When you know it is sexism / because you are a woman, but ...

Theresa May is a great example of the "glass cliff" effect - an organisation in trouble is more likely to go for an untraditional candidate, partly because they may have no choice, but it means that even though a certain percentage of women are getting senior positions, they are much more likely to be getting the ones that are poisoned chalices and likely to fail, which will be seen as 'proving' they can't cope.

When Margaret Beckett became the first female Foreign Secretary, one interview asked how she coped with criticism of her dress sense etc. She said she took such comments as total endorsement of her policies, as clearly they were unable to say anything against them! I admired her for that, though I bet in private some would still have stung (for reference, Beckett was the only Minister in Blair's Cabinet who had also been a Minister for Callaghan pre-Thatcher's win in 1979).

I just had on my FB feed this study about resume pitfalls... HBR

Tell me again why we don't need feilminism?

This is a very interesting discussion. I work in the public sector in a very traditionally female dominated profession. At my workplace recently there have been a number of new appointments. All the male appointments have jumped straight into promoted posts (often with very poor track records and in one case a confirmed failure not once but twice) whereas the women who had been working hard towards promotion have been passed over yet again. It's become so blatant that a number of us are now openly questioning what the hell is going on.

Its the wifework stuff. My mother is particularly bad at blaming all the women in the family for this. She will for example still phone me and say 'remind ds to send a card to his auntie for her birthday' Ds being 28 , married and in good job, but no apparently its my fault if he forgets. (His new wife is being given a pass at the minute because 'she's not english and doesnt know whats expected yet' despite the fact that she is a highly intelligent young women who also works with my DS at the same level.
I make a point of directing anything regarding our side of the family to my son as his responsibility. I will not be dumping wifework on my new daughter in law.

I work as a solicitor and answered my male colleague's phone the other day. We are both on exactly the same pay grade but the caller asked me if I was my colleague's PA.

This happens to me all of the time. I initially thought it was just coincidence but my colleague answers my phone and nobody has ever asked him if he is my PA. No, rather what happens is they elevate him to the status of 'senior solicitor'. So for example, I will get a follow up email saying 'further to my telephone conversation with the Council's senior solicitor Mr X.....'

When I worked in private practice this still happened. I had a client who would not deal with me because I was a woman. My colleague (male - not legally qualified) had to liaise with the client whilst I did all of the work.

I have only recently become awakened to all of the misogyny which surrounds us. Now I'm aware of it, I find myself becoming irritated on a daily basis.

If a client comes into the office to see us, 8/10 times they will address our male colleague first (2 female, 1 male).

It's outrageous.

Good point Confugled1 I would also add that post Brexit, they knew that Trump would possibly get into power and they didn't want to be shaking hands with him.

Same thing but at a different level - when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister - regardless of what people's politics were, she was always talked about as a female prime minister and people (mainly men!) would say they never wanted another one, in a way that you never hear anybody say hat they don't want another male PM.

Even now we only have a female pm because some male politicians made a spectacular misjudgement and gambled on the Brexit referendum which blew up in their faces and meant they had to jump out of top politics.
Theresa May has been left with a poisoned chalice - because the boys never expected to lose nobody ever scoped out exactly what Brexit entailed (not helped by neither side wanting to be the first to commit to something so whereas staying in meant one thing to everybody Brexit was a dream sold that meant different things to different people, none of which could ever be the reality as we just don't know what will happen).
In the future I think that people will talk about the cock up that Brexit has become - the remainers because they are never going to like it and the brexiters because she didn't manage to get the ideal deal they thought she should have done ignoring the fact that Europe don't want to give us what we want.

I don't think it's any surprise that May got in because the men didn't want it this time- they want it next time when they can pretend they have sorted things out and got things back to normal again.

I totally agree AntiGrinch. I've mentioned this story before but when my DH's boss was promoted the department suddenly decided that they could no longer pay for her (male) PA. Every single other person promoted to that job before her had a PA, but of course they were all male. They reckoned a woman could just do without a PA. But of course she would then be blamed if the lack of a PA caused her to be less efficient than her predecessors. Thankfully she threatened to take her millions of pounds worth of business elsewhere and they suddenly saw sense, but she shouldn't have had to fight for something that had been considered standard for men.

YY to all that Anti.

Another thing: a fuck-up by a man can be noticed but the man will essentially be rewarded for it by getting more training and support. The woman who fucks up will be punished for it and won't get second chances.

The thing I notice at work is that if women get promoted, they never get to drop (fully) their previous work. So if they now manage someone who does their old job, they are held far more responsible for it than when they did it, and their boss was a man. They can be forced into a position where they find themselves paranoiacally micro-managing because there isn't anything that won't be considered to be their fault. Men seem to be able to adopt an airy "above all that" (even to things that actually are their job, if they consider them to menial and administrative) and fuck-ups just don't stick to them.

What I think happens, is this: if a woman is doing well enough to be promoted (and it is proven numerically in unfuckable with terms), then she might actually get a version of the promotion - in the sense that the senior management will think "yep she's making loads of money at that level, let's give her greater scope to make us more money". But what isn't happening in their heads is true respect that they see her as a real player at the new level. they can be given more to do but they can never be promoted out of being seen as essentially menial people.

If a female assistant to a female boss is given a promotion, it is always at the expense of the boss. It never happens that PA to female marketing manager gets made junior marketing manager, and then marketing manager gets a new PA. what happens is that marketing manager loses the PA and has to make up the work. It's like you can never just admit women are now senior players, there is only a certain amount of seniority they have to share between them and they can never fully escape menial work.

Yep I've been asked to sort tea and cakes for a vip visit. Male manager said he wasn't asking me because I was a woman, but because the men couldn't be trusted. What tosh. I complained and didn't do it.

Another example is a male friend who got a job as a council town planner. Another job came up and when the female planner was out of the office the senior planner went through all of the applications and binned those from women saying 'one woman was enough'.

That is scandalous and should be reported. This is money from the public purse. Outrageous.

Mind you it doesn't surprise me. There is a reason why the Labour party has the Labour Women's Network.

When I volunteered to be the Women's officer in my local LCP, no one contested it, the first thing said afterwards was 'Make us a cup of tea darling'.

I've witnessed the coffee thing too but being older and wiser have asked meetings not to go ahead as not all were in attendance properly (I attended as an outside consultant). Once this is said others will chime in in accordance.

The best receptionist I've ever witnessed was a no nonsense phone answerer (sorry best description I could come up with). She did have a deep, rich, confident female voice and the caller was under no assumptions that she would engage in small talk. I could have listened to her all day. She did have a further remit and was the most organised person I've ever met. She was fantastic (and paid handsomely).

Definitely had the people assuming my very shy older male junior colleague was my boss, in a way they didn't assume if I went to the same events with an older female colleague.

I've been the only woman in the room (even of up to 60 people) more times than I can count, and while I didn't object to helping with drinks when I was also the most junior, I've made a stand since then, getting other people to do it - and somehow the result is people not even in the meeting end up doing it, who tend to be the mostly female and mainly black admin staff... Purely coincidence?

Preemptive Yes, MrNC is pretty good on this stuff, though not perfect in many ways. He certainly enjoyed being a 'chivalrous knight' on that occasion. More frequently though he is fighting assumptions that he's a lazy arse for 'only' working part time (and the number of companies that won't even consider a part-time man seems even worse than the ones that won't employ a part-time woman, because there must be something 'wrong with the man'). It wouldn't matter so much but we need at least 1 FTE of us to be employed!

Chris Evans thinks women are silly. I remember back in his heyday, listening to his breakfast show in the morning on budget day. A female reporter had asked the Chancellor some searching questions in an interview then reported back to the studio.

Whereupon the ginger fucking clown proceeded to say 'oh Sarah listen to you being all tough! But you're so niiiiiice, you don't fool us' etc.
Sarah had to giggle along with the silly cunt, those were the rules. I wanted to climb inside the radio and nut the little twat.

Meant to say he's a sexist although he is turning out to be a sexism in his own right!
Another example is a male friend who got a job as a council town planner. Another job came up and when the female planner was out of the office the senior planner went through all of the applications and binned those from women saying 'one woman was enough'.

It's the insidious nature of sexism which is so annoying.
I work with female colleagues in a professional capacity in small unit. The company has been taken over recently and regrettably the managing director is turning out to be both useless and a sexism. He had 2 efficient women working fr him who left recently so he's now in a panic that he'll have to do some work. He paused from ignoring my female colleagues recently to give them unreasonable grief and then was seen 'going out for coffee' with a male colleague who the very next day was promoted along with another bloke into md's immediate team - hard to prove it wasn't on merit but like helll it was.

theshitcollector yes, you're right. It's incredibly depressing.

It's hard to imagine a male being expected to work while having to go to the toilet to throw up frequently.

"it's happened to Every Female Born. "

Not to Lass.

You're not crazy. We're not crazy. And I only disagree with your demurral of "even if you've never experienced..." - I dont think it's necessary because it's happened to Every Female Born.

Men get sexism, too, of course (and I rather adore MrNC ), but I'm not going to derail.

In fact, I'm not even going to add anything. I wouldn't know where to start, and I'm already pretty fucking depressed.

To be fair the female contraceptive pill was developed in the 60s when controls were more relaxed. It's not really appropriate to compare medication licensed 70/80 years ago to medication being developed today. Although unfortunately I can't think of examples (not a doctor), I thought old medication often has worse side effects than is allowed with new medication.

We already know that greater value is placed on mens health. The trial of the male contraceptive pill eas stopped as some of them encountered unpleasant side effects like mood swings and depression. The ratio suffering was exactlythe same as women with the same side effects. But if its not good enough for men then its good enough for women.

I have developed a fine 'fuck off'face and manner to match as I've grown older, which usually deters this kind of behaviour. But, it happens to my adult daughters all the time.

The milkman who knocked the door when I was wfh the other day clearly didn't pick up on my fuck off face though, and had short shrift when he asked me 'Are you the lady of the house?' He was touting for business - my regret is that I didn't think to reply that door-to-door milk deliveries went out in the 1970's, the same as the way he's just spoken to me.