Anybody experience sexism at work and what to do about it?!

I've done the washing up liquid trick once. Never needed to make coffee for that person again

Pom - the notebook idea is a good one to copy - oh and from now on until you leave (and find somewhere much better) your new way of making coffee is to add a splodge of washing up liquid to it. When they complain, be offended about it!!!

Money often talks... The fines for sex discrimination are unlimited - so keep on with your notebook:

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8288800/Average-discrimination-tribunal-payouts.html

TBH if your boss is the HR manager she should be raising these points with them - it's her job to warn so as to protect the company against the ignorant dinosaurs who run it. I doubt the people who own it would be pleased to have a sex discrimination payout - so if the CEO doesn't listen she should raise her concerns with the owners. Then something might get done. In the meantime it's an awful situation - all you can do is keep evidence.

I often wonder how they ever make any money!!!

Do they make any money? Depending on the size of the company you can have a look at the annual accounts via Companies House's website.

Grievance!

The 2 male admin assistants were not invited to this meeting. One of the females pointed this out and the CEO said that they shouldn't even be in admin roles they should be engineering roles... And subsequently promoted them and increased their pay

If employees are capable of and are qualified to do engineering roles there is no reason why they should not be moved into that role. What would be ridiculous is moving them to engineering if they aren't capable of doing the work. What is also problematic is it is another example of not being clear about why they are hiring people and what they are supposed to do. Why are they hiring engineers to do admin?

I also don't understand why an organisation which isn't large enough to have a finance team (which can mean basically one person who understands accounts) and a facilities team (aka the office manager) yet has someone sporting the vainglorious title of "CEO"

God yes! The grass is greener. Find another job. Do you really want to work there another 5-10-15 years?

To be honest, the whole company sounds a bit of a mess, and if I were you I would be dusting off my CV to find something better...

Pombliboo123

They must have job descriptions, though. Can you not ask that these be available?

For you, personally, if they want to re-write your job description to include things that you don't agree with, you could then question it. Officially.

But the finance team manager is a male so we shoukdnt ask him to deal with cleaning....

A finance team manager shouldn't be dealing with cleaning beyond authorising payment of the cleaning contractors.

Your entire office sounds an utter shambles with no properly defined roles for anyone.

For example why on earth is anyone in the finance team responsible for facilities/ordering stationery/ dealing with cleaners? That is a complete waste of their time. The should be dealing with accounts, VAT, PAYE, paying bills and if necessary querying why facilities have ordered yet another shipload of paper clips. Facilities should be tasked with resourcing facilities and reporting to finance that these are good value for money.

That is just one example but just about everything you have posted isn't necessarily shouting a sexist problem but more a don't have a clue how to run a business problem.

The first question is do you want to stay in this job or not?

If you do, then you need to developing more strategies. There is an overhead to the strategies - both their development and their execution - but if you crack on with them they become second nature. Or at least, that is my experience. I do not have to take crap these days. I have been in the role five years nearly, had my share of disagreements, and read a ton of books though.

Do not spit in the coffee. That is disgusting. Do not make the coffee, and do not spit in it. Just do not do it. Does your organisation have a central catering department? Does your manager or manager's manager have an administrative assistant? It depends on the nature of your organisation, as to how the strategies develop.

In one job, when I was continuously asked to make the coffee, I made it very strong. When they said it was too strong and asked me to make it weaker next time, I made it stronger. My excuse was that I don't drink coffee, so find it hard to judge the right amount. It seemed to work after a while.

In the same job, we took turns covering reception as the receptionist was having cancer treatment, and we wanted to make sure she kept her job. I had a degree, had worked there for a few years, and had had a similar job elsewhere. There was a male temp, he was about 19, no degree and no experience. I was told that I had to cover reception instead of him as they couldn't expect a man to work on reception.

I've done the visibly writing in a notebook thing, it was 100% effective in stopping overt sexism - covert sexism is a lot harder of course. Stopping overt comments and behaviours at least improves your day to day life. My issues in the past have been with localised department cultures or individuals, the company I work for is not sexist at core and has policies in place to protect and foster female colleagues.

I really think you need to have a frank discussion with your line manager as Olenna suggests - did she have similar issues? Are other females in the workplace having issues? Possibly there is a way to resolve by combining forces with HR?

If that's not possible/palatable to you I can't see that you have any long term solution other than leaving this toxic company. The fact that it comes from the CEO makes it very difficult unless you have enough evidence of mistreatment to bring a meaningful court case. Deprive the CEO and company of your skills and take them elsewhere.

Love the notebook plan.

OP, I think you said you work in HR, which makes things much harder as you are the department you would go to for advice...

Have you had a serious talk with your manager, along the lines of "I'm thinking of leaving because of all this sexist crap"?

On a practical level, whose job is it to make the coffee for meetings? If you used to do it when you were the receptionist (and BTW it can be really really hard to shake off former roles when you get promoted in the same company), who is the receptionist now?

My phones awful sos. Big book Called today's sexist requests, let them joke, put them in too. Write each one, then if you carried the task out. If you say no, say no that's sexist, with a smile, they'll stop Or give you cause and proof. But said with some jest so they can't really say much, like sure Ask the female to make coffee cos I'm a girl, I make shit coffee haha, let me write in down in the book. Or leave.

I'd be open about it,

The TUC website has a union finder tool.

There have been plenty of articles written on how a more diverse workplace is better for business - better decision making and so on. They're probably not going to persuade such ingrained sexist as these sound, though. It's depressing that anyone still thinks it's acceptable to behave this way.

Certainly better than the idea I was brewing which involved laxatives.

TheSparrowhawk

That's genius.

The thing I always advise in situations like this is to invest in the most powerful weapon you can ever have in a toxic environment - a notebook. Keep it with you and when you're asked to do something outside your job, or you're faced with a sexist comment, write it down and make it very very clear you're writing it down. Ask people to repeat what they've said and read it back to them for clarification as in 'Sorry, what was that? Ok let me just write that down, you said 'You're paid average, for a woman' is that right? Ok, so that's said by X on X date.' Then put the notebook away and say nothing.

It is amazingly effective.

I would ask for a copy of your job description.

If making the lunch and coffee isn't on it, I would asked for a copy of the job description that includes those duties.

If you are asked to do a task that isn't covered by your job description I would point it out to the person asking and then suggest they contact HR to let them know who is responsible for that task.

Could you also ask for a copy of their equality policy. As the comment 'for a woman' is a sex discrimination issue.

Remain civil and polite.

If you don't have an HR department, and the sexism is coming from the top down it's much more difficult.

If you want to leave, you can take this issue and make it very difficult for them, but if you don't want to leave it's much harder.

It's difficult to believe, in this day and age, that you are being subjected to this.

I too would be furious. I am, in fact, on your behalf!