What is microfeminism? Popularized on TikTok, microfeminisms are everyday actions women are employing to push back against day-to-day sexism in the workplace, one small act at a time. Watch as Catalyst experts break down this TikTok trend in this episode of Catalyst Spills the Tea, a video YouTube series.
Women across social media are talking about how they engage in small acts of feminism in the workplace. Some do it to correct or call out intentional or unintentional sexist acts or microaggressions. Others do it to spark controversy.
This trend speaks to how there’s a strong desire to create more equitable, inclusive workplace cultures and how women are empowering themselves to drive change through small gestures. Listen as we dig into why this is happening, what the implications are, and why companies should care.
- Sheila Brassel, PhD, Director, Research
- Alix Pollack, VP, Head of Knowledge Transformation & Solution Development
- Host: Josh Smalley Baldasare, Director, Content Creation
About Catalyst Spills the Tea
Catalyst Spills the Tea is a video series where we discuss trending topics in workplace culture; gender equity; and diversity, equity and inclusion. We are all about creating equitable workplaces for everyone, so you won’t find people more obsessed with workplace culture than we are. Yes, we love research, but we also love memes, video shorts, pop culture, and debating hot trends just like the rest of you. We decided to bring our watercooler talk and infuse it with a little bit of our research in this video series. Essentially, we’re bringing the research receipts to #worktok. Buckle up!
Wait, what does “spill the tea” mean?
Spilling the tea is slang used to refer to gossip or news, popular on the Internet and social media.
Get More Insights
Sign up to receive the C-Newsletter with more thought leadership, tools and events.
Transcript
00:00:04:00
Hello and welcome to Catalyst Spills the Tea, where we break down and discuss trending topics in DEI. If you’re new here, Catalyst is a global nonprofit that drives gender equity through workplace inclusion. Today I’m your host, Josh Smalley Baldasare, Director of Content Creation. And I’m spilling the tea on microfeminism, with my fellow Catalyst staffers Sheila Brassel, Director of Research, and Alix Pollack, Head of Knowledge Transformation and Solution Development.
00:00:34:25
So let’s start with the obvious. What is microfeminism? Popularized on TikTok, microfeminisms are everyday actions women are employing to push back against day-to-day sexism in the workplace, one small act at a time. And I’d love to tag you in, Sheila, to kind of talk to us about why this is happening.
00:00:50:66
Thanks, Josh. Well, we know that for decades, if not longer – perhaps as long as women have been in the corporate workforce –
that they have experienced these sorts of everyday slights at work. Little things like having their ideas get taken up by someone else, often by someone in a position of power or by a man and having that idea, having that person take credit for their ideas, or their work, or things like being spoken over, or interrupted during meetings. So, microfeminisms are raising awareness right now of the ways that everyday sexism continues to be a problem at work. But this is certainly tapping into a trend that has been around for quite some time.
00:01:31:08
Yeah. But in those everyday kind of death by a thousand cuts, subtle, not-so-subtle moments, right, women are looking for ways that they can take back some of that control, that they can make positive impacts in their workplaces, even if they’re not necessarily in a position of power. So I think it’s just a really a great example of the ways in which feminism doesn’t need to be getting up on a soapbox or making broad, sweeping changes. It can be in those small everyday actions to push back against the status quo.
00:02:01:62
Yeah, and I feel like that’s why it’s been so popular, right? Is that it’s very accessible. And that folks like, like you know, a lot of folks, people have different roles, different personalities, and they may not feel like they can go out and like march or protest. But these little things, and especially the everyday aspect, make that I feel like very accessible and also very like powerful when all taken together.
00:02:24:00
I think it also helps women not to feel so alone, right? Because they can be in partnership in these kinds of actions. It’s really validating to have other women and hopefully people of all genders around you picking up on those sort of behaviors and responding to them in kind. Right? That it’s kind of in locking arms in solidarity in small ways that can have a big ripple effect.
00:02:46:62
Yeah, Alix. It can help so much in those moments where you’re maybe in fight-or-flight to have an idea of what you might do. But then also showcasing the diversity in these experiences, right? And how the ways that we’re seeing everyday sexism and microfeminism show up are intertwined with racism and microaggressions against women of color, and how this is the way that sexism shows up for women of color. And there’s so much power, I think, in this you know, awareness-giving that social media has provided.
00:03:17:20
Yeah. Yeah. It’s definitely one of my hopes coming out of this trend is that it’s an invitation into partnership for men, and people of other genders as well, that feminism does not belong to women. It’s about equity and you know, the kinds of things that these microfeminist acts are pushing back against are the same kinds of problematic dynamics that people across genders are, you know, suffer from.
00:03:34:08
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s definitely how I receive it as a cisgender man, like I feel like it’s an invitation for allies too. Because all these things allies can also do, like men can also do to support women. And I think, you know, the point that you, you both brought up about, like the noticing and the intersectionality as well, like, the more men notice these things that these women are like bringing awareness to, the more they can also interrupt them, in the name of partnership.
00:04:11:50
I love hearing your perspective on this, as you said, as a cis man, like what the invitation looks like for you. I also think that that’s a place where we have an opportunity, maybe an obligation to call out the potential challenges of this trend, which is that when it’s an invitation, when it is these positive forms of microfeminism, it’s a beautiful, accessible, inclusive thing. But it can also default to a place of shame and blame and sort of a zero sum. If women are going to quote-unquote win, then someone has to be on the losing end of that, right? And it’s kind of rather than calling in, it’s calling out men and saying in particular, like you are bad or wrong for doing or saying the thing you just did. And that’s not an invitation. That’s not how we make progress and it can be really alienating. And I think kind of gives the work we’re trying to do around equity and inclusion and feminism a bit more of an uphill battle to climb than we need. Yeah.
00:05:10:08
I would love for us to talk a little bit about these sort of combative cultures and climates of silence that, you know, breed these types of interactions that are hyper-competitive, right? So if you are working in a hyper-competitive environment, you might get more points if you do interrupt someone. If you do, you know, take credit for someone else’s work, intentionally or unintentionally. So it’s a lot of these sorts of cultural dynamics that we know can be shifted, that set up these experiences of everyday sexism at work.
00:05:41:70
Yeah I think, Sheila, what you’re getting at, too, is the call to action for organizations and leadership in all of this, both to if and when they notice acts of microfeminism happening in their workplaces, to life that up, to validate and celebrate and replicate that, as an opportunity for some self-reflection around why that microfeminist act was necessary in the first place.
00:06:06:70
Yeah, I’m really just coming back to like that idea of like, death by a thousand cuts, psychological safety, like, this is a workplace safety issue. You know, like women don’t feel safe in the workplace. They feel like they have to use these small acts to get to that place of like, feeling like, they’re on an equal playing field. So I think that’s like a big call to, you know, allies, especially, and these workplaces to acknowledge that and to do what they can to put in safeguards.
00:06:33:95
Well, I think we spilled the tea on microfeminism. So, I just want to thank Alix and Sheila for this conversation. It’s been very fruitful. And please join us next time on Catalyst Spills the Tea.
00:06:45:87
Thanks, all.
00:06:46:62
Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Alix.
00:06:47:70
Thank you.