Can we all just be honest here?
Can we all just be honest here on LinkedIn about Safety (workplace or otherwise) since we just celebrated International Women’s Day? I am going to be.
The Elevator:
I once called my husband from the elevator in our building to make weird, confusing small talk.
I’d left our loft less than a minute earlier to grab the mail, just four floors down. He asked, “Why are you calling me?” I laughed and said something with zero relevance and pretended to make conversation.
Because there was a very imposing tall man standing next to me in the elevator I didn’t know from our secure building.
At first, he thought I was being overly cautious. But when I explained, it clicked, not just because he understood my personal fear, but because he realized that as a big, tall, tough looking white man, he could be that guy creating fear in the elevator. The one unintentionally making someone feel unsafe.
That kind of awareness- huge. And it’s not just on women to constantly be on guard, men can help by to realizing they might be the one triggering it.
This isn’t about paranoia. It’s about survival. Women and marginalized people constantly assess risk, even in the most mundane moments. Who’s in the room? Should I take the stairs? What’s my exit strategy?
And it’s not just elevators. It’s how we modulate our voices in meetings. How we overthink our words in emails our actions during a work trip, happy hours. How we navigate workplaces where safety (physical or psychological) is never a given.
If your first instinct is to dismiss this as exaggeration, or roll your eyes, and say “it’s just some random guy in the elevator Kate” ask yourself: Why is someone’s lived experience so hard to believe? Why is it easier to dismiss than to reflect?
And for the record it’s not an exaggeration. One time it wasn’t just a random harmless guy in the elevator. The stats show somewhere between 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women have experienced sexual violence.
So it is real. It’s not an exaggeration and we are roughly 20% of your female workforce.
Safer workplaces start with awareness. Let’s talk about what it takes to build spaces where people don’t have to overthink their safety, because that thinking and extra work has already been done to make them feel safe.
#iwd2025 #letsbehonest #safetyintheworkplace #awareness
