Here it is 2022, and women are still talking about gender bias in the workplace. A head and neck surgeon who teaches at the University of California recently wrote this essay about the lingering (and very consequential) effects of gender bias in obtaining research and startup funding. Also last week, a writer for Poynter Institute penned this useful tip sheet on when and how women and other marginalized workers should speak up for themselves in the newsroom. She sought advice from a career coach, who advised employees from marginalized backgrounds to think very carefully about whether they should speak up at all. As Poynter’s Alex Sujong Laughlin noted, ” Choosing to speak up could have real consequences on your professional life.”

Don’t I know it! In the mid-90s, after I had broken a series of stories about the sexual abuse of patients by psychiatrists, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team decided to dig further into the issue of patient sexual abuse. Given my track record in covering this topic, Ben Bradlee Jr., who had been promoted to Assistant Managing Editor in charge of special investigations, thought I’d be a natural fit to join the team. But as I relate in my memoir, Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo, Jerry O’Neill, the head of Spotlight at the time, was discomfited by my assertiveness. He told Bradlee that I wasn’t enough of a “team player” and chose a younger, more compliant female reporter for the assignment. (In those days, Spotlight usually picked one woman for its four-person team to show how enlightened it was). The rebuff really stung. I did have a reputation for being outspoken, but I had worked on several articles with other reporters and had never had any problems working in a team environment. I couldn’t help thinking that a male reporter with a similar hard-charging approach would not have been treated like this.

My own editor, Nils Bruzelius, who had always been supportive of me, was away on a science journalism fellowship at the time. When I tried to discuss what happened with the Spotlight gig with another male editor whom I respected, all he said was, “Sorry, Alison, I don’t do gender.”

If that was the attitude of a man whom I liked and respected, I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere if I took the issue any further. So I let it drop and decided to go work for the new Metro Editor, who was one of the few women in a position of power at The Globe. One morning, I was asked to fill in for another editor at the editorial meeting that the top editor, Matt Storin, convened to find out what stories the various departments (news, living, arts, sports, and business) were working on for the next day’s paper. It also gave Storin the opportunity to critique articles that had appeared in the paper that day. We all sat around a conference table in one glassed-in corner of the newsroom with Storin at the head of the table flanked by his deputies.

That morning, Storin was incensed about something that Dan Duquette, then general manager of the Red Sox, had said in a sports roundup. “This is fucked up,” he roared. “We can’t let him get away with this.” Storin proceeded to repeatedly stab a copy of that day’s Boston Globe with his pen. As we watched our editor melt down, no one said a thing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The other editors, including grown men twice Storin’s size, looked abashed, as if they were children being dressed down by an angry adult.

Finally, Larry Edelman, the Business Editor, said in a mild tone, as if he were talking to a child, “Sounds like you’re angry at Duquette.” But that only served to enrage Storin more. He continued to spew vitriol and finally stood up and stalked out of the room without finishing the meeting. Afterward, still shaken, I went up to another editor and asked whether this kind of thing happened on a regular basis. He acknowledged that it did. “I feel like ducking under the desk when he loses it,” said the editor. “It makes me very uncomfortable.”

“So why doesn’t someone tell Storin that?” I asked. “Aren’t you coenabling this behavior by not saying anything?” The editor glared at me. “I’m not co-enabling anything.”

Over the next few days, I talked about Storin’s behavior with a few of my co-workers and everyone agreed that his tantrums were counterproductive. Instead of encouraging the newsroom to take risks, which is what he said he wanted us to do, many editors and reporters were playing it safe. Anything to avoid being the target of his wrath. But no one seemed willing to say anything to him, as least as far as I knew. So I decided to do it. Why, you might ask, would I, a lowly editor on the city desk, willingly go into the lion’s den and risk my career when more seasoned, high-ranking editors didn’t seem willing to? I don’t fully remember my thinking at the time, but I have always been far too willing to speak truth to power without thinking through the consequences.

I made an appointment to see Storin. At the designated hour, I walked into his spacious corner office, which had wrap-around windows, a couch, and a small round conference table. Storin was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk and he gestured for me to sit in one of the chairs in front of his desk.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “I know you care deeply about the paper and want us to take risks and do our best work. But every time you lose your temper, it scares people and makes them more timid. And I know you don’t want that.” I was so nervous that I picked up a glass paperweight on his desk and ran my fingers around its smooth rounded edges. “Are you going to throw that thing at me?” Storin asked. I look at the paperweight in my hand in astonishment; I had never thrown anything at anyone in my life. At a previous newspaper gig, Storin had thrown a typewriter at someone else in a fit of rage. Was he projecting here? I hastily put the paperweight down.

“Oh no, sorry about that,” I said. I tried to regain my composure, while Storin gazed at me with a small tight smile on his face. “As you know, I’ve worked for Nils Bruzelius for many years, and I think he’s a very effective manager. He is not afraid to criticize us and he speaks his mind, but he also praises us when we do well, so we know he’s on our side and. . .he never loses his temper.” Storin nodded curtly. “Yes, Nils is a good manager.” He paused as if waiting for me to say something more, but I had finished my prepared speech. “I appreciate your coming in to talk to me. I’ll think about what you said.”

I walked out of his office in a daze, sensing that while Storin had been remarkably civil to me, perhaps because he was shocked by my temerity, I had just sabotaged my future at the Globe.

I tell this story, which I relate in greater depth in my memoir, mostly to point out that speaking up can have real consequences for your career. While CEOs say they want people who are willing to speak up about problems in the workplace, they don’t always mean it, especially when the criticism hits too close to home. Which is why I applaud Laughlin’s advice that people from marginalized backgrounds should think very carefully about whether to speak up at all. As she writes:

It’s OK to focus on your work and get out. Often when you’re the “only” or “one of few” in a room, there’s a strong sense of obligation to speak up. “You do have an obligation,” Gavin [the career coach] said. “But you have a greater obligation to yourself and your future self. So if these two obligations are in tension, you have to choose one. And it makes more sense to choose the one that’s in line with your goal, whatever your goal is.”

As one of my mentors once told me (long after I had left The Boston Globe and begun teaching journalism), “You have to keep your eyes on the end prize” — whatever you decide that end prize or goal is.

This blog is also posted on medium.com.