To be asked to take minutes?

[Bottlesoflove]

I went to a monthly meeting I had not attended before, I am in a professional role and I work in a team of three, with two other male colleagues (all of the same "rank"). All three of us were there. My boss said the secretary couldn't come so could I take minutes? I had never been to one of these meetings before so not aware of the "format" they usually take, plus I have never taken minutes before, plus I didn't know the names of many of the people in the room... so I said "oh I don't know, not sure I would do a great job, maybe x or y could do it?" (My two other male colleagues - both been in the job slightly longer and would have attended this meeting before). At which point my boss said begrudgingly "don't worry I'll do it" and made me feel bad for making a senior do it. My two male colleagues just sat there.

Am I reading too much into this, or is there a hint of everyday sexism here? I was one of the only females there. It seemed he would rather make a big point of doing it himself than asking another professional male to do it, even though they were junior to him...🤔

So I am being precious, but you admit that you have also deferred minute-taking to someone you thought would be better equipped to do it in that instance? 🤔

I'm with you. You don't invite a junior doctor so some kind of meeting about process and proceedure to have them take the minutes, you're presumably wanting their attention, consideration, expertise in patient care and thoughtful responses.
Even if they are a randomuntrainedcuntowner

And basically you are also agreeing that minute taking can be difficult and can be just as effectively done by men so agreeing with me and the majority. So again not sure how I have been precious! 😣

Totally sexist. I used to work in a role where a rota was set up to share reception duties (for when the receptionist wasn't at work, as she was part time). I used to appear on it a lot more than my male counterpart (up to 3 times a week, him perhaps every other week). He had an identical role to me.

It only occurred to me after I'd left that it was sexist, that it was assumed perhaps as a woman I was a better 'fit' answering phones and greeting people on reception, and my male colleague's time was too important for these duties.

I think you're making a bit of a meal of the fact that you couldn't possibly be expected to know how to take minutes because you're a medic not a secretary. I used to take minutes for school council meetings as a sixth-former and I certainly hadn't had any secretarial training. (I also worked in a few quite senior PA roles without any secretarial training, but that's probably missing the point of the thread...)

However, I totally agree that there was no apparent reason why either of your male colleagues couldn't have taken the minutes, and that as they had been in the practice for longer it would have made more sense for one of them to do so. So yes, there probably was an element of sexism.

If I am the only woman attending a meeting with a group of people for the first time I won't take minutes or serve drinks.

I've been given this advice, too, OvertiredandConfused. Women in professional positions should never ever serve the drinks, even when it would be easy to do so - they then get typecast as either Secretary, or - worse - Mummy.

I am in a secretarial role and have been known to dive to the tea tray first if I see a more senior but more inexperienced woman heading that direction to pass the drinks out - I am already The Secretary (of sorts), so it can't hurt my already-low status, but I don't want it to hurt hers. Then I give her the Don't Serve The Drinks, Ever pep talk afterwards, in private!

I had a meeting this morning with an insurance broker. He was typing up his quotation on an ipad and said 'ooh I always feel self conscious typing in front of you ladies, you would have done typing at school and are probably so much better at it'

I was born in the 1980's not the bloody 1950's my face --->

Even as small talk I can't understand why anyone would think this was worth saying..

Working in a male-dominated industry, it's surprising how deeply anchored the "woman=secretary" assocation can be.

I'm a university lecturer, academic head of a teaching programme and the only person in our departement doing this job who is not male. All my interactions with the students involve expertise of mine that adminstrative personnel would not have, and the students have never seen me doing anything secretarial because I'd make an awful secretary and the actual secretary is brilliant at her job. Despite this, students regularly address me as the course secretary, which has never happened even once to any of my male colleagues, who are all less experienced in this role than me.

It's unconcious bias, we're all guilty of it, but that's precisely why it's important to pull people up on it. They're not conciously sexist, they're conditionned by what they see around them (all the adminstrative personnel is female, very few of the lecturers are) and they're mortified when they realise what they've done - hopefully next time they'll be a bit more careful about their assumptions.

Not really - I don't think most people would expect a male junior doctor to be knowledgeable in taking minutes for a meeting, or get upset that they had never had a need to do it or see it as a skill they needed to acquire. Maybe I am a bit dense or incompetent, but I felt that task was out of my comfort zone in that situation, so I said so. Not because I felt it was beneath me, but because it was something I have never done before. It was only afterwards I started to think about it.

If I am the only woman attending a meeting with a group of people for the first time I won't take minutes or serve drinks

Brilliant advice. Love it

'Also, how embarrassed would your boss have been if the other two also said no. It would make him look and feel like he hadn't got a grip on his workforce.'

Then he should have done his job and arranged secretarial cover, not put someone on the spot whose never done, has no idea how to do it and doesn't even know the names of the committee members . It's not the OP's remit to arrange secretarial coverage.

I would have said no in this situation too.

Not necessarily sexist though, I'm on a team of three men and two women - we all take turns in chairing meetings and taking minutes. Very different industry though.

I loathed being asked to take minutes when I first started. Then one day I started typing personal notes on my tablet while a meeting was being held and it was spotted and I was asked if I could turn them into minutes. By the end of the meeting, I'd got them all done and ready to upload/email.

It means I now know exactly what is going on. Comes in handy. Especially as it's the senior management meeting and I am not expected to do them for other meetings.

Now if someone wants me to make tea, they'd get a very different answer!! My mother was a secretary and made it very clear from the word go (back in the astonishingly sexist 50s) that she was never, ever going to make tea. It was even joked about at her retirement do (and she kept her word).

Of course it's fucking sexist.

This thread is making me snigger.

Due to circumstances I have worked in a very wide variety of roles, from cleaner to board level, including minute-taking roles. I would absolutely agree that there can be sexism at play here, but what I see here, and what I have seen time and time again in many walks of life is a bunch of senior people, men and women, who say 'oh I couldn't possibly take the minutes, I would be so rubbish at it', the implication being that they are only good at Very Important Things and making Very Important Decisions and they need a host of minions to help them with basics.

There is some skill in minute taking but it is hardly rocket science, and for anyone, man or woman, who is literate and can use a computer, to claim they can't take the minutes is pretty pathetic tbh. You write down what happens then type it up.

I work for a pretty massive company where women have leadership positions in most levels, including the very top exec roles. It wouldn't ever be expected that women make the tea, play mother, take minutes just because they're women. It needs to be this way in every organisation.

The people telling you what a useful skill it would be and how far it would help you progress up the organisation don't all seem to have got that you're a doctor and it's not really relevant to you OP.

FWIW I'm a professional in an office based environment, with a bit of clerical experience too. I've done minutes both as a trainee in my professional role and, more recently, as a senior person in a more egalitarian organisation where we had rotas for who would lead and who would minute. I'd say there's some truth to both the argument that it stops you from fully participating and the argument that it gives you power. I've experienced both. Depends on the meeting, the people, the dynamics.

But I think you did the right thing. There's always the worry you were picked as a cunt owner but even if you weren't, you were the least qualified to do the job. And the poster who told us this sexism thing has gone too far was being unintentionally ironic...

You're so NOT being precious OP - I got stuck in the role of minute taker when in a junior role and although it was good exposure to more senior meetings, it also meant that I had to leave the area to secure a promotion because everyone saw me as admin rather than skilled at my job. Frustratingly the guy who took over minutes from me when I left found it a really good springboard to promotion because he'd had "so much experience".

you did the rigtht thing. no need to do anything more.

every time a woman says "oh sorry but no" an angel gets her wings :)

...what I see here, and what I have seen time and time again in many walks of life is a bunch of senior people, men and women, who say 'oh I couldn't possibly take the minutes, I would be so rubbish at it', the implication being that they are only good at Very Important Things and making Very Important Decisions and they need a host of minions to help them with basics.

There is some skill in minute taking but it is hardly rocket science, and for anyone, man or woman, who is literate and can use a computer, to claim they can't take the minutes is pretty pathetic tbh. You write down what happens then type it up.

This is exactly what I was trying to say.

Definitely everyday sexism. For those saying that the OP was being precious, I totally disagree. If you work in a male-dominated field, the quiet, unquestioned assumption that any women in the workplace will do the "helpful" things is a killer.

I work in a male dominated field, and after a false start for my first couple of years (I had a "mentor" who offered "helpful" suggestions like: "To get ahead, you need to be known for something. Maybe you could bring something home-baked in on Fridays, and you could be known as the one who brings in biscuits" and "Don't be afraid to wear clothing to the office that you might worry is too revealing. Men will be too distracted by your assets to disagree with what you're saying"), I developed a firm policy of not agreeing to do minutes or coffee at meetings unless I was already known to the participants in the meeting as a serious, capable member of the team.

Minute taking is important, and, like C8H10N4O2 noted above, once my role is clearly defined, I often like taking minutes as it allows me to control the information flows coming out of the meetings, but before then, it remains a big no-no for me. I get mistaken for a secretary often enough as the only woman on my team, I'm not going to do anything to reinforce that idea.

And for OP's boss to actually say that "the secretary couldn't come so could [she] take minutes" sounds like clear but subtle sexism. In any case, anyone in the meeting would have heard that and juxtaposed secretary and OP in their mind and made their own unconscious associations.

Well done, OP, your response was perfect and you should not feel bad that your boss then took the minutes.

YANBU at all.

I can well believe there is misogyny (let's call it what it is) at play. I work in a university in a humanities subject and when I talk to my colleagues in STEM subjects, they often report similar experiences. It is a very different culture where I am, as we are about 60/40 female/ male and the HoD is a woman. I think this sort of thing is still a problem in the sciences and good for you for challenging it, even if you didn't mean to!

Absolutely everyday sexism and well done for saying something. Hopefully the others in the room will think about it more and realise the sexism present too.

Really think it depends on the industry and company in question.

I work in a very male-dominated industry and have certainly paid my dues as a junior in terms of taking minutes, helping with general admin and making the tea (remembering the time a former Chief Exec walked down two levels of the company and passed a full floor of male members of staff to utter the immortal line "we're having our board meeting and need a girl to come and make the tea" c2009 not c1909 in case you were wondering)

My current company is very conscious that women are under-represented and although I'm now on the senior management team, my MD always ensures that in a meeting with new people etc I am never asked to take minutes or make the tea. He and all the other (male) members of the SMT will offer themselves as they recognise that it would impact how I am perceived.

Couple of notable exceptions, a supplier came in for a meeting with me and our design team and gave me his and his colleagues' names upon seating. When I looked at him blankly he said "Oh, I assumed you were here to take the minutes" - his colleagues visibly cringed

Second exception, in a meeting I was running, one of our new estimators asked me to go and print him off copies of a document I had sent around that he'd forgotten to print. According to my MD my icy stare was response enough

Depending on the situation I don't think it's being precious. It's being aware of the dynamic and responding to that. I'm happy to take minutes, make teas etc and muck in with everyone else; but not when it's going to lead to me being treated less favourably than it would my male colleagues. It's not right, it's not fair and I'm not going along with it to avoid 'making a fuss'!

Sorry, in my rant I forgot to answer the OP!

YANBU