Men dominating the conversation even at ‘women’s’ event

Thanks, that was great.

If you haven’t already heard it, Speak Up was a brilliant programme on R4 last month, presented by Mary Ann Sieghart. Expert after expert presenting hard evidence of how little air time women get in groups and how often they are shut down or interrupted by men. Even when the woman is a Supreme Court judge and the man a junior barrister.

A small group of us have been negotiating with the management of our building. I asked the management for a meeting with me to cover some issues, on email copying everyone, they came back offering an alternative approach.

I was about to accept the alternative approach when a man in the group (I'm the only woman) emailed over my head with a stinging rebuke for not doing what I had asked.

I emailed everyone telling the man I had no need for him to make arrangements on my behalf, I could do that myself.

He immediately emailed me privately telling me not to do that as we were supposed to be presenting a united front. I replied saying that if he was happy to talk over me to everyone then I was equally happy to ask him not to in front of everyone.

Extraordinary.

The company I worked for decided that they wanted to encourage more women to stay/return after maternity leave. A steering group was set up to look in to it. As someone relatively junior but pregnant I wanted to get involved. One (fairly senior) man was involved. Every time female members of the group identified a reason why women were leaving the business when they had children he shouted them down with a load of whataboutery. His answer to any challenges was that he, as a lone parent, knew how difficult it can be to juggle work and child care but the company were doing all they could to support- as evidenced by his rapid promotion. No mention was made of the fact that his version of 'lone parent' involved having his DD every other weekend (whilst his ex did the everyday running around and had to take time off if she was ill etc) and occasionally working from home for an afternoon so he could go to her school plays/parents' evening. He then appointed himself (as the most senior member of the group) to feedback on conclusions/observations.

Sadly I was too young/scared of damaging my own prospects to speak up

I went to a women in law event about data protection a few years back.

All of the attendees were women in law (barristers, solicitors, trainees, law students etc).

And then there was one man who was not a lawyer. He knew 0 about data protection. 0. Which is fine.

But guess who spent most time talking????

The man who wasn't a lawyer At a women in law event.

😡😡😡

Good friend in STEM industry. One other woman in her team of around 20 for context. My friend attended a conference and there was an award ceremony one night. A few winners were photographed and interviewed for a professional mag at the conference. My friend watched the interviews and the two men were asked all about their career development etc and gave very long uninterrupted monologues about the industry. The only woman to win something was asked where she bought her dress and apparently even in the write up comments were made about how lovely she looked . She tried to bring the conversation back to her career but got talked over by a man.

This thread shows a perfect example of just one of the many reasons I'm looking forward to Filia conference so.much.
No mansplaining. Yay.
Good to know that women speaking first encourages other women, I'll make sure to do that more often.
Luckily I work for a pretty diverse company and I've just been promoted to a training team of 4 women, will be interesting to see how it goes.

I had to do some work with a group of stakeholders in a make dominated industry recently. The lack of listening skills, patronising, mansplaining rants... I couldn't believe it.

2 hour icebreaker.....shudder.

That's really interesting food for thought about the "status hormone."

Yes I can be a real Bitch when I get going. Never been a people pleaser and never going to.

Simitra, it's great to be "that woman" or to have her in your breakout group; people behave much better around her!

Presenter: Does anyone have any questions?
Smug bloke: Well, not a question, more of a comment, really...
P: Right. So is there anyone with an actual question, then?
SB: 🤨

When I was a mature postgrad I noticed this in our discussion groups that one particular (younger) man would constantly talk over me. I took him on one side and told him that if he did it again I was going to pick him up in front of the group every EVERY time. He still did it a couple of times but after I began picking him up for it he soon stopped.

On another course we had a male attendee who rambled on and on and on such that others could hardly get a word in. To add insult to injury at the final discussion the (male) tutor accused me of dominating the conversation. I pointed out strongly that one person had in fact dominated the discussion and that if he did not withdraw the remark I would be making a formal discrimination complaint to the university authorities. Another woman piped up that she would be willing to join me in the complaint, and then another.

The tutor apologised and withdrew the comment, much abashed.

I think the answer is to highlight the situation, even at the risk of derailing the actual discussion. Sometimes you just need to lash back hard, even at the risk of getting the reputation for being "that" woman.

It's definitely a thing. I work with a male dominated service and they do love to tell me about Government finance (they're not Government and have no experience of finance). I now tell them that as I don't advise on the operational aspects of their work I'd appreciate the professional courtesy of not arguing about the application of 'Managing Public Money'.

Fruitinator
Wasn't there a thread some time ago where a man kept interrupting the woman talking about a technical subject? Then he said that Dr Z, had proved a theory which rebutted the woman's ideas. She explained that she was Dr Z and that he had totally misunderstood her paper!

At college we were a big group of people with a lot to get through, and one mature student interrupted the lecturer constantly to talk about what he'd learned from his job. After a few bouts of this I spoke to him in the break and told him that he was stopping the rest of us from learning and should stop it. He looked shocked, but I don't think he ever spoke again. The lecturer should have done it though.

As soon as I read this I thought it would be construction.

I get it all the time, constantly get mansplained to, talked over etc.

I call people out on it now, in a firm but polite way. I often take people aside after a meeting to explain why their behaviour was unnecessary. Most of them don't realise they are doing anything wrong and think they were 'backing me up'. I really don't need that.

The industry is changing but very, very slowly.

I had to leave Scouts as a volunteer as the men really didn't want to listen to your ideas when planning meetings. It stopped being fun just being talked over. Constantly trying to out do other units to be the best ever with random competitive crap. Younger men showing you the right way to pitch a tent (when you are 20 years older and been camping since the 70s). They just wanted you to be there so parents felt reassured there was someone of the caring gender to provide first aid and cook better camp dinners, and less likely to be a paedo.
I suppose Scouts is 'there thing', but seeing as they have a lot of girls in the movement and profess to be inclusive they really could try a bit harder to make us feel listened to and not there to make tea.
It was not fun at all, and so much worse than any work environment I've been in, and so I have now left. But they still message me for my advice which is then passed off as their own to parents.

@FannyCann
It was supposed to be an hour but he managed to get an 'encore' after lunch. In fact lunch was cut short a bit to do it

I am a corporate trainer in a field where 98% of staff are woman (except the senior managers , of course they’re all men). The three men I’ve had to train in the last six months have all been the same. (All struggled too, because they won’t listen as they already know everything and they therefore don’t need to listen to me.)