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Answer by Sabrina Ali, marketing, former investment banking analyst:
It depends on whether your workplace is generally misogynistic or not.
If your workplace is generally misogynistic and this co-worker is one of many like-minded people, the best options are below, in increasing order of escalation:
Try to “thread the needle.” You definitely don’t want the misogyny to go unanswered, but God forbid you’re perceived as “uppity,” “sensitive,” or “no fun.” So you should find a way to calmly and intelligently respond to offensive comments that won’t immediately spark eye-rolling and backlash against you (tricky balance, I know). The best approach is to engage misogynistic comments openly and intellectually. For example, if someone makes a comment about women being incompetent or slutty or whatever the theme of the day is, that’s not just offensive—that’s actually just a bad argument that you can easily defeat on the merits with a fairly light touch. The less “defensive” and openly “offended” you seem, the harder it will be for the misogynist to avoid engaging. Just treat it like a normal conversation (even though it’s not), and you should be able to crush them at his own game, because what he’s saying is factually incorrect. The benefit of this approach is that you might actually change the tone of the workplace without hurting your own standing there.
Find an ally in a position of power. This is hard and takes effort, but if possible, you should identify someone relatively senior who has a lot of social influence in the organization and make yourself close to indispensable to that person. Once this person is a true ally to you, your own social influence should increase as well, which should deter rude comments against you and help you more effectively deal with rude comments that do occur.
Finally, go to HR. Theoretically, this would be your first line of defense, not your last, but if your overall workplace is misogynistic and you’re in the minority, you may want to try the options above before escalating to this point. If you go to HR, you should be ready to provide some specifics, examples, etc.
If your workplace is generally not misogynistic and this co-worker is an anomaly, if the misogynist is in the minority, you definitely have more options, as there’s less risk that you’ll damage your own standing in the organization by doing something about the problem. The main options are below:
Subtly gauge support among like-minded co-workers and socially ostracize the person until their behavior changes. This can be very effective, as the co-worker might be used to a different work environment that is more accepting of misogynistic behavior. If the co-worker is truly in the minority with his attitude, social conditioning may be able to fix this.
Directly confront the person in a factual and specific manner. There’s reputational risk here because even nonmisogynists can negatively judge confrontational people, and it really depends on the person’s level, but if you have a high EQ and feel you can pull this off, you can try this. Or you can try “thread the needle” from the section above.
Finally, again, go to HR (see above).
No matter what, you should engage with the situation as much as you feel comfortable—no more and no less. If you’re the type of person who can’t bear to stay silent in this type of situation, don’t stay silent, or it’ll eat you up. If you’re the type of person who hates confrontation, don’t adopt a confrontational approach. Do whatever feels comfortable and ethical to you, or else you might grow to hate your work environment and your own involvement in workplace culture.
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