What to Do If You're Bropropriated at Work

Jessy [not her real name] had had enough. She'd spent weeks overhauling a failed project at a male-dominated start-up where she works, only for her manager to claim her ideas as his own and explain them back to her.

She logged on to the woman-focused /TwoXChromosomes subreddit to vent and find some support from other women, she told Newsweek, asking not to be named in this piece.

"I am absolutely fed up with dealing with male colleagues who regurgitate my own original ideas back to me as if they suddenly are enlightening me on something amazing and innovative they contrived themselves," she wrote on Reddit.

"There's only so many times that I can repeatedly say, 'Yes, I came up with that idea,' or 'Yes, I was the one first who mentioned that we should do that X weeks before,' or 'Yes, that's the example I brought up in our last meeting.'

"It's enraging. But, at the same time I have to hold back my rage because I don't want to seem 'EmOtIoNaL.'

"How hard is it to give credit to someone and recognize and accept that, yes, other people can bring additional value to the table. That's the point of a team. Ugh."

She told Newsweek "this is not the first time whatsoever" this has happened to her in a job, and noted women managers have not treated her this way, although she admitted her experiences could be anecdotal.

But Jessy's message hit a nerve on Reddit, and is symptomatic of wider, well-documented problems with sexism in the workplace. One 2017 Pew Research Center survey, for instance, found that 42 percent of women in the United States said they had faced discrimination on the job because of their gender. And while 6 percent of men felt as though they were treated as if they were not competent because of their gender at work, the figure spiked to 23 percent for women. A further five percent of men experienced small slights because of their gender compared with 16 percent of women.

Such experiences can not only be upsetting—leaving women feeling undermined and undervalued—but can also affect employers by making workers less motivated, experts told Newsweek.

Jessy's post was upvoted over 5,000 times on Reddit and sparked more than 500 comments, with users sharing similarly infuriating experiences and offering comebacks.

She quickly learned she'd been a victim of a phenomenon called "bropropriating," a portmanteau of "bro" and "appropriating."

What is bropropriating?

Similar to "hepeating," when a woman suggests an idea and is ignored but the same idea is praised when a man suggests it, bropropriating sees a man taking credit for a woman's idea. Both terms have parallels with the more commonly known portmanteau mansplaining, where a man explains a topic to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has little or no knowledge.

Some may argue that such terms are in fact sexist towards men. However, as writer Erynn Brook explained in The Guardian, words such as mansplaining aren't sexist because "they highlight the power differential" and describe "the act of the person with the most power in the conversation," in this case the man. A similar argument can be made for terms such as bropropriating and hepeating.

What causes bropropriating?

Kristin Anderson, Ph.D, professor of psychology at University of Houston-Downtown is an expert on subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination. She told Newsweek: "Society has told men that what they say and believe matters, that their experiences matter, that things that affect their lives matter. Women don't get this same message from people, pop culture, the media, and politics."

People with higher status and cultural power in mainstream society, such as men but also white people, cisgender people and heterosexuals, are therefore prone to bropropriating "because power makes people relatively self-absorbed and dismissive of the opinions and perspectives of others." People with more power simply don't need to be attentive to those with less power, Anderson argued.

"It's likely in these cases that men really believe they have come up with an idea that, in fact, is not their own," said Anderson, the author of Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged: Entitlement's Response to Social Progress.

This can stem from how women are perceived in traditionally male-dominated environments, including the workplace.

"In many workplaces, women are viewed as either not quite belonging, or belonging in support roles only. So, it just wouldn't occur to some men that a woman would have a brilliant idea that is her own," said Anderson.

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of Talking from 9 to 5, which explores how the ways men and women communicate affects who gets heard in the workplace, noted that such phenomena partly stem from how boys and girls use language when they grow up in same-sex groups.

"Research by anthropologists and sociologists finds that among boys, language is used to maintain and negotiate status in the group. One way a boy gains status is by taking center stage and holding it by talking: giving information, telling stories, boasting. Among girls, it is frowned upon for a girl to seek center stage in these ways."

Susan Madsen, professor of leadership and director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project, told Newsweek that Jessy's experience chimes with research she and her team did on women in Utah.

Of 839 women who shared sexist comments they had been subjected to in the state, four major themes emerged, with one reflecting women being undervalued. Of those, 22 percent were related to the belief that women are less capable, intelligent, and competent than men solely due to their gender.

Madsen told Newsweek: "We focused on Utah, but it is a global issue."

What to do when you're bropropriated

The wave of responses Jessy received showed she isn't alone in her experience, with some users offering advice.

One user suggested she say: "'I came up with this idea / process, so have you got a comment or improvement we need to review, or should we move on to the next point?'"

Another told her to say: "I want to make sure you understand what I'm asking you as you keep repeating the process I've provided. Do you have everything you need to get started?"

While Jessy found some of the advice helpful, she found some of it too passive aggressive for a professional setting. "I did take the advice from others to better document what I stated with timestamps to make my future rebuttals more legitimate," she said. "Although, I find it ridiculous that I have to prepare myself to this extent because my manager cannot exercise basic active listening, empathy, and leadership skills."

While it would of course be better for men and bosses to be aware of bropropriating and find ways to correct their behavior, said Tannen, "unfortunately it is the woman, or the person in a subordinate position, who is more likely to be aware and be motivated to change it."

So be sure to make others aware of your accomplishments before someone else can claim them by alerting bosses and colleagues of you work so they know who is responsible and it's on record, Tannen said.

Tannen added: "After the fact, if a woman (or anyone) finds someone doing this, they should interrupt, tell the person it was their work, and thank him for his admiration and appreciation. Then if the same guy does it again, stop him again and refer to the other time.

"If it happens a third time, make an appointment to talk with him—voice to voice, not email—and remind of these repeated mistakes, and discuss if he has any ideas how you both can prevent it happening again. This gives him some agency and the respect of assuming he doesn't intend to make the same mistake again."

The consequences of bropropriating

Despite the advice, in Jessy's situation, the damage has already been done. She's found her experience makes her less likely to put her all in at work. "It's quite a shame as I always like to give it my best effort at work. Although, if management is clearly not reciprocating by making me feel acknowledged, respected, and appreciated then, sorry, I'm out," she said.

Behavior like bropropriating "can be devastating," said Anderson. "It's profoundly undermining to come up with good ideas that get implemented but the success is attributed to the wrong person. How many times would that happen in a work context before an employee just feels ground down?"

In a situation like Jessy's, said Tannen, "a boss who credits the man with the ideas that came from a woman will miss out on taking advantage of her abilities, and foist on the company someone not as talented as they thought."

The lesson to be learned, according to Anderson, is that men, and other members of dominant groups, should lean out, listen to others, and foster others' success. If they don't, everyone loses out.