( CNN ) -- Recently , University of Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise , who is Asian-American , was bombarded with harassing tweets when she decided not to cancel classes at the Urbana-Champaign campus during January 's severe weather . Upset over the decision , some students attacked her with racial and gender slurs . The harsh hashtag -- # f -- -phyllis -- reinforced notions that the sexual domination and objectification of women are still major problems in our society and on our campuses . Would the students have engaged in attacks on gender and race had the chancellor been a white man ? Somehow , I do n't think so . There was no respect for Wise 's position , nor her credentials -- but her high-visibility job made her stand out . The duality of being hypervisible and simultaneously invisible is the latest identity quagmire that some highly accomplished women must navigate . They are hypervisible because they are often the only one of a few in their position -- thus , they stand out . Yet because of their gender , and sometimes their race , their presence is not the norm , and others are not used to seeing them in these roles . Those same women who worked hard to climb the ladder to success sometimes find that they are out of place and unwelcome , rendering them invisible in certain situations . It 's almost as if they 're saying , `` I see you , but I do n't respect you and therefore I 'm not going to acknowledge you as a human being . '' While women have moved into positions of power , they have not moved with ease . It 's perplexing , given women 's accomplishments over the decades , that it continues to happen 50 years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act , which banned employment discrimination . But it is also not new . Pioneering journalist Ida B . Wells was threatened with murder after speaking out publicly in the 1890s . She became hypervisible after she criticized the lynching of black men . When whites ransacked her newspaper office with the intent to kill her , she only escaped the attempt on her life because she was out of town . Today , powerful , public women are not usually threatened with murder . But their opinions are often discounted , disregarded and dismissed -- or they are personally attacked . # CNNWomen Tweetchat : Join the conversation on Friday March 7 at 5pm ET/10pm GMT . In my research on the experiences of black women television news managers , I discovered this same dichotomy . On the one hand , these executives are highly recruited for their production and management skills . On the other hand , a little more than one-third of the 40 women interviewed described feeling invisible in editorial meetings where their ideas were not always given full credit until they came from someone else , usually a white man . This rendering of women 's ideas and personhood as invisible has consequences . Psychologist Derald Wing Sue calls these subtle and not-so-subtle snubs `` microaggressions '' and says they can lead to higher stress levels and more illness . As highly accomplished women move into spaces previously reserved for men , they might face more of these microagressions , which are often magnified in a social media , Internet age . As college classrooms become increasingly female with more students of color , how can we teach that hard work and persistence will get them noticed , when the truth is , it might simultaneously render them invisible ? How do we stop the disrespect ? First , we must acknowledge it and say it 's wrong . Silence is not an option . This is what Phyllis Wise did when she wrote an essay addressing the hateful tweets . `` What was most disturbing was witnessing social media drive a discussion quickly into the abyss of hateful comments and even threats of violence , '' Wise wrote in Inside Higher Ed . Secondly , we must continuously teach that the disrespect of women online or in person will not be tolerated . The University of Illinois example reminds us that if cyberharassment can happen to a woman as highly accomplished as Wise , all women are vulnerable . There is an urgent need to educate . Lastly , we must continue to see ourselves as leaders , regardless of whether others are used to seeing us in that role . Only when women in positions of power become the norm will they be able to fully exercise that power . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ava Thompson Greenwell .
A recent attack on a Harvard professor shows how public women are personally attacked . Susan Thompson Greenwell writes that women have n't made easy moves into power . Greenwell : Women in power have a dual existence , hypervisible and often unseen . They can be stopped by not being silent , she writes .