When her worker-owned co-op hired on more male employees after the recession, Tina Rodia noticed a huge shift in culture. Why does she now feel the need to apologize for being a strong, serious owner?
In many businesses, women still feel the need to apologize for being strong and authoritative. After 12 years of co-owning a worker-owned, collectively-run business, gender politics still prevail, even in a structure that fosters individual responsibility toward a collective goal. While worker-owned cooperatives defy the traditional top-down management scheme that historically employed men as bosses and higher management, the democratic structure of our ownership model (“one worker, one vote”) is often challenged in the interpersonal worker relationships that are harder to govern.
Cooperatives are a small, but established, slice of the business landscape of the United States and across the globe. Among cooperative businesses, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives are far less common. Many membership cooperatives elect a board of directors that follow a traditional business model with top-down management. Worker-run cooperatives bypass all levels of management, and every worker is an owner.
My particular business is one of the most parodied, as a hippie, touchy-feely alternative business model: the health food co-op. Ours was arguably a very feminist movement from the start: The store was staffed equally by men and women, the progression from volunteer to paid labor cut evenly across gender lines, and each worker represented one equal vote. Our business model has certainly evolved since its roots as a volunteer food-buying club, but has retained its commitment to equality. Today, that has great advantages, but it is not immune to subtle frictions and tension.
The recession hit us hard, but did something surprising. For years, applicants often were single women, college graduates who worked various service or retail jobs, and shared living expenses with partners or roommates. When the recession began, a flood of applicants came in. We were seeing heads of families, older applicants, former PhD candidates, and even a graduate of Harvard business school. While we increased the starting wage as often as we could, it was still in line for starting hourly wages at other retail jobs. But for people out of work, a job with full health benefits was attractive.
Before long, we had more male workers in our ranks than we were used to. And sometimes it was a boys club. I heard stories of early morning or late night shifts staffed only by men who seemed to revel in the all-male shifts—raunchy jokes and inappropriate language abounding.
Perhaps this is true with any business, but I am quick to argue that such a femininely and sensitively structured environment as our cooperative would result in men wanting to vent even more. Ours is a business that values “checking in” about our feelings before meetings, and reading moving or inspirational poems between agenda items. We embrace a culture of nonviolent language and carefully worded topics of discussion. We have a “vibes watcher” keeping the temperature of our collective feelings during meetings. For a cynic such as myself, I am often annoyed, and wish we could just be more objective, decisive, less touchy-feely. I am not a fan of mediation that is based on feelings. I am easily irritated by all this. I am not surprised that the men who own this business feel the same way.
But I am still a female worker in a mostly male environment at times. I recognize when the general atmosphere is not entirely wholesome or appropriate. And yet I have trouble saying “Hey, that’s kind of gross. I don’t want to hear that.” I have thrown drunken, violent shoplifters out of the store, chased thieves down the sidewalk, and dragged mentally ill people out of the store. I am not a meek person. But I am unable to call out a stock room full of men for being inappropriate when I am the only woman around. It is times like that I am glad we have a policy to fall back on, a personnel department to turn to. But why, in such a carefully constructed environment that caters to feminist ideals, am I so reluctant to say anything myself? And if I can’t, how hard is it for others to as well?
Many workers have come and gone over the years. Some don’t pass the six-month period of evaluations to become an owner. Others work a few years then move on to something else. Our two most senior workers are 65 and 70, both women. They have raised children at the co-op, offer the historical perspective newer workers lack, but embrace progress and contribute to the long-term planning and projected success of the business. Their influence and hard work is part of the reason we are successful today.
Yet in our evaluation presentations, some women are apologetic for being strong and/or outspoken. One worker, in a yearly evaluation of a longtime female worker quipped, “You act like you own the place!” He meant it as a good thing, but under the guise of a jibe exists a small kernel of truth: If a woman takes her ownership truly seriously, she has to be apologetic about it.
Tina Rodia is a freelance writer and small business owner in San Francisco. She grew up in Connecticut, and has a B.A. in creative writing and women’s studies.
Photo credit pikappbo1956/Flickr
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