Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

 Thankfully, at my current place of employment, I don't witness microaggressions often. Which means that this week I didn't witness any that I could write about. However, in the past, there have been a few. One in particular that I remember was a woman who came into the building looking to see what we have for available work. When showed the childcare areas, she had only witnessed female workers (because the majority of our department is females, with only one male). Her comment was 'are there any males that work here'. While the question itself was innocent enough, her tone surrounding it was anything but. It was almost like she didn't want there to be any males in the program.

Listening to her ask this had made me sick to my stomach because while childcare is generally dominated my women, there are plenty of men that work in the setting that are very good at what they do. The male coworker I have, for example, has been doing this sort of work since he was fresh out of high school. He has far more experience than a good portion of the women in the program but because of misconceptions, he's looked down upon.

When witnessing this microaggression, I was reminded that stereotypes often pervade our culture without taking the time to stop and think about them. Even when people realize that my male coworker has more experience than most of us, they don't think he belongs in the setting at all just because he's male. It's incredibly frustrating.