How the Cannabis Industry Pushes Women Out
Chelsea had been working in the cannabis industry long before I met her through my research in Seattle’s newly legal recreational cannabis market. She worked at a medical cannabis dispensary before recreational cannabis became legal in 2012, but when the dispensary she worked at closed, she decided to stay in the industry and got a job at a recreational shop. Soon after, she faced a reality that almost all women I spoke with experience.
“I know we have the most female CEOs than any other industry, but this doesn’t reflect what’s happening on the ground, here in the stores. … Customers would not respect me. …. guys would get promoted all the time over me that weren’t good at their jobs,” Chelsea explained as a colleague at the retail store nodded profusely in agreement behind her. “[The manager] told me one time that he thinks women are not good leaders, but they’re great at multi-tasking. …it makes me so mad just thinking about it.”
Chelsea’s story is not an anomaly. I spoke with many men and women who worked in seventeen different cannabis retail stores in Seattle – or about half of the stores that existed at the time I conducted my research.
The work of a budtender – someone who sells cannabis to customers- is deeply meaningful work. Budtenders I spoke with worked hard to build connections with their customers and help them find the right product to meet their needs. This sometimes meant finding products to help an old woman find something to soothe painful arthritis, alleviate nausea in a cancer patient, or find a product that would help a shy college student overcome social anxiety. As Chelsea puts it best, “you can customize [cannabis] to fit any type of lifestyle.” And budtenders are the keepers of this knowledge, the expert connoisseurs, the herbal pharmacists.
So while almost all the men I spoke with within the industry felt an immense emotional sense of duty and value from being able to engage in this work, women like Chelsea revealed an uglier side to this new industry.
Amelia, like many women I encountered, had contemplated quitting the cannabis industry altogether because of the emotional toll it took having her expertise devalued daily while the men around her only felt emotional satisfaction.
“John has a tendency to talk over people. He's easily able to raise the volume of his voice to get the point across with customers, and they will more likely accept it from him. Whereas if I were to do something like that, then I'm a bitch or I have an attitude. In which case, the customer is going to have more of an inclination to then retaliate towards me,” Amelia explained.
This daily questioning of women’s value in a cannabis shop by both customers and sometimes colleagues is pushing women out of the industry. They are second-guessed, overlooked, and pushed out of opportunities while men are valorized, promoted, and seen as experts.
While not every customer challenges them or every colleague overlooks their contributions, it has happened to every woman I spoke with to varying degrees.
I am sure many of the women reading this who have worked in a customer service role have similar experiences to these budtenders. I know I have a number of stories from my days working in foodservice. But this is a new industry experiencing exponential growth. We have a chance to start over and create workspaces that affirm and support women as well as gender non-conforming individuals.
It’s time we all stand up for our female and gender non-conforming colleagues. Back them up when customers question them or when a colleague devalues their knowledge. Advocate for clear and transparent promotion policies. Ask for their opinions and involve them in the decision-making processes at your workplace.
The cannabis industry is only growing, and it is doing so rapidly. Let’s not miss this opportunity to start building a model for what a safe workplace for women should look like.
Michele Cadigan is a Ph.D. candidate of Sociology and NSF Graduate Fellow at the University of Washington. She studies the intersection of economic markets and the criminal justice system in the fight for racial justice. Her current work examines how states rewrite criminal laws and build markets for cannabis in ways that facilitate or hinder racial equity and justice.