How everyday sexism undermines and undercuts women’s achievements

Women have been making gains from medal podiums to world politics. Even so, everyday sexism is always here to put us back in our place.

“You know what women are like… hanging around, doing their make-up.”

 This may sound to you like a comment made by someone’s worst uncle at the family BBQ. Or perhaps you are more world-weary and think this could have been said by anyone, almost anywhere. The latter, unfortunately, is closer to the mark, but somehow still misses the gravity of this comment, which was made by an experienced sports commentator, on the job, referring to Australia’s 100m freestyle relay team moments after they won the gold medal in the Olympics. This kind of comment is unacceptable in any context, but it is particularly galling that it was said by someone paid to give their opinion, about elite swimmers the likes of which the world, quite literally, has never seen.

 In Australia and around the world, some momentous steps forward have recently been taken by women in all kinds of professions. Women athletes are carrying Australia in the Olympic games – as of day 4, women have won all the country’s gold medals. Elsewhere, Kamala Harris has emerged as the United States’ Democratic Party’s best hope for election victory in November, breathing new life in a campaign that struck many as male, pale and stale (and ailing). Two separate online events for black women and white women supporters of Harris attracted upwards of 90,000 and 160,000 participants respectively, with the latter event apparently crashing Zoom.

 When it comes to gender politics, moments of hope are inevitably followed by backlash. Backlash is certainly present in these examples, but what Harris’ campaign and the prowess of Australia’s Olympians have really brought to the fore is the persistence of everyday sexism in every aspect of life, and its malignant impacts that undercut gender equality just as it seems to be making gains.

 Everyday sexism is difficult to define, but not because it is particularly complex or rare. As the term implies, it is common: Champions of Change Coalition notes that it takes place ‘in both the formal and casual interactions between people. It happens in daily life.’ Put simply, everyday sexism refers to the routine, normal actions and remarks people engage in that reflect and affirm deep-seated, harmful beliefs about gender.

 The difficulty in definition comes in not downplaying everyday sexism. The point of everyday sexism is that it seems innocuous. If it is noticed at all, it is often, as per Champions of Change, ‘perceived as too small to make a fuss about’. But when behaviours that uphold gender stereotypes to go unchallenged in the workplace, they can have significant impacts on the progression of women and other marginalised groups. Those in charge of hiring may assume that men are naturally more suitable candidates. People who break gender norms – for example, a man who requests flexible working arrangements to care for his children -- may be seen as incompetent.

 The impacts of everyday sexism are visible in our earlier examples. It has taken until this year for the Olympics to host the same number of events for women and men, and the gender pay gap in sport persists for all athletes. Even beyond the Olympics, the pay gap in Australia’s most beloved sports is outrageous.

 Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’ opponents have a pattern of shrewdly weaponising everyday sexist assumptions to portray Harris as incompetent and uninvested. This week, a 2021 comment made by Republican vice president hopeful JD Vance has come back to light, in which he refers to Harris and others in the Democratic Party as ‘childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives […] and so they want to make the country miserable’. This view may seem extreme, but it plays on common assumptions that are inoffensive to many: that women are happiest when they have children, that biological children are the best contribution women can make to society and that women and others who do not or cannot have children, in the words of Vance, ‘don’t really have a direct stake’ in the future of their communities.

 Attacks against Harris further demonstrate the intersectionality of everyday sexism. Republicans have been quick to dismiss Harris, a Woman of Colour, as a ‘DEI hire’, playing on racist resentments of workplace diversity initiatives in the US and around the world. Add to this the implications made by some that Harris’ career is a result of romantic and sexual relationships with powerful men, or leading Christian Nationalist Lance Wallnau’s shockingly racist comment calling Harris a ‘Jezebel’, appealing to particularly racist and sexist beliefs about the ‘danger’ posed to American society by Black women.

 Everyday sexism has real impacts on individuals, organisations, and society. We can’t even watch sport without running into it. It’s exhausting, and it’s high time that our workplaces and institutions addressed it for the drain that it is.