To ask for your stories of sexism at 'corporate/professional' dinners

[PurpleGreenWhite]

In the light of the story about women being sexually harassed at a men only charity ball - AIBU to ask for your stories of sexism/inappropriate behaviour at 'corporate/professional dinners'.

I'd like to highlight that the extreme behaviour reported above is part of a continuum of #everydaysexism within the corporate world.

See also thread in FWR - which is discussing the recent men only charity ball

I've name changed for this - and suggest others may want to in order to keep their professional life separate from any usual MN name.

Year: 2017

Context: Large marquee type Christmas dinner event for multiple businesses (I attended as part of a mid sized accountancy firm)

Issue: Scantily glad women dancing in a sexual manner on a raised platform - in costumes which were basically bra and knickers with sheer material attached to the top of the knickers.

Issue: Male employees gawping at the above.

Issue: Silent auction being advertised by women walking around with signs held above their head. Very senior male employee says 'There's girl's for sale over there. Ha Ha etc'

I will add some more lowlights from other dinners shortly....

dm...

A colleague of mine was raped following a drink/dinner over-night stay in a hotel. I was called a mongrel (for context I'm mixed race).

dm, yep. Pathetic.

VladmirsPoutine - that's awful :-(

I feel that there is a veneer of 'oh yes we can have equality in the office' but once not in the office the same men can be disgusting and abusive....

Year: approx 2011

Context: professional society dinner

Issue: President starts his remarks along the lines of 'my speech will be just like a ladies skirt should be - long enough to cover the subject matter but short enough to be interesting.'

Totally inappropriate - the audience was sadly only about 25% women.

Year: approx 2012

Context: professional society dinner

Issue: male former sportsman speaker makes incredibly misogynistic speech including crude joke about 'taking his wife up the Shard oh ha ha yes just clarifying I mean up to the top of that wonderful new erection - sorry building in London'. Other lowlights included belittling 'birth plans' - incredibly cruel when the chosen charity had a link to stillbirth FFS.

Mumsnet will be able to confirm that I am a long standing poster who was around at the inception of the Feminism boards!

They know my RL identity and they know I am not a journalist!

dm, yep. Pathetic.

No. The tide is turning. Women need to speak up and tell their stories. Even if it goes into the DM then good. Women need to shout and shout and be heard and read wherever they can.

Client says to me that lobbying isn't like the old days where you could take a politician to a strip club etc and get them drunk.

Well thank f""knits not as bad as it used to me.

And at that. It is pathetic to think that anything you write online is somehow personal! The OP isn't looking for stories about when different sex siblings shared beds or some such. This is an important issue. I can't understand the pearl-clutching DM-fearing MNetters that get worked up about journalists. This is the internet and if you don't understand how it works then you shouldn't post at all.
I'm very empathetic to those that need privacy but still need to consult the MN collective but the subject matter of this thread requires that it be shared widely. #MeFUCKINGtoo.

Law firm I used to work for - open secret there was a top ten list of best boobs in office circulated by male solicitors on a daily basis (including what they'd like to do to that person).

Clients taken to lap dancing clubs with private dances.

Apart from the obviously horrific harrassment that was going on at this dinner, what I can't get over is why so many men thought it was acceptable to attend a dinner like this.

And why the organisers thought it would be OK in this day and age that only men would be appropriate for such a charity event.

(I get that a lot of them probably wanted it to be like this sadly)

Thankfully, in my own industry, I haven't encountered anything like this. Or at least not since the early 80s.

VladmirsPoutine yeah but built up to be knocked down in that rag. people are being played for juicy gossip. why do they need details? just a yes, me too will suffice

1989. Rotary club dinner. About 250 v drunk men on tables of 10. I was waitressing 4 tables as were my friends. The men were very drunk and a little leery.

Halfway through some women from the Ladies Circle turned up dressed as French maids with pink cake shaped like a pair of tits. It even had cherry nipples.

That appeared to be a green light. I was then groped by more than one man and one asked me “Why don’t you look more like that?” Referring to ladies circle.
I told him I was 14.

Similar things happened to my underage friends who were working that night too. It was a horrible atmosphere.

quilpie - haven't you heard of good old fashioned feminist consciousness raising. That's how the 1970s feminists got things done - by discussing and sharing experiences!

MN has got a great record of these types of threads - were you around for the ' 'small' sexual assaults' thread.

Women need to work together on this. Join the dots around this behaviour. Organise and campaign. Do I sound any less like a DM journo now FFS

Law Society president apologises for sexist joke about Mishal Hussain

Up on stage in front of a captive audience of lawyers of which there are less senior women lawyers says:

“Thank you all for coming. If none of you had come, it wouldn’t have been any good. It would have just been me and Mishal on our own. Which, actually…”

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/24/sexual-harassment-rampant-hospitality-industry-unite-survey-finds
Sexual harassment rampant in hospitality industry, survey finds
Exclusive: nine out of 10 workers say they have experienced abuse, research by Unite reveals

guardian article on wider subject.

Tech Awards dinner last year

"scantily clad women doing a showgirl routine took to the stage of the Digital Entrepreneur Awards"

Wow so much for encouraging women in tech!

From a friend:

Last year:

Annual conference - after dinner entertainment - a Dolly Parton impersonator/singer - innuendo in the build up to her act (it was a surprise). Then her talking about her assets in front of the mainly male audience - going table to table 'flirting' with the men.

Totally inappropriate in a professional environment.

In about 2001, a male colleague who I'd not met before repeatedly reaching for my name tag in order to grab my boob at a Christmas party.

In my last job, where I worked for 10 years, we had a very senior male colleague who was well known for being completely inappropriate with female staff. At every works do he would corner young, shy, female staff (he was in his 60s) and press them for details of their sex life etc. He'd also pressure them into sharing a taxi with him and going to a very posh club he owned for drinks with him. What was really scary is that years earlier, when the company was smaller, he dealt with all HR type matters.

Being laughed at for not wanting to snort coke off the platinum credit card of CFO. This is a British retail giant & the man was a sleazy cunt. I was 22, engaged and perfectly happy with my prosecco, I didn't need to do hard drugs and shag the boss to feel good about myself. I was hounded and laughed at until I left the event

I worked in the city for 15 years for large /old firms (from my early 20s). The bad behaviour I saw was drunken/coked up young men and women getting loud and obnoxious (with the odd fist fight).

Most of the men I worked for/with were ‘good old chaps’ who would buy you a few gins, talk about work then pour you into a taxi on expenses. They younger guys were mostly geeky. The odd sleazy guy would be hauled to HR (usually run by women) and given a boot up the backside or asked to resign. And this was mostly letching, hanging around the desks of female staff, making creepy comments.

The only ones that made my skin crawl were very rich senior bods/owners of small businesses who weren’t handsy but known for bringing prodtitutes to the office.

I’ve worked/attended enough functions and been mostly a bit bored by the blokes discussing their new kitchens.

I’ve no doubt bad behaviour went on but it seems far worse now than ever.

@PurpleGreenWhite

Mumsnet will be able to confirm that I am a long standing poster who was around at the inception of the Feminism boards!

They know my RL identity and they know I am not a journalist!

We can indeed confirm this. The OP is a very long-term member of the site, so we've no reason to doubt her motives here.

Not just work do’s, but work in general.

Male boss used to ask me to wear a particular outfit, if he was expecting clients. At 17, I did. I was always asked to bring in the tea, and comments would ensue like ‘boss man, where’d you find this pretty young thing then’ ‘is she for hire’ ‘she can do more than make tea surely’ bum slaps, asking me to bend down and pick something up they’d dropped.

This is just one example.

I cannot get across how angry I am over the comments today about how women are the ones at fault, they should man up (ironic) and they have free will to leave etc.

Why isn’t it the man’s fault for exploiting in the first place?!