HANNAH HARSHE | COLUMN

I

’m standing in the doorway 
of Shannon’s room. She’s 
sitting on her bed, her laptop 
on her lap with an 
episode of “New Girl” 
paused on the screen. 
We’re yelling at each 
other, over each other, 
really. Our voices are 
growing 
increasingly 
loud and angry, and 
people walking down 
the street outside our 
apartment are probably 
wondering 
whether 
we’re safe.
For the record, yes, 
we’re safe, but I’m pissed 
and so is she. We’re arguing over 
what is probably the most trivial 
thing a person could possibly 
argue over and we know it, but we 
also both know that we’re right, 
so the conversation isn’t going 
to end anytime soon. Shannon 
mentions most girls are pretty 
and very few girls are average-
looking. I counter that according 
to the definition of the word 
“average,” most girls are average-
looking, even if that means that 
average-looking girls are also 
pretty. From there, we begin 
arguing. I pull out my laptop to 
look up the dictionary definition 
of 
“average,” 
we’re 
holding 
whiteboards and plotting what 
we believe are the distributions 
of various levels of attractiveness. 
I thought it’s definitely a bell 
curve, but Shannon’s adamant 
that it’s skewed to the left, and, 
yep, we’re yelling.
After about 15 minutes of 
arguing, I walk out of the room 
and 
say 
she’s 
annoying 
me 
and I don’t want to talk to her 
anymore. She asks if I want to go 
to Starbucks. I say yes, and we 
put on our shoes and go. Neither 
of us ever concedes or apologizes, 
but later that afternoon, Shannon 
says to me, “I’m thankful that 
I have a roommate I can get in 
yelling matches with.”
Unfortunately, not everyone is 
so appreciative of situations in 
which women loudly voice their 
opinions. In her study “Who 
Takes the Floor and Why,” Yale 
researcher Victoria L. Brescoll 
determined that when a male CEO 
speaks more often than his peers, 
professional men and women 
consider him to be 10 percent 
more competent than his peers. 
However, when a female CEO 
speaks more often than her peers, 

she’s perceived to be 14 percent less 
competent than her peers.
Seemingly 
confirming 
this 
viewpoint, in a board 
meeting 
for 
Uber 
last June, Arianna 
Huffington 
spoke 
of 
the 
importance 
of 
increasing 
the 
number 
of 
women 
on the board, saying 
when more women 
join, it shows other 
women 
that 
they 
can feel comfortable 
joining. 
“Actually, 
what 
it 
shows 
is 
that it’s much more 
likely to be more talking,” David 
Bonderman, who was on the board 
at the time, infamously replied. 

He 
resigned 
after 
receiving 
pushback for this comment.
This is a pervasive attitude in 
the workplace: When men talk a 
lot it’s because they’re smart, but 
when women talk a lot it’s simply 
because 
they’re 
opinionated. 
Further, anger is typically seen 
as a positive quality in a man but 
a negative quality in a woman. 
Brescoll elaborates on this in a 
New York Times article, stating, 
“Men are less often punished 
for (showing anger), but they are 
actually seen as more deserving 
of power, status and higher 
salaries. By contrast, women who 
show even mild forms of anger are 
often viewed as emotionally ‘out 
of control’ and are less likely to 
be hired and advanced to higher 
positions within their firms.”
So how do people respond to 
women who have strong opinions 
and anger? They interrupt these 

women. A study found that male 
Supreme Court justices interrupt 
their female colleagues more, 
ignore their ideas and ultimately 
hinder them from moving up in 
the workplace. 
In a few short years, Shannon 
and I will be moving out of our 
apartment 
at 
the 
University 
of Michigan and starting our 
careers. The days of our yelling 
matches will be behind us and 
we’ll no longer stand in her 
bedroom 
growing 
genuinely 
angry, desperate to prove who’s 
right. We’ll still be the same 
people, just as adamant and 
bold and strong in our beliefs 
as we are now, but we’ll hold 
those qualities in our workplaces 
instead. If we were men, this 
would be perceived as a good 
thing; we’d be seen as smart 
and confident. But because we 
happen to be women, we’ll likely 
be punished for those qualities.
So, I guess, this is my formal 
promise: In two years, or five 
years or 10 years or however long 
it takes me to get a real job, I 
will not give up the tenacity that 
keeps me standing in Shannon’s 
bedroom, determined to prove 
that I’m right. Never in a million 
years would I let Shannon talk 
over me or let her imply my 
opinions are wrong. When I’m in 
the workplace, I refuse to give up 
that adamant, determined spirit. 
I hope Shannon doesn’t give up 
hers either.
It’s easier said than done, 
I’m sure. Women face so much 
backlash for being angry and 
opinionated, and retaining those 
qualities 
into 
the 
workplace 
puts your career at risk and is 
not realistic for everyone who 
needs to keep their job. But I 
know who I am: I’m the girl who 
can engage random strangers in 
debates about Michigan football, 
and I’m the girl who always 
finds herself in a yelling match 
with Shannon over something as 
shallow as what constitutes an 
“average-looking girl.” If I were a 
man, this confidence would be a 
career asset. To my fellow college 
women, let’s make a pact: When 
we enter the workplace, let’s 
refuse to let anyone turn our bold 
spirits into liabilities.

5
OPINION

Thursday, May 10, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Furthermore, the nature 
of employment in America 
has 
become 
part-time; 
6 
million Americans have part-
time jobs but want full-time 
employment. 
Twenty-five 
percent of part-time workers 
live in poverty and would 
likely qualify for Medicaid. 
Part-time 
work 
and 
the 
associated job insecurity also 
leads to worse mental health. 
Imagine adding the potential 
of losing Medicaid coverage 
or a family’s coverage to 
the mix. Chronic stress is 
linked 
to 
many 
physical 
health 
problems 
including 
cardiovascular 
disease. 
Conditions 
like 
diabetes 
can also worsen with stress. 
Programs like Medicaid are 
meant to improve health, not 
make people sick.
Even if work requirements 
did have a positive impact 
on 
people, 
how 
many 
people would be affected? 
According 
to 
the 
Kaiser 
Family Foundation, only 7 
percent of Medicaid enrollees 
are not working for a reason 
other than disability, school 
attendance 
or 
caregiving. 
Furthermore, 25 percent of 
workers, such as seasonal 
workers, who would meet 
the 
29 
hours 
per 
week 
requirement on average would 
risk losing their Medicaid 
because they cannot meet the 
requirement 
every 
month. 
In another cruel twist to the 
already toxic bill, there is no 
exemption for caregivers of 
children up to thirteen years 
old despite the efforts of state 
Sen. Rebekah Warren, D-Ann 
Arbor, to amend S.B. 897.
But perhaps the biggest, 
reddest 
flag 
concerning 
S.B. 897 is the clearly racist 
provision that would exempt 
residents in rural, mostly 
white 
counties 
from 
the 

requirements. The provision 
states 
that 
counties 
with 
unemployment greater than 
8.5 percent would be exempt 
from the work requirements. 
Sounds fine and not-racist, 
right? Well, let us conduct 
a comparison. Lake County 
is in western Michigan and 
is 87 percent white. In this 
county, the unemployment 
rate as of March was 9.2 
percent, 
well 
within 
the 
range for exemption. On 
the other hand, in Detroit, 
which is 80 percent Black, 
unemployed people would 
not be graced with the same 
exemption because Wayne 
County writ large has an 
unemployment rate of only 5 
percent. Same goes for other 
majority-minority cities like 
Flint, Saginaw and Benton 
Harbor. While I do not think 
that this provision to S.B. 
897 was meant to be racist, it 
certainly is.
In summary, S.B. 897 will 
lead to poorer health for 
disadvantaged Michiganders 
who rely on Medicaid with 
particularly harsh impacts 
on seasonal workers, parents 
or guardians of children, and 
urban people of color. It is 
racist and classist.
I understand the need to cut 
down on Medicaid spending 
in Michigan but there are 
better alternatives. It is clear 
from the push for Medicaid 
work requirements and the 
earlier fiasco to repeal the 
Affordable 
Care 
Act 
that 
Republicans do not believe 
health care is a basic human 
right. It is up to vigilant 
voters to defend the health of 
our fellow Michiganders. S.B. 
897 must be opposed.

College women, let’s make a pact

Hannah Harshe can be reached at 

hharshe@umich.edu.

Ali Safawi can be reached at 

asafawi@umich.edu.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

Readers are encouraged to submit letters 
to the editor and op-eds. Letters should 
be fewer than 300 words while op-eds 
should be 550 to 850 words. Send the 
writer’s full name and University affiliation to 
emmacha@umich.edu

HANNAH 
HARSHE

Republicans’ Medicaid madness by Ali Safawi continued below:

This is a pervasive 
attitude in the 
workplace: when 
men talk a lot, it’ s
because they’re 
smart, but when 
women talk a 
lot, it’s simply 
because they’re 
opinionated.

