“Hi, I’m Mimi Wallace and my pronouns are she/her/hers.” I do my best to consistently introduce myself this way anytime I meet someone. However, it’s not that easy during virtual calls. Many times, there are no introductions necessary or it’s a call with more of a panel format – with only enough time to throw out a question at the very end.
Still, I thought it was important to include my pronouns beyond just when I could get them into an introduction. So, I listed them in my name on Webex – an easy, inclusive way of sharing them without saying them.
The number one question I received after doing this was, “Why do you do it at all? You obviously look like a woman.” My answer always begins with, “Thanks for asking” – it’s important for me that everyone be seen and heard, and there’s nothing wrong with genuine questions or wanting to learn. Gender and gender expression can be complicated, but the truth is – you don’t need a complete understanding of gender to be respectful of someone’s wishes and to address them the way they want to be addressed.
That’s the long answer. The short answer is because of my children.
As a parent, I have tried to embody and teach the idea that it’s vital to take responsibility of the way you effect the world, not just your school, neighborhood, or town but in how you treat and respect others. So, I mention my pronouns, even though it might seem obvious, because I want people to feel comfortable with me. Whether that is asking questions so I can better help educate, or – more importantly – so my transgender and non-binary community members feel comfortable, safe, and loved.
And I want my children to understand the importance of inclusion.
As my children are a little older now, they see me working remotely and on frequent virtual calls. Recently, my oldest casually asked, “How do you know anyone else’s pronouns?” I had NEVER thought of that. As a cisgender person, it can be easy to forget about the challenges that non-cisgender individuals endure every day. I sat wide-eyed, a bit embarrassed, then said, “Good point, time to take action.”
An hour later, I had added my pronouns across the board: Outlook profile, Outlook email signature, Sharepoint, Social media handles, and Webex tools. I was also very excited to find out that Workday (our new HR tool) has already added pronouns as part of our profiles. THIS is why I love working at Cisco – we are truly empowering an inclusive future for all, in big ways and small ways, and they are all important!
It’s my intent that by listing, sharing and shouting my pronouns, it opens a respectful, safe space for everyone to comfortably share their own pronouns. I hope to help eliminate misgendering, which I can only imagine to be deeply painful and frustrating and be an example of how to be a more inclusive employee and co-worker. I am thankful and proud that Cisco encourages us to lead by example.
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Love, love, love this article!!! Thanks so much for sharing.
I don’t find pronouns inclusive. I don’t feel safe a lot work. I don’t feel able to speak about how I feel because women aren’t allowed to speak. Gender ideology harms women.
https://leelaventura05.wixsite.com/website/post/when-you-put-preferred-pronouns-in-your-email-signature
Leela, thank you so much for sharing your personal experience. I’m very sorry you endured such trauma. I, in no way, want to ‘deny the reality” of your assault. I consider my use of pronouns a non-political statement and strictly a means of inclusivity for multi-genders.
time wasters
Well written. Thank you.
So very awesome, interesting, well-written, and meaningful! Love it and love you.
This is excellent! Thank you for making something so important so easy to understand. I share your value of wanting to make sure the people I interact with are seen and respected for who they are. What a simple thing we could all do to make our world just a little bit kinder, safer, better!
Thank you for sharing this Mimi. Excellent article, explains clearly the importance of updating these. Is there a resource internally or externally that shows how you can update pronouns on all these different tools? Did you find it difficult or were most of them pretty straightforward?
Everything varied. Cisco Webex and Microsoft Outlook are very straightforward. Sometimes you have to be creative: use the middle name input, leave off special characters, build it into your first name, etc. It doesn’t always look perfect but I think it gets the point across.
That’s great guidance, thank you!!
Thank you, as a member of the LGBTQ community who is communicating multiple families with transgender children I would like to say that your efforts are greatly appreciated. #virtualhug
Thank you not only for sharing the article but leading and caring on such an important topic.
Thanks, Mimi. Great post. I love the idea of tooling to help us on this. I wonder if we can go a bit farther. I would love for tooling to correct my pronouns as I type, so I get it right, and a person’s pronouns are reinforced, and hopefully then I get it right when I interact with that individual.
This is a great idea! I’ll keep an eye out for a way to make a request of developers. They tend to be very open to inclusive feature requests.
By the way, along these same lines, another error that many of us (myself included) make is how we informally communicate with someone from another culture. Is one addressed by first or last name? Which is the family name?
Mimi, thank you for your leadership and working to “Power an Inclusive Future for ALL”.
Loved the article. Thank you for sharing! #YouRock
Thanks for sharing such important topic. And also thank you for being such a great ally that supports the community with clear and conscious actions.
You are helping to build a new society 🙂
Love this!
Love this article!
This is fantastic!
Thanks for sharing and helping broker understanding and making us more inclusive moment by moment.
I’d love to see pronouns added to the directory as well as an option for phonetic pronunciation of our names (it currently exists in webex insights). Great work normalizing this on your calls!
Me too! On Linkedin, they now have the ability to record your name in the way you prefer which makes it easier to honor different languages and geographies. I can’t wait for more platforms to offer that.
Thanks for posting this ! In the healthcare industry that i serve, use of pronouns is the norm . So important to respect people’s preferences – and we’re fortunate that technology helps us on this one, simply write it in where possible in your profile or when joining calls .
Thank you so much Kathryn! I had no idea it was the “norm” in the healthcare industry. Fantastic!
When do you people stop forcing your speech on others? how is that respectful or inclusive? just because 1% of the population are bunch of snowflakes. doesn’t mean we have to suffer.
Thank you for reaching out “anonymous”. I’m fortunate to have the free speech to share my opinion here and happy to see that you have the free speech to comment. I don’t see sharing my pronouns as “suffering” only an attempt at making it easier for my multi-gender friends to share their own pronouns.
Great article Mimi, thank you for sharing.
Wonderful blog Mimi! Thank you for sharing. I appreciate your leadership in this important area of inclusion.