Fighting for diversity

Jemma Charles at Discussion Box describes what it means to be an openly queer CIS womxn in technology, and how she, and all womxn, still have to fight for representation

 

Being a womxn in business is hard. Being an openly queer womxn in business is harder.

 

It’s well known that womxn are significantly underrepresented in key corporate roles. Only 25% of C level positions are taken up by womxn and only 6% are in CEO positions.

 

I consistently come across hurdles in my role as a Chief Revenue Officer in a tech company, in fact I have a reputation of being ‘difficult to work with’. This no longer personally impacts me; in fact, I find it to be a compliment.

 

If I was a man, I would be considered ambitious, direct, a critical thinker, logical and business centric. As a womxn with the same skill set, I am considered bossy, abrasive, emotional, aggressive and even sexist. I’ve had men mansplain my own business model to me, and when corrected I am called difficult and abrupt. When I implement boundaries, I am called outspoken, cold and angry - despite never having raised my voice, and I am often told to calm down.

 

The founder of Discussion Box Lisa Carter and I have grown the company by 1000% year on year, with a turnover of £1.2 million in 2021. I am good at my job, but people do not like a womxn who celebrates their own achievements, it is considered uncouth and met with people wanting to dismantle our success.  

 

Tech is a male dominated industry, and in my experience, 9/10 faces in the room are men. Womxn’s voices are often not heard and there is an expectation to ‘keep up with the boys’. This translates to shut up, take a joke and don’t challenge.

 

I felt huge pressure in my younger years to drink.  As a now sober womxn, I reflect on the pressure of drinking under the guise of ‘team bonding’, or getting to know the bosses, essentially to mingle with misogynists in order to climb the ladder in the industry. I had several jobs in tech during my 20s, all of which have greeted me with misogyny and sexism.

 

One eye-opening experience I recall was going from IT into sales, and the culture and expectation that came with it. Moving from the dark, IT basement to the boardroom meant going through an ‘initiation’ which entailed my much older male boss instructing me to transform my entire identity. More explicitly, I needed to buy business attire, which is fair enough; but also to buy a better bra, high heels and wear more make up as people ‘buy with their eyes’. 

 

This is not acceptable, and yet my manager was frequently praised for ‘transforming’ me. The worst part was my subservience at the time. I thought this was the reality of being a womxn in business.

 

In my 20s, I felt reluctant to come out in my professional life due to the fear it would cost me progression, when I had fought so hard to be on the same level as my male counterparts. I’ve been fetishized and had my sexuality dismissed by men who frequently asked me about my sex life, and how they could ‘turn me’, with the offer of a threesome permanently on the table. 

 

I’ve had to pacify transphobic rhetoric to protect my professional life, but ultimately go against my morals in my personal life being married to a non-binary person. I will not do this again, and I want womxn to know they can work in a safe space where diversities are not only protected, but celebrated.

 

We all have layers of social identity which compound our experiences of discrimination. I know as a white womxn, who is middle class, English speaking and a UK citizen, that I have bags of privilege.

 

However, I am also queer and neurodiverse. These layers of my social identity take away some of that privilege. Lisa, our Founder is a black womxn: being a double minority means that she has to work so much harder to succeed, fighting prejudice, sexism and racism in the tech world.

 

It’s important to me that we offer womxn safe spaces to work, to learn, to climb higher, to be heard and earn the money they deserve. Currently, it will take 135 years to close the gender gap globally. Womxn lose up to $1 million dollars over a lifetime due to workplace sexual harassment and discrimination.

 

This has to change. Building womxn’s generational wealth needs to be an obtainable reality, which starts by empowering intersectional gender equity.

 

I will always stand in solidarity with all womxn, fighting the interconnected issues of thriving as a womxn in business. Together we are stronger to fight the inequalities.

 

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Jemma Charles is Discussion Box’s Chief Revenue Officer

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com