Small Actions to Help Women to Thrive in Higher Education

Practice Micro-Affirmation

We may be more familiar with the concept of “Microaggressions,” which tells us what we should not do to promote equity at work and in classrooms. Rather, Micro-affirmations illuminate what we can do. Micro-affirmations are small acts to express your respect for your students and colleagues on a daily basis. Microaffirmations can be ephemeral but, when used regularly and consistently, can be greatly effective in creating inclusive and caring environments and in supporting others to succeed.¹ Examples of micro-affirmations are:  

• Affirming someone’s place: this can be done by saying hello and asking how they are doing regularly (and asking how their religious/ethnic holidays went if they were celebrating any of those events). Women and women of color in business rarely have chances to interact with senior leaders.² There are many analogous situations in academia, e.g., women of color students in male-dominant disciplines getting less time with faculty and women faculty having less time with their chairs and deans. These inequities along with others, repudiate women’s place in academia. As a person with privilege, your actions of proactively seeking chances to say hello and checking in with colleagues and students with underrepresented or minoritized identities can signal to them and everyone else that they belong and are in the right place. Dr. Daniel Solorzano asserts that this minor gesture to greet women and women of color at work simply conveys the message “I see you.” Affirming actions like this may seem small, but when consistently practiced, they can help offset some of the institutional oppression. 
• Provide regular and quality feedback: As women and women of color get fewer chances to interact with leaders in the workplace, they are also less likely to receive quality feedback and comments.³  Informal and formal feedback are important. If you are in a senior role, try building a systematic structure, such as setting up bi-weekly or monthly meetings for each employee/student. This way, no one is left out or finds it difficult to seek feedback from you. If you are in a junior role, suggest that such a structure would be beneficial for you and your junior peers, which ultimately benefits your unit/team as a whole.  
• Mirror the language that minoritized colleagues and students use to describe their identities: This requires active listening and learning from your minoritized peers and students. Jessica Stillman  addresses that by mirroring their languages at meetings and classes, you can acknowledge their own experiences and positionalities.  
• Affirming emotions: First, men have been socially conditioned to be stoic and not express their emotions. This masculine ideology permeates workplaces to the point that showing emotion can be seen as unprofessional. But, showing emotion is normal and human. Thus, when women, who are less conditioned to hide emotion, express themselves in the workplace, we should welcome it rather than condemn it. Second, it is important to acknowledge various emotional reactions that women and women of color experience that are tied specifically to their underrepresentation and marginalization.^{4, 5} Again, it’s not that women are more emotional, it is that their situation creates more of an emotional burden than for men. The biases, inequities, and oppression at work put more stress on them, which inevitably causes them to undergo stronger negative feelings; it also causes them stronger positive feelings when overcoming such systemic barriers. Thus, it can mean a lot to them if you can celebrate their victories and engage with them about their struggles while recognizing and validating their emotions when they are joyful or frustrated.