"Micro" acts of every day sexism...

Closing a 50m deal. Now, I'm in a line of work where we deal with massive amounts of money as "business as usual", but 50m is still kind of a big deal.

Email goes out to the entirety of a massive, multi-national corporation from our CEO -1:

Congratulations to IfYouSaySo [me, literally the person who's been owning and driving the entire affair from when the RFI was published] , DudeBroColleague [has contributed fuck all, happens to be my own level of seniority as well as the proud owner of one presumably functioning - he has kids - penis] and team! [a.k.a. a multitude of people less senior than myself or DudeBroColleague whose immense dedication has allowed us to pull this one off] Great job!!!

For comparison: Email sent when a male colleague closed the deal: Congratulations SuperNiceMaleColleagueWhoseFaultThisSexistCrapReallyIsnt. Great work!!!

...and the disgusting chumps missed out the apostrophe altogether.

From Channel 5 listing this eve 2200. "Good Girls Guide To Kinky Sex" info states "These girls will try almost anything from sexy food play to ice cubes, hot lubes and vibrators."

Another restaurant one - when you go to a carvery where the chef is serving the meat and gives more to the men. Last time I went first, then my DH, and he'd got twice as much meat. I got up and went back to ask for more, and when we got the bill they had added 'extra portion'. I swiftly had that removed along with the 'service charge'.

@EmpressLesbianInChair My mom does it loads. She's started righting herself now but says it like "I was talking to a girl in Sainsbury's, well, no, a woman I suppose....." as if she has to weigh-up whether or not the adult human female in front of her is a woman or a girl. Not sure what her criteria are!

@wibdib Good for you. I've gotten a lot more bolshy about this and now just say 'Errm, do you mean women?'

I prepare correspondence for my employer, and any time it's not addressed to a particular individual he writes "Dear Sirs," which I change to "To whom it may concern,". I never mention it, and neither does he. He signs them without comment, and repeat.

Referring to grown women as 'girls’

Women on here do that too sometimes. I hate it.

@ToeNailSoup I’ve found that answering back and working ‘you boys’ (or all you little lads or you wee chaps or similar) is fairly effective at shitting down the use of girls.
The one occasion I got pulled up on it, did the wide eyed look and said that I was merely modelling his behaviour; that after he had said girls, as we were all similar ages and most definitely grown ups, he obviously wasn’t calling us girls because that would be a fairly sexist/ageist/misogynistic thing to do, so I assumed he was in a chipper youthful mood so I thought I had best reply in kind... not a lot he could say to that

Referring to grown women as 'girls'.

Brefugee Thu 14-Nov-19 13:11:32

i rewrote a departmental handbook for my company last year and changed all the "he" to "She" (and other relevant female pronouns)

Called into meeting to discuss. Apart from the fact that 70% of the staff are women, I said "but it includes men too, don't feel put out by that"

Was "ordered" to change them all to "he" - and literally "it means everyone, you don't have to feel put out."

So i refused and password protected the file. None of the men wanted to make the new handbook so finally it was printed like that. And every man who got a copy received an apology that they were being excluded...

@Brefugee - may we all follow in your footsteps

Seeped down, not seemed

In the late 90s I worked in Financial services for a very large company.
The big boss was an absolute sexist pig, which seemed down, although my (Male) manager was great.
There were 4 female financial Advisors and the rest were men, guess who used to get asked to cover reception when the admin staff were off?
In fact I ended up volunteering because what none of the geniuses worked out was that if a new enquiry came in it had to be allocated to a Financial Advisor and whoever answered the phone could choose who to put the call through to - guess which Advisor I allocated all new customers to? Totally smashed my targets and then a couple of the men caught on and demanded to be allowed to answer the phones sometimes too. My manager told them to get lost!

naked it helps if you are size 6/7. I just googled the Salomon Speedcross shoes I use. They weren't listed as male or female on the two sited I looked at, but the smallest size I could see was 6.
Maybe they are men's shoes, but the site I bought them from doesn't list them as that, and they fit me fine.

Ditto, a Barclays bank employee once told me that now that DH and I were married, even though I hadn't changed my name I nonetheless HAD to change to Mrs as that ws the rule. I told her she was ridiculous. (have never liked barclays. And we still bank with them

I have had exactly the same with TSB earlier this year. They told me that I "legally" had to be Mrs HisSurname, otherwise I was committing fraud. I really really need to be bothered to move to a different bank.

I am going to go back and read the full thread but I just want to add mine! I should say, my most recent one. Booked a stay for my husband and I last weekend, nowhere fancy just a Premier Inn. I did the booking and paid, put myself as 'lead guest' Ms PleasureSwing and him as additional guest Mr HisSurname (which isn't the same as mine, as I haven't changed my name). When we got to check in they had amended the booking to Mr & Mrs HisSurname. The receptionist addressed me as Mrs HisSurname! A name I have never used ever, she might as well have called me Mrs Blubberguts for as much as husbands' surname is my name.

It is bad enough that I have family insisting that my "legal name" is now Mrs Hisname, but for a random hotel chain to decide it too? FUCK OFF WITH THAT.

I'm a trail runner. I have been looking for new running shoes recently. When I Google and click through I always get the men's shoes as default. When I try to find the women's they either dont make them in the style I want, don't do that colour ( a lovely blue and yellow men's shoe will become purple on the women's), the choice is severely limited compared to men's (eg 15 styles and various colours in men's, 4 in women's)or it's not uncommon that they don't have any women's trail runners at all.

Fucking hell those are awful Whatnow!

I'm disabled and experience this from the disabled perspective too. I have an unseen disability that affects my mobility, there are occasions where I use a wheelchair. The contrast between 'seen' and 'unseen' is clear. And relevant to sexism I think. We're told often that these micro instances are nothing important, not to get upset about it, just habit etc. No harm is meant by it. But until you experience it from both sides, you don't really know for sure if it is inherent or you're just being oversensitive.

When I'm in a restaurant in a wheelchair, I often don't get given a menu. I'm obviously not capable of choosing my own food. As a 40 yr old woman, I've been handed the children's menu a couple of times. This never happens when I'm not using a wheelchair.

At the airport with a group of colleagues, having just returned from a business trip. I was the most senior manager present. Everyone waited with me for the wheelchair assistance person to take me and our group through to collect my own wheelchair that had been checked in with luggage. The worker was friendly and asking everyone in the group how they were, then he tilted his head to one side and asked me in a kids voice "have you had a good time?"

Mine is how in a workplace, it's always women who sort out cards and gifts for colleagues, even if the closest colleague (to the giftee ?) is a man.

At my small workplace, it was always a man (the manager) that did this. But when a new woman joined, she said how she loved doing this, and at her former workplace had always organised the birthdays and christmas parties, and bought the cards, etc. and she'd be happy to do it.
The male manager of course let her.

This is more macro than micro, but my office has been making a big thing about how much they value diversity and how diverse they are. It's in Central London and over 2/3 of the staff are female.

So the organisation was bigging itself up on how it employs so many women and something like 13% ethnic minorities.

Er yes - but that ignores the fact that all the top posts are taken by white men, that every time we have all-staff meetings, it's usually about 5 white men standing up to address the assembled (mostly female) throngs and maybe 1 woman or non-white person getting to speak if you're really lucky. And this is in London where a much higher than 13% of the workforce are non-white too.

I've never worked anywhere like this before, where there is such an overtly sexist/racist culture (one token black senior women, no non-white men at senior levels, incompetent white men promoted vastly beyond their levels of competence) etc.

Shocking not only that this still happens in 2019, but that the organisation actually thinks it deserves a pat on the back for it's diversity!

Probably not coincidentally, the top men in charge are all ex-military.

@SoundofSilence - it's was children's TV that turned me into a feminist as a child. I don't know who remembers the US show, Flipper, about a dolphin. Well, I don't know if it was the first episode or the first one I saw, but he was friends with a little girl, they had a great adventure, then at the end she had to go away to live a safe, normal life, and 2 brothers came along and had all the adventures week after week with Flipper. I was so sad and furious that the girl had lost out to boys. Thinking about it now, it would have been so easy for the siblings to be a boy and a girl, but it was 2 boys instead. Sorry for rant, but such a reflection of our sexist world.

A few years ago I was closing a big deal for a client. I didn't meet the client face to face and only dealt with them via email. I have a unisex name. When the deal went through, he said he would gift me seats in his corporate box at the next football match. I had to ring him about something and he realised I was female. The gift he ended up dropping off was a bunch of flowers from Asda because "I didn't think you'd like football".
I love football.

Gara - I said to a male colleague, who had received such a lovely, thoughtful and apt gift, chosen by Jill (not real name) 'It's your turn to choose Jill's' and he said 'no, I don't really like presents.'
So I had to do it (3 of us in close team). He knew I had aging parent and kids plus worked full-time. He was single, no parents and worked part-time. Still happy for a women to do the work. He was a lovely guy in general but this so, so pissed me off.

Charley50 - used to have exactly this in my workplace. We'd actually go out in a lunch break, trek around town to look for a lovely apt gift. I had done it a few times, and then it came round and i was told ' it's your turn Gara again to get pressie ' , I refused and said why can't 'Fred' go, he's not been out to gift buy. The woman looked at me shocked, 'but it's Fred!' 'And?' I said, until Fred does a gift shop i am not taking my turn again. ' oh but he's a manager'. I then pointed out that i was also a manager in our small dept, with 2 members of staff,and was technically the same level as Fred. The women still looked at me as if i was mad , or thought i was better than them or something. Which i didn't i just thought on principle it was Fred's turn.

Also - when the receptionist was off sick they always used to ask around the different departments for 'volunteers' to be on reception for a stint. I was never asked to do this as i was a manager, but it irked me that only the female admin ladies were expected to help out, not the couple of male admin workers.

Mine is how in a workplace, it's always women who sort out cards and gifts for colleagues, even if the closest colleague (to the giftee ?) is a man.