Let’s Not Put Women Down

It’s obvious, but we must constantly remind ourselves about it.

Recently, I was in a remote meeting. It was a pretty relaxed meeting with a warm and open-minded vibe. You know, the kind of meeting that you actually don’t want to end early.

One of the participants has a certain demeanor that kind of annoys me at times. Warm and friendly, but at the same time loud and braggy.

And this meeting was no exception. She talked and she bragged (not all too much, but it was enough bragging to strike that particular cord that I find so disharmonious).

I wrote in a private message to an acquaintance who was also in the meeting: “She talks A LOT 😅”

My acquittance didn’t immediately respond, but when she did, it was firm:

“Now now… Let’s not put women down.”

It wasn’t the reply I expected — but it was the reply I needed.

She continued:

“I am making a point here that we seem to point out the women and not men, let’s not continue with this bias of putting women down when men get away with the same thing.”

Men do get away with a lot of stuff, don’t they? They can basically bullshit their way through life. Or, as Anna Delvey puts it in the Netflix hit series, Inventing Anna:

”Men fail upwards all the time.”

It’s 2022 and this, as crazy as it may sound, still holds true.

It’s not like women should never be criticized. Of course, they should! But I can tell myself all day that I always try to call out men who brag and talks too much as well, and I really do — but it doesn’t matter. As long as this bias exists, I would add to it by calling out women for things that men tend to get away with. Simply because I’m not alone in this universe.

I believe this is something that many people have a hard time grasping. You can try to be 50–50 fair all you want, but if you’re just 1 out of 10 being that, what do you think the end result will be? Still heavily unfair, of course. What you can do is try to even it out a bit, by not putting women down.

All of us who are sincerely longing for an equal and inclusive world and want to help create it, must understand that treating people equally simply isn’t enough. This might be considered controversial, some might even be offended by it, and it is indeed a bit of a paradox. But when you think about it, it makes sense.

If something is heavily unfair, it must be countered with the opposite “unfairness” (in this case calling out men for being braggy big mouths but not women) until more people learn to not discriminate.

That’s why the response I got wasn’t the one I expected, but the one I needed. It’s obvious, but we must constantly remind ourselves about the kind of biases we’re fighting. The fact that we strongly oppose them doesn’t mean we don’t carry them ourselves or are partly responsible for preserving them.

So, with all of that said:

Let’s not put women down.

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