Firing of CP Rail conductor over social media posts shows how women in the workplace are expected to conform

We've made great strides on gender equality in certain areas.

Over the past several decades, sexual harassment has gone from "just life," as feminist Catharine MacKinnon once said, to a legal wrong. Young women introduced the term "slut shaming" to popular discourse to try to end stigmatization around women's sexual behaviour. And the #MeToo movement this year shed a necessary spotlight on the ugly tendency for men with too much power to abuse women with not enough.

But the workplace remains an arena where women's appearances and sexuality are still too often policed. And the recent case of CP Rail firing train conductor Stephanie Katelnikoff is a reminder of just how much work is left to be done.

Katelnikoff'sdismissal

Katelnikoff was fired late last year for violating CP Rail's code of ethics and its internet and email policy. While she did make some negative comments about the company in social media posts, CP rail included a number of racy photos Katelnikoff posted of herself on Facebook and Instagram in its evidence package against her, leading Katelnikoff to believe it was both the photos and her comments that led to her dismissal.

In the workplace, women's sexuality often comes up in debates over dress codes. Some employers want women to enhance their looks monetizing women's sexual attractiveness for their benefit while other want women to conceal their bodies based on gendered stereotypes of "respectability" and concerns about corporate image.

There have beena number of cases where human rights tribunals found that sexualized dress required of female restaurant servers were discriminatory.CBCNews hasreported on other occasions where servers were told, for example, to wear a bra under their uniform as part of their job.

• CP Rail fires conductor again, this time after revealing social media pictures and posts

• CP Rail train conductor speaks out on her firing after Banff derailment

Paradoxically, both enhancing and concealing requirements may be at play at the same time, as many women who have been told to be "feminine" but not "too sexy" in the workplace can attest. Regardless of the precise requirement, such tacit terms of employment undermine women's equality by making their employment conditional upon conforming to gendered appearance and sexuality norms.

Katelnikoff's case is somewhat different in that it does not concern her behaviour at work, but her social media use. Certainly she would not win any awards for model employee of the year, having used her social media accounts to criticize her employer and its management, and indeed that is something courts have found to be sufficient grounds for termination in certain contexts.

Nevertheless, it is troubling that the company would purport to base its decision, even in part, on revealing modelling photos she took and posted on her own time and that are unrelated to her employment (except, perhaps, for the few that were taken on railway tracks). It raises the possibility that her employer took the public expression of her sexual attractiveness as transgressing a condition of her employment. (CP Rail posted a statement Wednesday after CBCNews reported the story saying Katelnikoff's termination"was not about her posting of personal photos or information per se that were not related in some way to railway safety and CP.")

Stephanie Katelnikoff says most of her social media is about her personal life

7 years ago

Duration 1:01

The train conductor lost her job with CP Rail because of her social media pictures and posts.

American academic Kenji Yoshino discusses a phenomenon that he calls "covering," which is an implicit requirement by mainstream society that minority groups or those with "disfavoured" characteristics will receive equal treatment only so long as they downplay their difference and not "flaunt."

He calls covering the "the civil rights issue of our time." This is due to the conformity costs and "self-denial" it disproportionately imposes on groups with less power. Implicit in the covering demand is the requirement that individuals acknowledge the superiority of those in power by emulating them or otherwise conforming to their expectations.

Yoshino counts women in the workplace as one of the groups upon whom covering demands are commonly made, particularly in relation to appearance. An objection to "flaunting" he says, is really an objection to these groups expressing "belief in their own equality."

Male sexual dominance

One of the things that the #MeToo movement has successfully highlighted is the idea that male sexual dominance is still as much a part of the work environment as the air we breathe, and it has been similarly invisible. This is true even when expressed in extreme and violent ways.

By contrast, the penalty for women who transgress social norms of female respectability by "flaunting" their sexuality are very severe, within and outside the workplace.

Women's dress and comportment has been used for years to denigrate and discount their experiences of sexual harassment and assault. The harm to women that results from their explicit photos being publicized without their consent and sent to friends, family and employers, is now being translated into laws prohibiting "revenge porn."

What often motivates those who distribute these photos is the anticipation that their victims will suffer humiliation and stigma as women.Its currency is the discriminatory notion of sexual respectability. Women should be attractive, revealing some of their body, but not "too much." They should be appreciated by others, but not be aware of their own attractiveness.

"Respectability" can benefit some women, sometimes but likely only the most privileged along lines of race, class, sexual orientation and other characteristics. What would benefit all women is equality as equally entitled to affirm and express all aspects of their identity, including their sexuality. This would mean we need to stop punishing women like Katelnikoff who "flaunt," including and especially when they do it on their own time.

This column is part ofCBC'sOpinion section.For more information about this section, please read thiseditor'sblogandourFAQ.