What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know

11. The Experience of Gender Bias Differs

221 11 The Experience of Gender Bias Differs by Race The image conjured up by the label “scientist” remains that of a white male hovering over test tubes in a darkened laboratory. — kenneth manning, professor and editor of MIT: SHAPING THE FUTURE our First lady is an incredibly accomplished woman.1 Michelle obama went to Princeton as an undergraduate and then on to harvard law School. After earning her JD, she worked for several years at law firm Sidley Austin as an associate specializing in intellectual property, where she was assigned to mentor a summer associate who was to become her husband—and later the 44th president of the united States. Michelle eventually left Sidley Austin to start a youth mentorship program for urban children; after her first child, Malia, was born, she began working as a vice president for the university of Chicago hospitals and served on the board of food supplier treehouse Foods. As First lady, she has become an undisputed style icon and has spearheaded an initiative to reduce childhood obesity. in other words, Michelle obama is a consummate new girl. And yet, both during the 2008 presidential campaign and again after the publication of a 2012 book that depicted her arguing with her husband’s staff, she’s had to defend herself against a very specific set of stereotypes. “that’s been an image that people have tried to 222 • The Experience of Gender Bias Differs by Race paint of me since the day barack announced, that i’m some angry black woman,” she said in an interview with CbS’s gayle King.2 in the book Sister Citizen, author Melissa harris-Perry observes that Michelle obama took a sharp turn toward domesticity partway through her husband’s campaign. the woman who had met her husband when she was his professional superior, who earned more than he did at several points in their life together, and who had, early in his campaign, told humanizing anecdotes about how he never picked up his dirty socks suddenly recast herself as maternal and supportive, clad in J. Crew cardigans and pursuing a campaign for childhood obesity.3 no hillary Clinton–esqe health-care gamble for her. Some feminists felt betrayed at the transformation from hardcharging lawyer to high-profile homemaker. but, harris-Perry points out, what one commentator called the “momification” of Michelle obama was radical in its own right.4 White American feminists from betty Friedan on have depicted the homemaker role as stifling, but for many professional black women, it represents a cultural ideal that has long been the province of whites.5 this is a book about gender, not about race. but it is not a book just about white women. Women of color have been incorporated into the first ten chapters, which contain quotes from women of many races. (For reasons of confidentiality, they typically are not identified by race.) this chapter aims to explore the extent to which the everyday experience of gender bias differs by race. it examines in detail the hypothesis, forwarded in the 1960s by Frances beale, that black women are in “double jeopardy”: that they (and perhaps other women of color?) are doubly disadvantaged by race and gender.6 Far fewer experimental studies have studied this issue than the issue of “gender” alone. one important study, by isis h. Settles, found that black women identified more as “black women” than as either “women” or “blacks.”7 in a response to this insight, Joan got a national Science Foundation (nSF) grant to fund interviews of 60 women scientists of color about their experience of gender bias. The Experience of Gender Bias Differs by Race • 223 (Most are academics.) this chapter combines material from those interviews with material from the new girls of color. Women of color were more likely to report each of the four patterns of bias than white women were. the biggest gap concerned tug of War bias, reported by 59 percent of women of color but only from terrorist to fashion icon During the early stages of Barack Obama’s first national campaign, Michelle Obama just acted like herself. She said that when her husband was nominated, she was proud of her country for the first time. She told Good Morning America that one of the reasons her husband was qualified for president is that “he is very able to deal with a strong woman” and...