The Work is Female

REISH GALUTHA

Apr 23, 2023

This is a Carousel guest piece by an anon

The > 80% Female Workplace

I worked for five years at a media agency that was over eighty percent female. For the first few years, I reported to a straightforward young man of German Catholic ancestry, with blond hair and blue eyes. He was known to be devout although he otherwise kept his religion to himself, and thereby got away with it. He was no-nonsense, and I enjoyed serving under someone of high moral character. He in turn reported directly to the CEO, also a man. No women existed in my chain of command.

My boss had a long term girlfriend, and, although he was usually the first one in and last one out of the office, he spent almost no time whatsoever fraternizing with the broader team. That he no longer attended company events, even the sacred holiday party, was frequently mentioned to me by the women. He could get away with this, however, having a familial relationship with a member of the board of directors.

I had no such security. When we moved to a larger office in the same building, they placed me in the center of an open office floor plan, some distance away from my boss, and told us to communicate via Slack, thrusting me directly into the middle of the longhouse. Twitter anon Lom3z describes the historical longhouse as, “a large communal hall, serving as the social focal point for many cultures and peoples throughout the world that were typically more sedentary and agrarian.” I contend that the open floor plan of the modern office is indeed a very literal form of the longhouse.

I imagine that the cubicle workspace was, by contrast, a masculine world of private cave dwellings, within each of which was the potential for endless little worlds of varied work. The more sealed your cubicle, the greater the probability of depth of work and thought. This is of course unacceptable today when everything must be seen, spoken about, and commented on. All persons must be on a single page, united by a common narrative. Female safety depends on full visibility.

READ MORE