0:00:00 - Michelle Pualani
Welcome to the Her First podcast. I'm Michelle Pualani. Her First is a podcast to help online business owners, coaches and creators gain the confidence needed to build a successful business while creating sustainable lifestyle balance. We're here to help you prioritize yourself in your business and life. In this episode, Joanna and I are going to discuss whether women are judged more harshly than men at work and in life. Advanced Warning this episode does contain content around sexual assault and may be triggering to some listeners, so please be advised. Let's get started. So, Joanna, you had a really lively discussion about this concept on TikTok last week. Can you tell us more about it?
0:00:43 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, of course, and I was actually surprised with the response I received when I created content about this topic, and it all started when I stitched a video that talked about the difference between performance reviews for men and women. The video talked about a study that was done analyzing the performance reviews of 248 individuals, and this was across different companies, different genders of managers, and those reviews were really interesting because they were 39% more critical of women than they were of men, and in those reviews they talked about women's personalities, like their personalities being issued. They were called abrasive, and these were not things that happened in the reviews for the men.
0:01:31 - Michelle Pualani
So I don't have a ton of experience in the corporate world I know you do and I don't necessarily have that background with performance reviews, with promotions, with jobs and bosses and everything else and, of course, I've had a really handful mixed roles, but I think I've actually in my past, as I reflect on it, kind of filled roles that were more positioned for women, so I've had a little bit of a different experience.
But being from the outside and third party to me has been very obvious how we judge and look at women so much more harshly.
And so I'm really excited about this conversation today, because I know that you have so much to share when it comes to this and we're going to talk a lot about really great questions, that we have Things that are going to hopefully wake some people up and help them realize the ways in which we have been potentially treating women differently in different situations. But what this particular statistic that you shared makes me think of is how we speak to and treat young people young women, young girls and how we define their personalities. Even the first thing that's coming to mind for me is when a young woman or a young girl expresses leadership qualities, they're being called bossy, and so when you think of abrasive personalities in the workplace being described, of women and being more critical of women, it's really because we have this perception of how women are meant to act and the ways in which we judge them for acting in certain ways, when similar or same qualities in men we see differently. So I'm super excited about this conversation today. I'm already getting fired up.
0:03:23 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, no, I'm really excited. I think we're going to talk about and discuss a lot of questions. I think one thing to note is that I do not feel like I have any real solid answers for this problem. But what I do see are trends, experiences that happen across multiple different women that I think are important to really address.
Like being called abrasive or being sort of docked for your personality interview is something that I personally experienced. You know I've gotten meets goals, everything's done, hit this sales target, everything's great, but maybe you should like be a little nicer. Like that has happened to me in real life. And what's always funny about those situations? That coaching never happens before the review. It's not like your boss comes to you and says, hey, in this situation, this is how you react, let's talk about it, let's figure out a way to communicate better. No, you get that in your performance review like a little red mark saying like you're basically too bossy, too abrasive, when I've never personally known a man who said he's experienced that in a performance review.
But one thing that really got me thinking was when I saw that statistic.
It reminded me of a time in my career when I first became a manager.
I realized that I also sort of expected more for my female employees than my male ones and I think it's likely because people always expected more of me and how I was taught a lot of my life to sort of excuse not so great behavior from men and while in for me as a boss at that time when I was that way, it didn't really affect my employees pay.
I didn't get into their reviews, I didn't even give them a hard time for being abrasive, like that wasn't really an issue. But for me I would expect better work for my female employees and I would maybe assign them the harder projects or give them the more difficult or more important tasks and I think that subconsciously I trusted them more to do it. But if two people have the same title, the same pay, all of that thing, that's actually not right for me to do. To give someone more responsibility because I trust them more, it's just not fair to that person. So I realized that in my management style I needed to make sure I was taking a step back, I was changing my leadership style. I was making sure I was dividing work evenly and not being biased towards one gender.
0:06:04 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, and I think the just to reiterate one of the things that you mentioned is that we are making objective, somewhat objective, assessments. We are making observations in this episode today and really asking questions and looking at this. We know that there is inequality between genders. That's something that is undeniable, and I have had conversations specifically with men about it not being an issue and that, to me, is just sitting in a place of ignorance. So, coming from the belief and understanding that we do have gender inequities in a lot of spaces specifically we're talking about in business, in life, in work and how we show up, so kind of what you're speaking to when it comes to your experience is that it's also not only felt but it's given. It's coming from us as well, and we see this between women sometimes, which can be really challenging.
So, even with our biases, or even being aware of the biases that we have, sometimes we get lost in the action of putting too much pressure, expecting more.
The ways in which we describe or judge or call someone, we unfortunately come from that place of bias.
It's ingrained into us, it's taught, it's societal, it's in our education system, it's all over the place, and so I think being aware of it is only part of the problem, and then starting to try to enact some of those changes.
So, as a leader, as a business owner, as a manager, as someone who has team members, how can we be more conscious about the way that we're treating other people and we're reviewing other people and how can that show up in the ways in which we show up in our businesses or in our work?
But I'm really excited to discuss kind of how this is being felt for some of us and how we can start to change that a little bit. So, if we are feeling this, what does that look like If we're seeing it in the workplace, if we're seeing it in our businesses, if we're seeing this inequity happening and how it's affecting the way that we think about things, how it's affecting the actions and choices that we make, and so I'll pass it back to you. But I think that really reflecting on your leadership style and how that needed to change and adjust, because you had higher expectations for the women that you worked with is a point of consciousness in which I think that we can all hope to get to in order to start making the daily change and hopefully changing for the future what it means to be a woman in the workplace or what it means to be a woman in business.
0:08:52 - Joanna Newton
And where my thought process kind of went. Next, as I was thinking about this concept is right. We see in this study, women are judged more harshly than men in performance reviews. So if that's the case, could the flip side also be true? Is it also that men are just not being held accountable or not being judged for their poor performance? And I started to think about where this could come from, like why is this happening? And it made me think about experience I had literally in fourth grade.
So like little baby Joanna was in fourth grade, she was at recess and where my school was there was like a playground on top of the hill and there was this like hill that some of us sometimes would sit and chat sitting on the hill. Okay, so I'm sitting on the hill chatting with my friends and I get hit in the back with a rock. The rock was like a bit. It wasn't a pebble, it was like a big rock. I know I do what happened. It completely knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't breathe. So my friend takes me to my teacher. I'm crying hysterically, I'm probably having a panic attack because I just got hit with a rock. My teacher, who was a woman. The first thing she tests to me is to stop being hysterical, which is like a whole nother layer of conversations, the root meanings of that word. If you don't know, google it. But I was told to stop being hysterical Again. Just got physically assaulted, the wind knocked out of me, hit with a rock, don't know what happened, and she's telling me not to be hysterical. Well, it turns out a little boy threw a rock at me and so he was taken, I think, to the principal office, talked to and then I get brought in to the principal's office he had left.
I get brought in and I was told that it wasn't a big deal because he only did it because he was trying to get my attention, because he liked me. So I had two adults, my principal and my teacher. My parents weren't even like thinking about this. If this happened to my daughter I would be enraged, yelling at every school board member, every teacher involved, like losing my mind. But I was told that it was okay that he physically assaulted me with a rock, threw a rock at me because he had a crush on me and was just trying to get my attention, and that moment I moved on in my head. I think I remember being mad like he wasn't punished.
Nothing happened. Did I get it? Mistakes happened. You're in fourth grade, you're not fully developed, like I'm not mad at this boy for what he did. Those things happen right, but one. It could have been worse. Do you know what I mean? I could have been hit somewhere more vulnerable that like, caused damage. But also in that moment I was taught that basically to excuse the bad behavior of men if they had a good reason. So this little boy, he only did it because he liked me, so it made it okay. And that's just astounding lesson to get taught as a fourth grader.
0:12:06 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, and the impact that it made on you over the course of your life to then accept that behavior in other situations in which they were more serious and they had higher implications. These stories of when we're young are so interesting because you look back and they're reflective and they played out the way that they did. But oh, we were kids, oh, it's not that big of a deal. But the impact that those experiences have on us over the course of our lives is unimaginable and sometimes we can't even decipher how it is that they've shaped our personalities and defined who we are and how we show up in the world. But firstly is starting with emotion. You showed up with emotion in crying, in experiencing, in feeling pain and hurt from something physical, a physical attack on your body, and that was already being told not to experience that. And we're taught that from a young age, especially as women. We are likely more emotive as human beings. Physiologically, hormonally, neurologically, we have very different capacities than men and so, yes, we likely do experience emotion on a totally different level. But we've been taught for so long not to show up with that emotion, not to lead with that emotion, not to bring that emotion into the workplace, when really it's one of our strongest skills, when really it's one of the things that make us the type of person that we are. And so being told, yes, if you have not heard the origination of hysteria and in that in women definitely Google it, look it up, because it changes the way in which we think about responding to women and it's so easy to discount women oh, is she on her period? Oh, you're just crazy, oh, you're being over the top, you're being dramatic, and obviously there are instances in which that may be the case objectively, but ultimately, whatever a person is feeling in the instance that they're feeling, it is validated and it should be okay, especially as a young person, to sit in the anger, to sit in the pain, to sit in the hurt, to sit in the sadness, whatever that looks like, is really, really important. And the more that we suppress that as we become adults, the harder it is for us to evolve and to grow and to change, because we've been suppressing that emotion. So acknowledging that emotion is so much an interesting part of this experience. When you're discovering what it means for yourself to be treated differently, you have to figure out and uncover how have I been treated differently and how can I start to express and experience that and act differently, but then making the excuses for bad behavior?
How men are essentially taught from a very young age how to show up in the world and they get away with so much more. Or it's okay if I like her or it's okay if I can excuse the behavior. For this reason, and I know that I remember when I look back on this, I remember as a young person being taught that men don't develop as quickly as women, or that women are typically further along intellectually or with smarts and things like that. Maybe men are more advanced physically, whatever the comparison was. But as I was growing up, instead of saying that men need to step up and need to match women with where we are, that we need to then tone ourselves down to match where they are. If we do have that difference in evolution intellectually, it's again women needing to pull themselves back, needing to reel themselves in and meaning to meet men where they are, as opposed to the opposite, men meeting us where we are.
0:16:02 - Joanna Newton
And what's so interesting is people will talk about that phrase boys will be boys, right. When someone does something it's like oh, boys will be boys, it's okay, whatever. And as you were talking, I was thinking about that phrase and I was thinking well, is there an opposite for women? Is there a phrase, is there a thing that's the opposite of women and I kind of thought of it for a second is, if you're really emotional and maybe a little bit more upset about something, someone might ask you like oh, are you on your period, right? Like that's something that has happened to me. I'm sure it's happened to you, it's probably happened to every woman listening to this podcast.
When that gets said to a woman, it's somehow supposed to mean that what she is emotional about or experienced is no longer valid. It's actually the opposite. In a, boys will be boys, boys will be boys. Says, oh, he did that thing, it wasn't nice, but whatever, boys will be boys. Just move on. Your emotional, you're upset, something's going on with you. Oh, are you on your period? Yes? Then therefore, since you're on your period, whatever it is you're upset about is no longer valid when, in fact, like one, there are actual hormonal changes happening in our bodies throughout a month, throughout our cycles. That affects how we act, right? Maybe my emotions are a little bit heightened, but it doesn't make the grievance, my feelings, what is happening, any less valid.
0:17:31 - Michelle Pualani
Absolutely, and I feel you on this one and I have been with my husband I mean, we've been partners for 10 years and I love him and he is so incredibly supportive and so wonderful, and so I'm not harping on him here. But there are times in which sometimes we will argue and go back and forth and this is coming from a totally different thing, from his background and trauma and everything else, the way that he says this, and so we've had to talk this out. Trust me, it's a long time of having to navigate this. So it's not superficial, it's not just face value. We have dug into kind of the background behind this.
But one of the things that he has said in the past that has made me especially angry and just taken me to that next level is that, well, I didn't mean to make you feel that way, so you shouldn't feel that way. I get where he's coming from, because he didn't mean to hurt me. He doesn't want to hurt me, right? He cares about me, he is compassionate, he wants his language and his actions to support me and to be positive and to be received well and if there's a miscommunication or whatever it is that came up, if I'm feeling angry. If I'm feeling upset, if I'm feeling frustrated, I can feel whatever. That feeling is independent of whether I'm extra hormonal or whatever happened, or whether it was a miscommunication or whether I didn't understand what he was talking about.
It doesn't matter why again, hormonally, it doesn't matter why I'm feeling this way. What matters is that I am feeling this way and that those feelings are valid, independent of the external circumstances. So, just like your experience, maybe the rock didn't hurt that bad. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't matter the situation, but if you show up crying, it should still be met with empathy and be met with, yeah, you have the right to sit in your feelings and to experience that.
Whether we're hormonal or not, or crazy or not, it really essentially doesn't matter. But I am vindicated in the feelings that I have and I think for so long again, I suppressed that and for so long I felt like, oh well, I need to reel myself in because I can't be seen as someone who's overly emotional, or I need to reel myself in because I don't wanna be that person who's like oh yeah, Michelle's on her period again, or hormonal, but I was again suppressing emotions for so long, which really caused so many problems in my life. A lot of my anxiety attacks. A lot of the reason why I went through therapy, a lot of the reasons why I am the way that I am now has been having to evolve out of that place of stuck emotions and not acknowledging my emotions because I was trying to make it better for someone else, because I was hiding myself and my expression in order to make it easier on other people.
So, we do that and we expect that of women is to make it easier for other people and let men get away with oh, that's just who they are, that's just what they are, that's just how they are and it's okay. It's like, why can't we look at women and say, oh yeah, women are just emotional, that's okay. It's okay for them to be emotional, it's okay for them to be as they are and sit in that and accept that just as much as we accept men for being rowdy and boisterous.
0:20:44 - Joanna Newton
And then, especially, when our emotions aren't abusing someone, right. So, like our emotions are emotions, in that moment when I'm crying, I wasn't lashing out at anybody, I wasn't physically assaulting anybody, I wasn't calling anybody names, I was expressing that I was hurt, right? So can someone be boisterous and loud or any of those things? Yes, can someone do that at someone? That person tells them to stop and they keep going? No, and that's a big, big difference, right, and I think that's something that you've expressed, you've experienced.
I've experienced and when I stitched the video about the reviews and shared my getting hit in the back with a rock story, it turns out that there are a ton of women with very similar stories, both at young ages, older ages, of being hurt in one way or another and then either being told that it's no big deal or actually getting blame, so that I would read some of these other stories and see, kind of, how that relates to this. Someone shared that my friends visiting cousin hit me in the head with a roller skate and knocked me out. I woke up with him on top of me and the parents blamed me. This person experienced being completely knocked out and being told it's her fault and that you know happened to a real live person. Another person said that when she was six she was like a boy, cracked her head open with a pipe, hit her in the head with a pipe and it knocked out her front tooth and she was told oh, that's not a big deal, it was an accident.
And there are stories and stories of people experiencing this that are just here, and even some workplace stories people were sharing. Like a bunch of people talked about how there's one person that's a man that works on their team and he's a bully and mean and everyone, man and women, are walking on eggshells around this one team member who's completely toxic and they're all just expected to fold to him because that's just how he is right. So you hear these stories over and over and over again of this behavior abusive, toxic, harmful behavior. You know that starts with accidental rock throwing and then turns into this is who I am. I can hurt whoever I want and it doesn't matter. Everyone else has to deal with it.
0:23:27 - Michelle Pualani
I acknowledge and recognize there are always gonna be differences between men and women. There are again, physiologically, neurologically, just with the genders that we have evolved into and of course, this is growing into the non-binary and other identities, but still, if we think feminine and masculine, the differences between them will always be there and they will always be distinct, at least in my perspective. And so with that, yes, there are going to be things in which divide us. So it's not to say that we are speaking to this in terms of like. They should be the same. You know, women and men should have the same treatment. There should be complete equality in every situation. Really, there isn't. That's the difference between equality and equity. Equality is looking at it and saying you are two completely, totally different people, you've had totally different backgrounds, you've had totally different experiences, but we're gonna give you the same treatment. Equity is looking at two different people, saying you have totally different propensities, you have different experiences, you have different backgrounds, and we're going to give you the relevant opportunities to meet you where you are in order to gain equality, in order to gain an even standard right. So, when it comes to this experience, I know that men have a tendency towards violence. Does that make it okay? Absolutely not. But we're hearing, in these stories in particular and what we're talking about today, there is a bit of physical aggression, there is a bit of violence involved and for women, yes, maybe women are maybe a little bit more emotional, maybe we do get into that more emotive quality or way of being, but, like you said, it's not affecting other people negatively. Now, of course, if we're getting into manipulation and coercion and like other things, not talking about that today but really essentially is that we have the ability and right to look at how it is that we are speaking, to indoctrinating, raising, teaching, educating men and women, and it's okay to again treat these things differently or treat these people differently in these different situations, but knowing what's okay and what's not okay.
And I think that what Joanne is talking about really is the fact that we have for so long made it okay for men to act poorly against women specifically and just in general. Right, I mean, you know men can be dicks to other men. My husband deals with that all the time and he struggles sometimes with that really like egocentric masculine mentality. That's like you know. I'm gonna do it this way just because this is the way that I've always done it and I'm allowed to do it this way or whatever that is. So, in any case, I think that the experiences that you shared from those women, having had some physical attack or some physical violence against them, and instead of letting them express themselves, instead of saying that's not okay and speaking to the relevant party and hopefully educating and teaching them through that process because what it really does is it okays boys from a young age becoming men that they can continue that same violence and aggression Really is like you're teaching them to perpetuate something that is not okay.
0:26:54 - Joanna Newton
It's really fascinating to watch and I have a six-year-old and I can see that starting in some ways between the different genders of children as they're playing in the playground and doing things. And I think what happens when we sort of systematically excuse the bad behavior of little boys who become teenagers, who become men, hurts men and it hurts women. It hurts women for, I think, a lot of the reasons we just talked about, but it also hurts men because, like you said, they're used to their behavior being excused. So there are obvious implications in the workplace. What they talked about with reviews a lot of times pay raises are directly tied to what sorts of scores you get in that review process. So if women are judged more harshly, they're going to get fewer raises or fewer promotions. It's going to affect likely women are doing twice as much work for the same pay as a man because people are expecting more of them. They don't get the same sort of benefit of doubt. Excuse. In that area there is a pay gap between men and women. These are real things that are faced in the workplace. But I think what also happens is there are real implications for our life.
So, as these women were leaving and talking comments. There were a lot of comments about abuse against them when they're a child getting hit with a roller skate, being pushed at the playground Some of these not so great actions but more innocent actions. I think it's much easier for women to talk about those stories than it is like our adult stories of abuse, whether that's being abused by your boss and called out for things called names and meetings in front of people, whether it's a verbal or emotional abuse from a spouse, a parent, something like that as an adult, or even to the level of sexual assault. So one of the things that came up in the comments is people started telling some of their experiences with sexual assault and rape. So when we excuse maybe some of these more innocent infractions, it kind of sets us up to be a society that allows even more serious violence against women.
0:29:19 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, it's a domino effect and we're seeing that more and more. If we don't start to think differently about how we're raising, how we're educating, how we're considering young people and the language that we use with them. There are so many studies done around how you speak to young girls and young boys and then how they evolve, how they show up in the classroom, how they show up with each other. We have natural propensities, right, there is a certain level of that female, male but the way in which we cultivate some things that are coming to mind, as a teacher is even told that a particular student is an A student. They work really hard, they're really successful, they're going to do great, and then this student is a troublemaker, they're challenging, they are difficult, they're going to not do very well, that teacher will treat those students differently. We have to think more generally about how we're approaching people and what we're essentially training them to do, and it is that domino effect of leading into sexual assault, leading into issues, harassment and other problems that we're seeing crop up daily in the news, daily, and it spans every single industry, and you were talking about these real issues that we see in our success and in the workplace the pay gap. One of the things that I'm learning a lot about right now as I'm launching this new product line in business is we're in researching funding, right. So you're looking at venture capital, you're looking at even loans, you're looking at the different angel investing and the different sources of funding and women known businesses and women startups get such a small percentage. Like getting into women of color as well, it's like literally than less than 1% of funding goes to women owned and funded and started businesses. That's not because of women. It's because we have a systemic issue, right, and there's way more to that.
So, getting into what you're talking about, Joanna, with sexual assault as we get older, I'll share a little bit about my experience with this topic and my experience in college with different organizations who supported this type of resource, education and kind of sharing about this. But I know that, on average, there are 321,500 victims age 12 or older of rape and sexual assault every single year in the US and that nine out of every 10 victims of rape are female. But unfortunately, we have a lot of what's called victim blaming in sexual assault and rape. So what we do is we put the onus and the responsibility on women to say you shouldn't have been wearing that skirt, you shouldn't have gone out drinking, you shouldn't have been in that place at that time. You basically should have done anything different to ensure that you weren't violently attacked or sexually assaulted in some way. And this reflects the exact same way in which we are treating the Joanna story. So if Joanna, being assaulted physically, is being told one, stop crying, it's not that big of a deal. And two, oh, it's okay, because he liked you, excusing the behavior of the man who threw the stone or the boy who threw the stone, what do you think is going to happen when they get into teenage years, to college years and later even into adulthood? They are going to then believe that it's okay. Any transgression I take against women is fine and we're validating that.
So my experience with this started in college. Specifically, I worked with Safer and the Gender Equity Center at Cal Poly State University here in St Louis, missbow, california. Safer was our sexual assault resource program. Gender Equity Center was similar, connected, but more so focused on the differences between men and women, masculine and feminine, and I actually worked with someone also who you know. We focus on the women's side of things, but there's also men in masculinity.
There's a deeper discussion that we don't have the time to get into today about how men are being validated in showing up in that masculine energy and how they struggle with push and pull of. Well, I've been taught that I can't show emotion. Well, I've been taught that I have to show up in this really strong way and that I'm emasculated if fill in the blank. You know, in our partnerships and our relationships, if a woman is smarter than me, better than me, et cetera, and so I know that they struggle with that as well. So we're not negating that either.
But really, from this learning experience and where I was in college and going through this, is that we put too much of the responsibility in the wrong places when we're navigating this discussion. The responsibility is not on women. If they have experienced sexual assault, it's nothing that they did to set themselves up for that. Trust me, it's not something that you would ever choose to experience it and say, though this is something, that I'm going to wear a short skirt or I'm going to go drinking just to even that story has never made sense to me, but for some reason in our society it's accepted, and so the victim blaming it needs to stop.
0:34:38 - Joanna Newton
It's so true and that mentality leads into court cases and convictions when it comes to sexual assault and rape. So a woman, if she actually goes to court for her male perpetrator, she gets on the stand and gets asked what she was wearing, if she was drinking and all of those things and depending on those answers, that affects that man's sentence when he is the perpetrator. Even if he admits to what he does, right, he's going to see maybe low or no sentence. And that is really disturbing that it gets all the way to that level. Clear cut cases of sexual assault and rape don't get convicted in the way that they should. And when we create a society where men are systematically taught that they don't have to think about the feelings of others, they do not have to think about the repercussions of their actions, it doesn't really create a safe society for everybody. And what's funny is when I was putting together this episode outline this morning I saw on the news a story like two day that's happening, that's so related to this topic. I don't have all the details and I'm probably going to pronounce everybody's names wrong because I'm not a soccer fan, I don't really follow sports, but there's the head of the Spanish Soccer Federation. His last name is Ruby Alice, won a game. Maybe it was a big game, maybe it's the World Cup, maybe it was at the World Cup, I don't know. But they won a game and he kissed one of the players on the lips On television, right in front of everybody kissed a player on the lips. The player stated that it was not consensual. She did not want that happening. He seems to think it was consensual. Now, right now, the team is doing things about it, Like he's suspended. I think there's an investigation, things are happening, which is fantastic. When something like this happens, that's what should happen. There should be some sort of investigation. There should be something happening.
But what's fascinating is people are saying that they're overreacting. People are saying, oh well, the kiss wasn't that long. People are saying, oh well, he's attractive, so he's attractive and fit, so she should just get over it, right. But this is a workplace problem. This is a superior kissing an employee, even if that's not the direct structure. It's a superior in the organization making a sexual advance to someone underneath him and that organization. This is sexual assault. This is sexual harassment and the fact that people are upset that there are repercussions for him and saying that it's not that big of a deal is Just so indicative of what women base every single day Just going about their life and there are so many layers to this story and I haven't even heard about it yet.
0:37:34 - Michelle Pualani
So there's a lot going on with this, but I think bringing it back to how it affects us on a daily basis and how it shows up in the workplace, in our businesses, in our lives, is One. The player's ability to step up and confidently say that this was not something that I wanted, this is not something that I asked for and it was not consensual is really important because we're talking about that ownership. We're talking about that responsibility that we each individually can take to speak up and have our voice be heard. It's likely that, as a woman, as a female, is that we have been Suppressed in some way, oppressed in some way to not have that voice be heard and be told that what you feel, what you think doesn't matter, like it's not important, it's not relevant. So I think that's really critical and bringing this back to this story and then, of course, what we're looking at with the backlash. You may like this coach. This person may be a well-known figure. It's actually bringing up.
I did see this on social media the other day it's a lot older, but Cameron Diaz and Chris Isaac when they were at an awards ceremony. Cameron Diaz very, very much did not want it, but they were introducing an award for the best kiss like the best screen kiss and Chris Isaac forced her into a kiss. And then, very interestingly, jim Carrey took the stage because he won the award and he kissed Chris Isaac, forcing him into it, kind of putting him in that situation. And then there was some follow-up stuff of what happened. Later I will talk about all the celebrity aspect of it, but it's interesting to see the reaction from the outside world, to think about how things are going to be perceived, and that's the other piece that I just have to say.
When it comes to women Standing up in their own lives and how this shows up in the online space, in social media, in our videos, in our Podcasts, in our content, in our products, in our programs, I know that we have this concern of how we're going to be perceived. Is it cancelable? Did we say the right thing, like, are people gonna backlash on social media? There's always a fine line, and it's not to say that Joanne and I have the answer for that, necessarily, but I will say that if you are really Feeling strongly about something, if there is a conviction there. If you do have something within you that you feel like you need to voice, you need to speak up about, or that you want to Share a topic in your content, that means a lot to you.
I think that not worrying about that the implications and how it's going to be received is sometimes a part of the process. It's a part of growing, it's a part of building, it's a part of stating and creating a personal brand and making your mark in the industry Without worrying about the negative repercussions and backlash that can sign up kind of come with that. So I know that kind of got off topic, but bringing it back, I think that it's a larger issue that we're dealing with and just seeing how it comes up in your life and then being able to respond accordingly. So what are you speaking up about, how are you showing up and how are you either feeding into these narratives or trying to kind of shift and change these narratives altogether?
0:40:38 - Joanna Newton
And it has me thinking about a couple of different stories and instances where I've seen women stand up for themselves and this might seem like a silly one, but there's this famous interview with Taylor Swift and it was when she was like earlier in her career. She was younger and she was like dating a lot and writing a lot of songs about all of her bad boyfriends. And someone in an interview and it was a woman interviewing her, I don't remember who interviewed her and said well, boys aren't gonna want to date you because if you break up, you're going to write bad songs about them. And she responded so smartly saying well, if a boy doesn't want me to write a bad song about him, then he shouldn't do bad things. Right, and this is just a classic example of that interviewer actually not caring about the way that Taylor Swift has been hurt or cheated on or treated badly or abused. But actually, oh, it's a her problem because since she tells these stories, since she exposes their bad behavior, this is a problem for her, instead of actually saying well, why are people treating her badly?
And what's funny is like people like to speculate about what song Different men are about. There are some positive songs about exes of hers and those men are Loved by Swifties. I think about, like, if you look up, like Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift, he was a great boyfriend and she has songs about reflecting on. You know why she didn't stay with him or whatever that is. She didn't say anything mean about him, right? So it's not her. That's the problem. She's just exposing the way she's treated badly and standing up for herself for doing that.
0:42:21 - Michelle Pualani
I love Taylor Swift and everything that she stands for, and it makes me think about how she I saw an interview, a separate interview, something about her being slut shamed in her 20s, which, to me, is again the situation in which we have the comparison between men and women and what men are fully able to get away with. It's. Men are always congratulated for dating multiple people, for seeing a lot of different people, whereas women are slut shamed or called bad names for what it is that they've done, even if it's similar or the same, probably way less worse than men. And also, you know, thinking about a similar instance is.
I know that, when it comes to the celebrity space, what women and men are asked about on the red carpet I've seen so much content around that when women are always asked a what are you wearing? What's that dress like? Who is that? And then, or how are you balancing Work and life and caring for children and the home? And men are asked these much more weighted Questions about the character and the role and how they show, showed up in the film and like things that I'm not gonna say matter, but things that have more depth to them. I think women are treated at that superficial level in so many ways. So I know you have a really great story about May as well, with some of these things that we're seeing differences between how men and women are treated.
0:43:41 - Joanna Newton
So my daughter is fearless. She always stands up for herself, she will not let anybody treat her poorly and I like to think that maybe it's it's my upbringing but me bringing her up like I'm such a great parent. But I think it's just her. She is amazing and I have a really proud moment with her. Actually wasn't there?
My husband was there and told me this story, but there were a couple of boys that were just picking her on her in the playground and they weren't even doing anything that bad, but like they were kind of just picking on her Dokingly and she asked them to stop multiple times and as a parent, my husband was watching it. And you want to let kids Figure it out. And no one was really getting hurt. She was. He was kind of stepping back, trying to let them figure it out and they just kind of kept pestering her and pestering her and pestering her and while she was done so she looked at one of the boys in the eye and just Stomped him in the foot, like she had verbally asked them to stop messing with her Multiple times and they would not stop, so she would stomp on his foot. No, there's probably better ways to deal with that. She is.
She was five at the time. Now she's six, who's five? At the time she stomped in their foot with a little boy. Oh, you'd think would just stop. But instead he looked at my husband and pointed at May to be like look what she did to me and tell on her for standing up for herself. Now my husband just was like, shrugged his shoulders and was like I didn't see anything, because they need to deal with this right.
But there's that moment where she said no, he kept doing it. She said no, he kept doing it. She said no, she set a boundary and then wanted her to get in trouble for setting that boundary. And the truth is I'm totally fine that she's. You know, maybe, like maybe some parents would feel differently about that, but she needed to stand up for herself in a way that she would get listened to because she used her words enough times and I'm proud of her for doing that. And I hope that taught that boy a lesson that he, you know, can't get away with treating someone badly. But it's amazing to me to watch five six-year-old boys already displaying some of this behavior.
0:46:00 - Michelle Pualani
And unfortunately it's learned behavior in more ways than we can count at this point. I think that there's so much that we set children up for a lack of success when it comes to the toys that we give them, the clothes that we give them. I mean, there's so much on social media now that I feel like we're exposed to, which is really cool to see the type of language that we feed to young women and young girls, and I do think that that is changing. But with that particular instance, it feels like May took it to the level that she felt only he would understand, which, unfortunately, is some kind of violence, right, Like stomping on his foot was her aggressive, assertive way of attacking him to say stop, you have to at some point fight back. And then he wanted to then just tell on her. So instead of leaving her alone, instead of walking away rightfully he didn't retaliate physically, but I think that there's so much to be said about the fact that they think that it's okay, Like and again, little boys think that it's okay, and I know that there are differences Like I have two nieces and one nephew, a niece and a nephew, sister, brother, Like you can see the differences and the distinctions between them and he does wanna throw things and he is a little bit more physical and he is a little bit more aggressive and maybe a little bit more violent. But there are things that we can do to curb that and there are things that we can do to educate about kindness and compassion and the way that we physically touch people and the way that we engage with people and the way that we communicate with people. It to hopefully not have that be an experience that happens.
So this has been a great discussion of just some of the things that we're seeing in the world and how they show up in our lives. And again we're talking about young women and girls. But again we were all young women and girls and this is we've just evolved, we've grown, we've gotten older, but we still carry around some of that wait, some of that baggage and how it's showing up in our daily life. And what comes to mind for me actually with this is working with folks who struggle with taking a certain action or making a change or seeing a shift in their business or their work and not realizing that it's likely tied to an insecurity and doubt or a fear that comes from an experience like this. So it's not to say that we need to dig into the therapy of what that looks like and get into the childhood trauma.
That's not something that I'm at all versed on but if we're able to identify, oh, this is the fear, this is the insecurity, this is the doubt, this is the limiting belief that I have, independent of why I have it, but this is what's keeping me from taking the action, from making the change, from doing the thing. Then that's what we wanna try to target, and it's so important, and especially as women, to identify that we have been held back in certain ways and so identifying all the ways in which we have been taught or educated or raised to be the good girl, to show up in the right way, to be quiet, to listen, to just meet other people's demands. So much of that feeds into how we're prioritizing ourselves in our lives or how it shows up in our businesses and in our work. I think it's all relevant to really understanding who we are at a deeper level and then being able to have that effect the way in which we show up, the actions that we take, our daily choices.
0:49:24 - Joanna Newton
And a couple final thoughts for me as we wrap up our discussion today. I think you could feel right now like what the heck do we do about this? And I definitely don't have the answers right now. This is something I'm actively wrestling with and working through as a business owner, as a member of society, as a woman, as a mom, as a wife, all of those things.
But a couple of sort of immediate takeaways for me is to just stop excusing the bad behavior of men in my life, just personally, not saying, well, it's just because of this or just because of that not that you can have empathy or understanding or work through issues, but just to stop flippantly excusing their behavior. Also be supportive of other women dealing with abuse and bad behavior from men. If someone's sharing a story, talking about something, not excusing their husband or coworker or partner's bad behavior, like just supporting them in that. And then also as business owners, growing teams to just make sure we're creating cultures in our workplaces, or if you are in a workplace, that you're creating a culture that is really trying to treat people equally or equitably, regardless of their gender.
0:50:42 - Michelle Pualani
Yeah, thank you for sharing that, Joanna. So, as you're listening, be sure to check out Joanna's video on TikTok. We'll link it in the show notes below, where you can see some of this discussion happening real time, because people are responding to this. I mean, it's definitely a hot button topic. As we know. It spans many industries. It spans especially social media, with the Me Too movement and everything that we're seeing that hopefully will change and disrupt what it is that we're talking about today.
We are identifying that it's a thing. It's been a thing for a long time, Joanna and I reflecting on it. Before this episode, it wasn't a thing as necessarily as large as it was. Social media obviously helps leveraging that, but when we were in junior high, when we were in high school, this wasn't something that was talked about as regularly and it wasn't something that we could connect with other people about. And so now I think that we have the means, through the internet and through social media, in order to talk about these important topics and hopefully change the narrative on what it means and what it looks like to be a woman, to be a man, and how we show up in the world and how we treat each other, because that's at the core of what we're talking about how do we treat each other, how do we treat ourselves, how do we put ourselves first, how do we take care of ourselves in relationship to other people, and what that looks like.
So I think my biggest takeaway from today is really identifying those ways in which you show up in the world, the ways in which you have a bias, the ways in which you have accepted what's been taught to you, what's been told to you, your experiences, and let that determine who you are today. And it's not a bad thing. It's not getting rid of it, it's not trying to shame yourself for it or guilt yourself for it. It's about saying I am conscious and aware of how I've gotten to this point. Do I like it? Am I okay with it? Is this what I want and is this who I want to be in the world? And if not, identifying the ways in which you are ready to change? Those things, I think, are so, so important.
0:52:45 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, thank you, Michelle, and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in as we discuss this difficult topic. Hit subscribe to follow along for more content like this, and please leave us a review if you enjoyed today's episode and share it with a friend. What is one thing you can do today to prioritize you first in business and life?
