AIBU to be sick of privileged, older white men - join my tiny rant!

[windygallows]

Yup I'm probably unreasonable but I just want to put out there how sick I am of working with privileged, older white men - 40 plus and often 'posh'.

They dominate the upper echelons of the organization I work in as well as all the organizations I liaise with. Some are very good but many aren't due their seniority nor are they that smart - but they are well spoken and confident so whatever they say comes across as read. Their smuggery is driven by their high self regard and knowledge that they are 'where they belong'.

And despite their seniority they are often mollycoddled and supported by (usually female) PAs and completely enabled by wives at home who have been supporting them for 20+ years to the point that they take all the support for granted. They are so enabled that all they have to do is go to work and everything else is sorted for them - it's kind of a carefree oblivion they hold and thus they are completely oblivious to the challenges that others (e.g. women) face in their day to day lives.

I see this male privilege everywhere and everyday. In my boss who is completely self absorbed and with a family set up that enables and supports the fact that he is Number one. In other work scenarios, like when I was interviewed last week by a panel of important men + one woman from HR brought in to balance out the panel. I see 'important white men' driving fast in their cars, beeping up behind me in the fast lane as they need to go to their important meeting. Male privilege is everywhere and am sick of it.

From age 50 (my age) the number of women in the workforce starts to drop significantly and I'm wondering if it's because they're just sick of working with the men I describe!

I can't be the only person to feel this way. Please join me in this tiny rant!

[Holdingonbarely]

Sorry I didn’t mean it to come across as you don’t understand the maths!
I was just pointing out the obvious problems

[Karrwomannghia]

I know! No probs! If both can go part time and we childcare costs as a joint responsibility that’s the ideal I guess.

[Karrwomannghia]

Share not we

[Charley50]

@GalateaDunkel - throughout history, men have actively disallowed and excluded women from doing certain jobs and pastimes, and being education, that is why this country was built by men, not because they are innately better at building countries!

[EBearhug]

that is why this country was built by men, not because they are innately better at building countries!

Exactly. Many jobs in Britain had marriage bars for women in the 20th century - the last one ended in 1973, in part if the civil service. Men had the power because they set up the systems to ensure it kept others out. Plus most of them would not have been able to be so dedicated to their work if they didn't have other people, be it a wife or servants, providing meals, doing the laundry, cleaning the house, doing shopping, looking after children, etc. This is all work which helped build the country. It's just it's mostly unrecognised and usually unpaid. "Who cooked Adam Smith's dinner?"

And yes, some men have made contribution's to computing. We have probably all heard of Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee and so on. Far fewer will have heard of Grace Hopper, Dorothy Vaughan, Stephanie Shirley, Wendy Hall and all the other women that history has been trying to ignore, but their contributions have been just as important.

In my job (IT), the white male managers mostly don't even see sexism and racism, even when you point it out to them.

[SleightOfMind]

When I got my first senior role in my industry, I was the only person at my level in the company who was female, non white and state educated.
There were some white privately educated women above me.
That was just over a decade ago and the pace of change is glacial.
You’re not wrong OP and, although I don’t usually do brooches, I’d don a badge for this.

[staceyflack]

You are not alone in your observations.. watch 'Nanette' i think you can see it on netflix or youtube. Very powerful and moving. 🤔

[Seriousquestion09]

And now you find them on bumble posing as single trying to hook up with women in their 20s/30s.

I matched with one once (40+, white, barrister, top law firm) who claimed to be single and it was clear he was not and had fetish fantasies about “exotic” women... he was so entitled from our conversation.

I did my digging and his story checked out in terms of job and seniority but I was fairly sure he was married.

[speakout]

I must be lucky, I don't personally know of any privileged, older white men, unless you count my OH, but he worships the ground I walk on.
I choose to cut people like that out of my life.

[Hisaishi]

I would join in but I think it would send me into even more of a rage than I'm usually in.

But I agree.

[Polarbearflavour]

Yep - I used to be a PA in the City! Did have some lovely bosses though to be fair but the nice ones had “normal” routes and had worked their way up.

Was an EA in the Civil Service. My directors weren’t posh but there was a definite vibe of grey men empire building - an unpleasant place to work.

[Balloondog]

I would join in but I think it would send me into even more of a rage than I'm usually in.

But I agree.

^^

This, with bells on!

[SergeantPfeffer]

YADNBU OP, I previously worked in academic research and it was exactly like this. It’s one of the reason I (and most of my female contempories ) gave up an left. Now work in a female dominated industry and it’s awesome!

I do wonder if there’ll be a rebalance at some point- these companies must lose so much talent and that talent has to go somewhere. I keep thinking that if I was setting up a new company I would make it as family friendly as possible. Yes it would be a faff and require a bit more HR but think how many high quality staff you could recruit if you were more open to part time working. We see it at work when we advertise part time positions, we’re flooded with overqualified women. So much talent out there going to waste, it makes me

[GalateaDunkel]

throughout history, men have actively disallowed and excluded women from doing certain jobs and pastimes, and being education, that is why this country was built by men, not because they are innately better at building countries!

Oh i would agree with that.

Your argument seems to be that there should be a female Elon Musk, and that if there isn't then it's mens fault. For some reason white middle aged men are the only group about which it is "ok" to assume things about. Like they have only achieved anything in life because they are men and white, not because they might deserve it. Anti semites say the same thing about Jews.

Adam Smith was also enabled by the faceless men who build sewage systems and roads, printing presses, houses, railways etc etc etc - no one claims that they ought to get credit for his work though.

Anyway - i know no one agrees with me and that's OK. Most middle aged white men compete with each other, and generally to rise to the top of any successful organisation you have to have some talent. Why do you think organisations stuffed full of useless men are still in business ? There are lots of useless women as well, most of whom in this country are, shock horror, white, but there are useless black men and women too. When women appear to do well in "male dominated" fields they are fawned over - look at Elizabeth Holmes, so I don't fully buy into the idea that men completely refuse to budge up on the bench.

[IWriteCode]

When women appear to do well in "male dominated" fields they are fawned over - look at Elizabeth Holmes,

Two words: Hillary Clinton.

[SergeantPfeffer]

Haha! You’ve obviously never worked in academia galatea! Maybe a very small number of childless exceptional women are fawned over, but otherwise they’re treated like shit.
Do you have any male friends that have been told by their boss that having a child will end their career? Have you ever sat in a room with a group of men and had your ideas poo-pooed only to hear a male colleague repeat it to acclaim? Have you been left out of important networking opportunities after work because you’re not a man?
Yes men have to compete, but the bar for them is much lower.

[SergeantPfeffer]

I cannot be the only women to have experienced multiple versions of this

I’m no shrinking violet either!

[lisasimpsonssaxophone]

Galatea but people aren’t saying that those successful men don’t have talent or haven’t worked hard to be where they are. The point is that plenty of women or PoC have just as much talent and work just as hard but haven’t got a hope of being anywhere near as successful.

Male privilege/white privilege/straight privilege etc. don’t mean that someone has absolutely no struggles in life, or that they get everything they want automatically handed to them. It just means that they have never had their gender/race/sexuality act as a barrier to them achieving something.

I know people who were born into wealthy families, sent to expensive private schools, bankrolled through uni, given their first job through one of Daddy’s friends and handed a huge deposit for their first home by their parents, who will still say without a hint of irony ‘I worked hard for everything I have, nobody ever gave me any handouts!’ The implication being that the black woman from the council estate who worked nightshifts to put herself through uni could be a stockbroker too if she just ‘worked harder’. Once you start noticing those attitudes you realise they are everywhere. You can’t unsee it, and it is maddening.

[FaFoutis]

I work in academia. This isn't just older men, there's a whole new generation of young men who are the same.
I can't even think about this, it is utterly depressing.

[lisasimpsonssaxophone]

Oh and as for When women appear to do well in "male dominated" fields they are fawned over, I’m afraid that isn’t my experience at all. I used to work in a very male-dominated field and any woman who reached seniority was the subject of all sorts of rumours about how she’d slept her way there, or only got the job because of hiring quotas, or just generally bullied until they ended up leaving. I even started to feel it myself as I ‘rose through the ranks’. I don’t think there’s anything else we can say to convince you that this kind of shit goes on every day, though. If multiple women saying ‘this is our actual lived experience, we live through it every single day’ isn’t enough, then what is?

[MeganBacon]

Where I work there are a good number (not 50%, but not bad) of very senior women, and probably 50% middle management level female. HR have worked hard to implement this - we all go on bias training, flexible working offered to all (men routinely take this up to do the school run/childcare), at the most senior level I've seen men and women go to a 3 or 4 day week to demonstrate that fitting work around family (or for any other reason) will not jeopardise your career. HR argues that this improves the diversity of the pool from which we hire, and although we don't pay the highest salaries (although still good), raises the overall quality of workforce. I do not work in HR but would love to see any HR mumsnetters advise readers how to speak to HR to encourage these sorts of changes? I think the effective practical way to address male/female inequality in the workplace is to target men to work flexibly so they can do childcare which worked in Finland decades ago.

[GalateaDunkel]

The point is that plenty of women or PoC have just as much talent and work just as hard but haven’t got a hope of being anywhere near as successful

White males are the least likely to go onto to further education in this country, you have more chance of going to university if you are a white female (1st by some margin) or if you are asian or black than if you are a white male.

Things are changing but you can see what the constant insistence that it is not changing fast enough has done already. Give it a generation or two and we could be storing up real problems for ourselves as a society - look at Trump.

[lisasimpsonssaxophone]

Have you been left out of important networking opportunities after work because you’re not a man?

Sorry, too many posts from me but I’m on a roll now. This is so fucking true. The number of times I’d go away to a conference or a site visit and turn up in the morning to find my customers and colleagues all with raging hangovers, having ‘bonded’ the night before at drinks I wasn’t invited to.

[morningtoncrescent62]

Now work in a female dominated industry and it’s awesome!

Details, please, SargeantPfeffer - I want to go and work in a female dominated industry but I can't find one! My organisation is 70% women so you might think female dominated, but women are massively over-represented in the lower grades and in part-time and precarious roles (fixed-term and zero hours contracts). The higher up you go, and the more secure you get, the higher the proportion of men. The tiny number of very senior women are used to 'prove' that any woman can do it. My grade (about two-thirds up the structure) has a fair number of women in it, including ethnic minority and working-class women, mostly keeping the show on the road, and unlikely to get any further. Above that it's mostly white men and no-one quite knows what they do. And you're right, they have mostly women PAs enabling their work.

[darceybussell]

I work in a very large professional firm. There are around 40 partners in my office and one is a woman. We have got diversity initiatives coming out of our ears. It's making no difference. We have had legal equality since the 70s but we have got nowhere.

I'm involved in a lot of the diversity stuff and to be honest all it has done is depress me and made me realise that I have absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting to the top. The only way to get there is to impress the white men who are already there, who invariably promote in their own image. We are trying to change their opinions but they just don't see it as a problem and on the whole don't really believe that they have unconscious bias. They will all nod along in meetings and say all the right things about how diversity is important, but when it comes to promotions it's the same old clones every time. It's not a meritocracy, it's nowhere near one, and the more I get involved with trying to change it the more I just feel like giving up.