Battle Tactics for Your Sexist Workplace

After the latest series of national events where, as Eula says, the country has "played us for f***ing fools", Eula and Jeannie have decided it's time for a break. Like so many of us, they need some quiet and some rest. They're taking a break for the summer but hope to be back in the fall.

If you have a podcast you want to share with our listeners, shoot us a message at [email protected]. We're happy to see if we can drop it in our feed. And we're still reachable on Twitter and Instagram @btswpodcast.

If you're a Patreon member, 1) thank you for your support! and 2) Eula and Jeannie hope to show up there over the summer with AMAs and other bonus material.

It's a really hard time to be a human. Take care of yourselves. <3 See you in a few months.

When we asked the BTSW Facebook group whether they'd ever been voice policed on the job, we got a ton of stories and responses. So many that we decided we needed to dedicate a whole episode just to those stories. So today is Part 2 of our conversation with the hosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries - the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Megan Figueroa is a linguist, writer, and research scientist, and Carrie Gillon is also a linguist and the language planner and researcher for the Squamish nation in British Columbia.

If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, go check it out. The Vocal Fries drop some truly amazing wisdom about the connections between voice and grammar policing and white supremacy and colonialism.

Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace is an independent podcast! Become a patron on Patreon and help support the show.

We usually ask folks to support our show on Patreon. Today, we wanted to suggest places to support crucial abortion services.

Planned Parenthood

Shout Your Abortion

National Abortion Federation

**NOTE: During this episode, we refer to Rachel Jeantel by her last name only. We wanted to clarify and use her full name here. Rachel Jeantel was a primary prosecution witness at Trayvon Martin's murder trial. Court officials claimed she was "hard to understand" and ultimately her testimony was dismissed as not credible.**

A couple months ago, Jeannie asked the BTSW Facebook group whether anyone had ever gotten criticized for how they speak or sound while at work. The response was overwhelming. So many listeners had stories about getting their voice or speech policed on the job.

Megan Figueroa and Carrie Gillon know about voice policing better than most - and the many ways it causes more harm than good. They're the cohosts of the excellent podcast The Vocal Fries, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. Plus, Carrie is a former professor of linguistics and the Language Planner and Researcher for the Squamish Nation, and Megan recently finished her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she's a Project Manager at a language development lab. Carrie and Megan go deep on the ways linguistic discrimination can harm women on the job and elsewhere, and why all of us who have taken joy in correcting someone for using the wrong "your" or "their" on Twitter maybe need to check ourselves.

Hi! We love making BTSW - and if you love listening, help us make it! Become a patron of the show or make a tax-deductible donation.

"BREAKING: Schwing quits the Northwest News Network. The reason? My male colleagues make tens of thousands of dollars more for the same work. And TBH, making this public scares the S-H-star-T out of me. "

That was a tweet reporter Emily Schwing sent in March 2019, after quitting her job with something called the Northwest News Network. That’s a collection of public radio stations in Washington and Idaho that do regional news reporting. (BTSW's old production partner, KUOW, is part of the Northwest News Network.)

We talked with Emily because she DID a tactic we actually talked about on the show - she quit a job because she felt like she was dealing with a gender pay gap. And then - even though she didn’t really want to go public about why she quit- she went public about why she quit.

And then something unexpected happened - her tweet went kinda viral. Local newspapers picked up the story. And suddenly Emily found herself wondering what was going to happen to her job prospects if future employers Googled her and found all this stuff about her complaining about being underpaid at her previous job.

FWIW: Emily has done some amazing work since March 2019 - with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and with the excellent podcasts Reveal and 70 Million.

Over the course of making this podcast, we have gotten a lot of messages from listeners asking for help, perspective, and advice on crappy work situations. Eula and Jeannie rounded up a bunch of those messages and brought in some deep expertise to help respond - in the form of the fantastic Keita Williams, founder and head of the elite accountability practice Success Bully. She brings insight and tons of tactics for sticky (wait! we mean sexist and racist) workplace dilemmas.

NOTE: This episode was originally recorded in The Before Times (2019), but disappointingly, the problems listeners wrote in about then - from self-proclaimed woke dude co-workers who come down harder on women to gendered pay gaps to leaders bragging about never taking a sick day - are still extremely relevant. Yes, bosses are still being stingy about sick time DURING A PANDEMIC. It's a real thing. Let's all take a moment to sigh in disappointment.

We have often talked *about* straight cis white dudes on this show. But the number of times we've talked *to* them on the show? Next to never. So we wanted to revisit this bonus episode from the Before Times with two of our favorite dudes, Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh, the co-hosts of the long-running daily podcast Too Beautiful To Live. We talked about allyship and their own evolving thoughts about racism and sexism on the job.

Luke also hosts Live Wire on public radio stations everywhere and Andrew also co-hosts the delightful podcasts Spotless and After These Messages.

Earlier this week, longtime NPR host Audie Cornish announced she's quitting her job. Soon after, public media Twitter started re-asking questions it's been asking for a while now: why are so many people of color leaving public radio? Audie's co-host Ari Shapiro tweeted a thread about it, including re-tweeting a list from NPR podcast host Sam Sanders listing all the hosts from underestimated backgrounds who'd recently left NPR (that list is now outdated). Other folks pointed out that this pattern doesn't end at highly visible national hosts. All over the country, at your favorite NPR member station, people in management are very likely wondering why their staff isn't more diverse. Why it's "so hard" to hire and retain people of color in public radio newsrooms. It's with that context in mind that we decided to share this episode, where Eula (a part-time freelancer) and Jeannie (a full-time permanent employee) tell the story of the day they learned their podcast would no longer be produced by the Seattle NPR station KUOW, and what that meant for each of them.

Hella Black Hella Seattle

"People Don't Follow Money, They Follow Vision" - A look at 'public radio's latest existential drama'

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to be an effective ally or advocate for a co-worker, but when a situation arises that seems like you should be doing or saying something, you worry that you won’t do the most helpful thing? That your actions or words might actually make things worse for your co-worker? How do you know you’re actually helping? 

This is a dilemma that comes up a lot in emails from listeners. And in the Before Times, we talked to someone about exactly this question. 

Jeannie considers this guest a total expert in workplace advocacy and allyship....largely because she advocated for Jeannie when they worked together, and for a bunch of their colleagues. 

Her name is Phyllis Fletcher, an author and editor who lives here in Seattle. you've probably heard her name before - she's in Season 3 credits for providing expert editorial consulting.

Eula and Jeannie originally talked with Phyllis for bonus episode for Season 2. But her tactics feel more relevant than ever. So we wanted to make sure everyone can hear what she has to say.

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How did you two meet?

When it comes to this podcast, that's the question Eula and Jeannie get asked the most. And it's one of their favorite stories to tell. So on this episode, we're doing something a little different. We're having them tell the story of how they met and their friendship.

Big thanks to our Senior Producer Kyle Norris for suggesting we make this a podcast episode!

You're Not Uncool. Making Friends As An Adult Is Just Hard.

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

The Importance Of Work Friends

Some stuff broke, and we need a minute to regroup. We'll be back in two weeks!

In the meantime, if you miss us, there's a whole bunch of fresh bonus content on our Patreon for supporting members.