level professionals, and seasoned executives.
It took me a long time to admit that this was happening to me at work. I wanted to believe that, if I just worked hard enough, one day that would be reflected in my title and my salary.
Finally, I had to admit that this was simply not true. I began to research workplace harassment and bullying. I taught myself my legal rights as an employee, and I worked with legal professionals to learn how to advocate for myself in a professional setting.
The amount of harassment that I experience has not decreased. But my ability to recognize it and take immediate corrective action has saved me in more ways than one.
In this article, I want to share what I have learned with anyone who may benefit from this information. It is my hope that this article may help people who are going through some of the same pain I have felt over the many years of my tortured career.
If someone is fucking with you at work, you don’t have to just sit there and take it. You can educate yourself on your rights, stand up for justice, and inspire the people around you to do the same.
If all women in STEM advocated for themselves and fought tooth and nail for justice, then we would finally be able to take over the biomedical industry. This would put women’s healthcare back where it belongs – in the hands of women.
If all female educators practiced ruthless self-advocacy, then women could finally take over and have the power to fix the education system.
And every time that a woman stands up for herself, she shows the women and girls around her that it is possible to do so.
Considering how much women in the past sacrificed to make our lives possible, don’t we owe it to them to dig in our heels? Don’t we owe it to the girls coming up behind us to make workplaces safer, so that they don’t have to go through what we did?
In my opinion, we do. As modern American women, we can exercise our constitutional rights, and we must.
This blog post is designed to give you some pointers on self-advocacy in the workplace. Keep reading to learn more about what you can do to take your power back at work.
Know Your Rights!
In order to advocate for yourself at work, the first thing you need to do is learn about your rights as an employee. Some excellent places to start on this may include:
your employee handbook
employment law articles online
Reddit and Quora
Your employee handbook should cover workplace harassment and reporting procedures. Free employment law articles on the Internet can provide you with additional information about specific legal questions.
Personally, I have found public forums like Reddit and Quora to be especially useful. There are many threads on these sites that discuss workplace harassment and employment law. I find it particularly helpful to read about these topics from real people.
Of course, only an employment lawyer can give you answers to legal questions specific to your case. But if you’re worrying about the cost of speaking with an employment lawyer, don’t!
Most employment lawyers provide free consultations for potential clients. This means that they will set up a 30- or 60-minute meeting (typically by phone) to discuss your questions with you.
During a free consultation, you can ask an attorney any legal questions you have. Personally, I recommend setting up free consultations with a minimum of 3 attorneys. This will allow you to get multiple perspectives on your case before making any decisions about next steps.
Another great option for finding a free attorney is LegalShield. This is a legal plan that anyone can sign up for. You can pay as low as $30 a month for unlimited access to free consultations with in-network attorneys. Plans like LegalShield also offer discounted services with in-network attorneys.
Many workplaces actually offer LegalShield or similar services as part of their benefit package. But if you sign up for a legal service through your work, note that you typically cannot use those legal services against your current employer. So you should sign up for a plan independently.
He Said, She Documented
When you are familiar with your legal rights, you can identify behaviors or patterns that violate those rights. You can then begin to document those behaviors in accordance with state law.
For example, let’s say you have a supervisor who loves nothing more than torturing you during “check-ins” or “reviews.” He says things to you during these private meetings that are disrespectful at best.
Maybe he belittles you or insults your intelligence on purpose to make you feel small. Maybe he tries to correct errors in your work that are not really there, and then lashes out when you simply try to defend yourself.
Or maybe you have a coworker who has been bullying you in subtle ways. And you have done your best to ignore him, but his behavior just keeps escalating. Now he is stalking you on social media and/or in real life.
If you know your employee rights, then you know that these behaviors are not only wrong – they are also illegal.
To protect yourself in situations like these, the best thing you can do is document everything that has happened. And this is where knowing your rights really comes into play.
In many cases, it is perfectly legal to record abusive bosses or coworkers during meetings. Most states in America follow “one-party consent” laws when it comes to recording. That means that it is legal for you to record conversations even if the other person doesn’t know you are recording.
For example, North Carolina is a one-party consent state. So if you are living in North Carolina, you can record other people’s conversations without getting their permission. And those recordings are admissible in a court of law.
In addition to audio recordings, it is very important to save any incriminating emails or other forms of written documentation.
I recommend taking screenshots of everything suspicious and then saving these screenshots on a personal drive (like Google or iCloud). You could also print these screenshots out and store them at home as hard copies.
You want to document the abuse as it happens. That way, you can demonstrate a pattern of behavior in a court or mediation setting.
Again, knowing your rights is a crucial first step in self-advocacy at the workplace. Certain government jobs may not allow audio or video recording. And some private companies may not allow emails to be sent or stored off site.
If you want to build a strong employment law case for yourself, you need to be sure that everything you are doing is 100% above board. You don’t want to give them anything to hold against you that may discredit you or your case.
Study Your Company
As you work on documenting abuse or bullying at work, you should also take some time to study your company. You can search for your company’s financial information on Google, or just actually pay attention during company meetings.
The powerful people who run big institutions like to pretend that they are not responsible for abusing their employees. They may tell you that certain financial choices were “out of their hands” due to “budget cuts.”
In reality, what happens to employees is a choice that is actively and knowingly made by people (normally men) at the top. It is very common for CEOs and managers to receive kickbacks and bonuses when they save the company money.
When your salary gets cut yet again, or when your cost of living “bonus” barely makes a dent, that happens as a result of a conscious decision made by people. A company is nothing more than a group of people, so don’t let the free food and snazzy letterhead distract you from reality.
That’s what they want.
So educate yourself. Research financial reports about your company. Look into the men running your company – how have they been making money? Where is that money going?
Go onto LinkedIn and research those men – who are they connected with? How did they get positions of power in your company?
In many cases, you can even find salary information about your colleagues online. If you are part of a 501(c)3 organization, then your company is legally required to publish its tax returns online. So look them up and read them.
Remember, girls, knowledge truly is power. Why do you think they kept us out of universities for so long? It’s obviously not because we are too stupid for higher education. It is because men in power don’t want women to take it. And it is really as simple as that.
What Actually Is Money Though?
The one thing a powerful man never expects from a woman is that she will say no.
Think about it – what do all powerful men want? Money, power, and legal impunity (in my experience at least).
But what is money, anyways? If you really look into the history of it, then you know that humans haven’t always used money. Money, or at least modern money, is not actually real. We are not exchanging gold coins or copper pieces anymore.
Money, in today’s world, is nothing more than a system.
The “Founding Fathers” of our country did not break away from England in the name of freedom. They broke away from England so that they would not have to send England part of the profits from the colonies.
The Declaration of Independence is a financial document.
When America was founded, the only people who could control money were wealthy white men. Over the past 248 years, they have been steadily losing this hold.
Money is nothing more than an arbitrary system that reinforces our patriarchal power structures. The amount of money you have is nothing more than a reflection of your social capital, your buying power.
The wealthy oligarchs who govern this country want you to believe that the amount of money you have is a reflection of your worth. That people who have more money (and thus more power) deserve it.
But why does a wealthy CEO deserve to make millions of dollars a year, when millions of single mothers in our country are struggling right now to feed their children?
Why do male executives deserve lavish vacations, fat retirement accounts, unlimited Uber eats, and houses they don’t even sleep in?
And why do women deserve to be harassed and abused in the workplace, when all they are trying to do is feed themselves and their families?
The answer is simple: they don’t.
The money system in this country is an illusion. Once I realized that, I understood that my lack of “power” in STEM was not a reflection of my innate worth. The way I have been treated in STEM says more about the people who abuse me than it does about myself.
And I hope that this information will resonate with female readers from all different walks of life.
What we need to accept is the fact that money is nothing more than a decision. There is no reason for hard-working men and women in this country to go hungry, to struggle to afford Christmas presents this holiday season.
The inequity in this country is a choice. And the inequity within your company is a choice. Once you accept and internalize that, I hope it emboldens you to advocate for yourself at work and in life.
Hall of Shame
My sixth great maternal grandfather, Colonel Timothy Matlack, was the scribe for the Declaration of Independence. He was good friends with Thomas Jefferson, who founded my alma mater UVA.
My maternal great grandparents were medical missionaries in India, where my grandfather (the surgeon) was born and raised.
My father is a decorated war hero and biomedical industry power player. He was responsible for completing the NEON program, as well as a host of other atrocities.
My father refused to help me get a job in biomedicine, because he said that my mental health issues (ie, my autism, ADHD, and queer-ness) would “damage his professional reputation.”
During the dinner after his Army retirement ceremony, my father delivered a monologue on why we shouldn’t make bathrooms for transgender people in the Army.
He said that there was no point in building separate bathrooms for “the transgenders,” because there were “not enough of them to justify the cost.”
When he drove me to visit his NEON offices in Colorado, he started talking about his “Executive Assistant” (air quotes his). He said that she was a woman in her mid-30s, “the kind of girl you look at and think, huh, she probably used to be pretty.”
He has stood by and watched me get emotionally and physically destroyed in this industry since I was 18 years old, and he could not give a flying fuck. He has continued to prosper and advance in his industry, at the expense of people like me (and the entire LGBTQ+ community).
When I was 3 years old, I attended my father’s PhD thesis defense in Santa Cruz, CA. He asked me how he did afterwards. I said to him, “Daddy, I think you should try to say ‘um’ inside of your head instead of on the outside.”
Since year 3, I have been correcting scientists, to their unending chagrin and dismay. And it took me a really long time to understand why I never achieved the level of success in my career that you would expect, given my education and my family connections.
The reason why men like my father will not help me is because they know that I will challenge them.
My father told me a long time ago that I am the smartest person he ever met. But if that’s really true, then isn’t that concerning? If I am really that good at biomedical editing, communication, and research, then why can’t I get a job in the industry?
Why do powerful men like my father only attack me, when it would take almost nothing for them to give me a helping hand up?
In the vast majority of jobs I have had in STEM, the best I could hope for was having my ideas stolen. And I have heard so many horror stories from other women, so I know that my experiences are by no means unique.
But I wanted to share my story, and my knowledge, so that other women could recognize and understand workplace abuse and discrimination. We need to stop taking it personally, and we need to accept that it is not happening because we deserve it.
We all deserve to be safe in our workplaces. We all deserve to earn money without having to sacrifice our physical and/or mental health. We deserve to have the same chances as men. And we do not deserve to be punished for demanding what is ours by birthright.
I want to also note that I understand that not everyone is in a position to take action against workplace abuse.
For example, many mothers simply cannot afford to risk losing their jobs. People with serious health conditions may be unable to risk losing their insurance. Many women really do not have a choice but to deal with a toxic workplace.
But even if you cannot take legal action for yourself right now, you can still educate yourself on your rights. You can still document everything that is happening and save it for later use.
And if you see someone getting mistreated in the workplace, you can provide them with support. Send them an extra positive review to brighten their day, or bring them a cup of coffee from your next Starbucks run.
We cannot change everything by ourselves. But if all of us take action, no matter how small, then change will be inevitable.
