How many people does it take for society to be against you?

Let’s say society is divided into two factions. One faction is univocally for equality between men and women in all areas. Another faction thinks that due to various factors, women and men should in some areas have different societal roles.

People treat others according to their values.

Let’s say the ratio is 80:20 in favor of your value system. You are a woman and interact with 100 people per day from all factions.

What would this feel like?

First, in interactions you would regularly interactions get comments that are inappropriate for your value system. Proportionally, you would get “Why are you still working?” and “When are you going to start working again?”. So you will get confronted with the minority values that most of society disagrees with, every day.

In a previous post, I looked at the small number of bad actors it takes to make a community of neutral people a toxic environment.

Most people you are friends with are probably sharing your values, or are neutral. So you will feel the society at large is wrong and against you. Even if you are in the majority.

Major news outlets, because the 80% are boring non-news, will report on the incidents highlighting the 20% faction, skewing perception further.

If the confidence of the 20% in expressing their values changes up and down over the years, it will look like major changes in society.

Academia

Now let’s consider the impact in academia. Much has been said about the leaky pipeline, which has many causes, including poor support and pressure on mothers, harassment, sexual misconduct, and unequal share of care work, among others.

Still, let’s say in your institute, out of 10 women who enter, 8 are for equality and 2 are in favor of traditional gender roles.

Now let’s say one of the 8 writes an email to the department in favor of equality, the other 7 may not feel the need to say anything because of course they agree. But the other 2 may give opposing views. They may also be supported by their equivalent camp of men. And now you have a feeling of being in a minority, and questioning whether you are right, why is everyone against you, can you fit in, etc.

This skewing effect is probably most drastic on social media, where responding takes effort, and that effort is most commonly taken up for a backlash reaction, rarely for a supportive action.

The skew can be addressed by stating your values openly, and by expressing support more often to people when they are so obviously right that it feels like it does not need to be said.