Male Allies

What they can be for us

“What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.”

Gaton Bachelard

I’ve written a fair amount about finding other women to support us and supporting other women. Most days I’m convinced this is the only way to change things, since the legal profession hasn’t meaningfully changed while men have been running things.

But since most of us work in male-dominated workplaces, we can’t rely exclusively on other women to support our careers. We also need male allies. Unsurprisingly, in a study that surveyed 101 female faculty members in male-dominated departments across 64 research universities in the United States and Canada, the researchers found that having men as allies in male-dominated workplaces helps women feel like they belong.

Male allies are not just male friends in your workplace. The Harvard Business Review defines allyship as “the purposeful collaboration of dominant group members (men) with women to actively promote gender equality and equity in their personal lives and in the workplace through supportive and collaborate relationships, acts of sponsorship, and public advocacy in order to drive systematic change.” While that definition is quite a mouthful, the operative words are “actively promote,” “sponsorship,” and “public advocacy.”

Although many men see themselves as male allies, for the most part women do not share that opinion. In the 2022 State of Allyship-In-Action Benchmark Study conducted by the Integrating Women Leaders Foundation, which surveyed 1,150 participants in mid-sized Fortune 500 companies, men thought that men within their organization were “active allies” or “public advocates” for gender equity far more than women did, as shown below:

It’s particularly disheartening to see that men in the C-Suite were far more likely to believe that they were active allies than men who were in lower management. And the disparity between what men believe and what women perceive was far greater at that level too.

What Makes Someone a Male Ally

Given this acknowledged difference in perception, it’s important to understand what a male ally needs to do.

The first thing men need to do—before anything else matters—is to notice gender disparities. While this may seem obvious, the WLF study discussed above universally found that, while women perceived biased behaviors occurring in their organizations, men did not. In fact, as you can see in the table below, the study showed that men pretty much never see biased behaviors occurring in their workplaces.

This isn’t any different in the legal profession. As we’ve discussed previously, the ABA’s Walking Out the Door report similarly found that, while 91% of men believed that their firms were “actively advocates of gender diversity,” only 62% of women shared that view.

Thus, if nothing else, men need to pay better attention to gender disparities in the workplace. If a man is in a meeting, particularly in a “room where it happens,” he should notice how many women are there. Once a meeting starts, he should notice how many men speak, how often they speak, and how many times they interrupt women. (Want something to help you track this? Try using this glorious tool.)

I can’t count the number of meetings where I suggested a solution to a problem that was subsequently adopted and reiterated by a man. When this happened, I didn’t need or want a man to grandstand on my behalf, but it would have been nice to have a man to say: “well I’m glad we all agree with Jennifer’s suggestion.”

season 6 dancing GIF by CBBC

Gif by cbbc on Giphy

The second thing we need in male allies is to listen to women and to believe them when they speak. This rule doesn’t just apply in the context of sexual harassment or assault, where you see the hashtag #believewomen. It applies when women tell you that they are tired of being called “honey” or “baby” or “kiddo.” It applies when women tell you that perpetual bro-speak during meetings makes them feel excluded. It applies every single time a woman talks about gender disparities, even when she’s emotional.

If this rule sounds unrealistic, consider that what makes women feel excluded in the workplace is composed of hundreds of little things that add up over time. What a woman is talking about today might have been the last straw, but it wasn’t the first.

Finally, the most important thing we need male allies to do is to speak up when they see things. To be a male ally, it’s not enough to believe in gender equality; beliefs must be reflected in actions.

While some people may disagree with me on this, to me speaking up doesn’t have to mean staging a protest on behalf of women in the office, particularly if you’re a man who doesn’t have much power in your workplace. So much can be accomplished with humor. If there’s an inappropriate discussion going on, trying saying “Well enough about strip clubs, let’s return to the reason we’re having this call.” Instead of saying “Steve, can you stop calling Jessica ‘kiddo?’”, try saying “Man, Jessica, it must be great to be called kiddo when you have three kids yourself.” Humor isn’t always the solution, but it often works in the moment.

In more serious cases, speaking up can admittedly be more uncomfortable. Compare the discomfort of speaking up with the discomfort experienced by the woman at whom the conduct is directed.

After reading the elements of allyship, you might think that you’ll never have a male ally in your workplace. But here’s where I think the concept of allyship sometimes falls short: it implies someone either is—or isn’t—an ally. People, and especially people in workplaces, are far more complex than that. We can cheer on our male colleagues as they work towards allyship, even if they’re not perfect. We need all the help we can get.

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