Man in meeting ignoring women

[sunshinepoppy]

I am a relatively new secondary school governor. I have attended a few meetings and during each meeting the (male) chair behaves as if he has not heard what any woman has said and then repeats what the woman has said as his own idea. The Headteacher is a woman and he did this to her several times.

e.g.
Sunshinepoppy: What colour hats do we need?
Headteacher?: Historically we need blue hats because the school started on a boat.
Chair: What you have to understand is historically because the school started on a boat we need blue hats.

It is baffling behaviour and very obvious that he only does this to women. He wants to meet me for a debrief and a review of how I am finding the new role and what I think of the meetings. Should I mention this to him? I am not sure that he is aware that he does it.
Has anyone encountered this before?

YABU: Do NOT mention it
YANBU: Mention it

I have a couple of men I have to work with who are notorious for this and it does work pretty well. Some men are quicker to pick up on it and alter their behaviour than others, and if there's a gap between meetings you'll like need to do it again at the beginning of each one, as they'll have slipped back into their previous pattern, but it's worth a try.

Why on earth doesn't the headteacher pull him up on it, though?

YANBU at all to try and tackle this in some way.

Are you meeting him on a one to one basis? I find that a bit odd. I was a parent governor in a primary school for 4 years and never met one to one with the Chair. Obviously, I talked to him and if there was a problem I could have spoken with him, can you ask the Head to be there with you? Pre my first meeting I met with him and the Head, but that was it.

You may find that if there are any women of a certain age on the committee, then one or two may have an ingrained acceptance of this sort of misogyny and won't even realise it is happening.

He probably doesn't even know he does it. At best, he'd say that he doesn't think everyone understood the comment, so he explained it (ie, he thinks it's hard to understand what a woman says, but he's super special and therefore translates into manspeech for the other people, meaning men).

If you can get the women, or some of them, to agree to work together, that's more likely to be successful. e.g. he repeats what the head said, you turn to head and say "thanks, Head, for your info, do you know how many hats we need and how much they cost?" so just pretend like he never spoke, and continue on the conversations as if he didn't say anything. If he asks why you didn't respond to him, point out that the Head was the most knowledgeable and appropriate person to speak to.

But I would NOT mention it at a 1-2-1. He is running that meeting so that you can tell him how wonderful he is. He won't react well to anything else. He probably wants to check that your brain is coping with all the complex business you have to think about, and if you've noticed how well he runs the meetings.

I wonder why you're meeting with him alone, too. I don't think that's usual is it?

I would point it out from a time wasting angle. I. E. "you spend time repeating what women say rather than just agreeing and moving on. It slows down the meeting and interrupts the flow of ideas" or something along those lines.

This happens so often - I'm a member of the exec board in the company I work for and for a while I was the only woman in the room with 7 men (there is another one now, thankfully). They would sometimes literally turn their backs to me and ignore everything I said or just repeat my words as their ideas. What worked (to some extent) was increasing my assertiveness up a notch: "As I said/suggested...". Once or twice I had to resort to: "I'm really glad you agree with my view/like my idea...".

If there are more women present, then what one of the other comments said (sorry, can't remember who said it) - try to organize to repeat the name of the idea originator several times before it gets appropriated by the man. Asking questions such as: "Mary, did I understand correctly that..." or "Mary, can you elaborate your idea on Z a bit?"

However, to answer your question - no, I don't think you should mention it to him directly. There is no way to phrase it that wouldn't rub him the wrong way and it is much more likely NOT to produce the desired result. Overall, high costs for a very low probability of success.

Who writes the minutes?
Can you get them to write them to say ‘headteacher said xyz which was then repeated by Chair’ - if that happens for ea h point that could be quite powerful.

Any chance of somebody else being chair?

Start to add ‘and please don’t repeat what I’ve just said, this meeting is going on for long enough without you repeating everything, just add any new or different information’. Or maybe ‘but I’m sure you’ll feel the need to summarise/repeat what I’ve just said again Chair - you need to be careful - one day you’ll forget to do it and people will think you didn’t hear it properly the first time around’ and so on. So if you flag the behaviour before it happens you might get him to become aware of it and stop? Might need to record the meeting to prove to him that he is doing this though!

Are the meetings minuted? Offer to take the minutes and when he repeats a something say "For the record, I've already captured that comment as coming from Headteacher (or whoever) earlier"

I’m afraid you have to grow a pair of ovaries about this, @sunshinepoppy and use them!

This blatant sexism will not stop unless you do do thing about it.

Why don’t you mention it as a round about way of asking him if he needs a hearing aid, as you’ve noticed him interrupting and repeating what the women say in the meetings. Ask him if he finds it difficult to hear women speaking?

Ask him if he needs extra supports on how to chair a meeting, as he seems very unskilled in doing so.. that ignoring the input of women at the meeting has been noticed multiple times by attendees and complaints have been made, and is absolutely unacceptable.

Let him know clearly that you will report him to the trust or whoever is in charge of the school, as this is a very grave matter, interfering with th row kings of the committee and also is illegal, and if he does not change his behaviour and stop behaving in this discriminatory way, against the best interests of the school, there will be consequences for him and the school.

Who takes the minutes of the meetings? They need to absolutely ascribe the comments to the women, and not just report in a general way..” it was said” etc, must be replaced with “WomanX said such and such”. Make sure everything is reported inaccurately in the minutes.

"That's an excellent suggestion, Mrs. Triggs. Perhaps one of the men would like to make it"

Sunshinepoppy: What colour hats do we need?
Headteacher?: Historically we need blue hats because the school started on a boat.
Chair: What you have to understand is historically because the school started on a boat we need blue hats.

That’s a bad example because it’s historical background not an idea. It is simply agreeing with and repeating the historical background that requires blue hats.

Oh he knows he does it.
'Yes Mansplainer Twat, Headteacher just said this'. Every time.

Thank you for man-splaining what Miss/Mrs/Ms X just told us.
Every - single -time.

I would definitely mention it to him directly and would not be afraid to piss him off and fall out with him over it, the stupid twat.

If he doesn't change his ways I'd get him removed as a governor.

Is his position volunteer, or is it yours?

why not just say something in the meeting - 'xx just said that, did you not hear?'

or if it continues, stop farting about and say 'why are you ignoring all the women here?'

nothing to lose except possibly a really crap volunteer.

In addition, in most board meetings the procedural rules are that members of the board address the chair with statements and then the chair says what goes for the entire board. Which could be repeating what a member said or something different.

So a question is asked of the board- what colour hats?
Board member- we need blue hats because x

Chair- speaking for entire board- we need blue hats because x

It’s not sexism based on your example, it’s procedural that whatever is said amongst board members is chit chat and the chair listens and picks whatever he/she thinks is the right answer and then says that as the final word as the chair.

I have met many people who are women who do this to other women are you sure it,s a sexism thing and not just being an idiot? Either way he needs to be pulled up on it.

hahaha Ringers you beat me to it
suggest you print out the cartoon and attach it to the agenda

Hopefully, as recommended by the DfE, a professional clerk writes the minutes. If they do, and they do it well, they won't be recording who said what all the way through. As much as possible minutes don't identify contributors, the regular exception to that being the Headteacher. They aren't a verbatim record. I train clerks...
So in this example I wouldn't even bother minuting the question because its not particularly challenging or strategic. I'd say something along the lines of "The Headteacher advised governors that traditionally hats were blue because the school started on a boat".

Your problem is the Chair and to remedy that get plans in motion to nominate someone else for election next time around. That normally happens in July or September.

Why is the chair a problem when he is obviously listening to women and concurring on their statements and ideas? The objection from the OP merely comes from not understanding how formal meetings work and what the role of a Chair is.

I've found it very common behaviour on the part of some men. Have a look on Youtube for videos of The Fast Show, sketches classed as "the woman whom men cannot hear". Exactly this scenario, over and over again. eg: