To be dismayed by the lack of real effort men have to make - and they still manage to succeed

[thecatsmum12346]

Ok this should probably be on the feminist forum but interested to hear your thoughts here.
I was at a business breakfast this morning (Northern Ireland) aimed at helping SMEs gain funding. early start…
When we got there……
The Room was full of men (only about 2 other women there). All the speakers were men. The room smelt like it was full of men. Most of them were very mediocre speakers. Some couldn’t really be bothered dressing in a professional manner (covered in dandruff etc).
The food, organised by a man was sausage baps and bacon baps.
I asked for some bread without a sausage so I could put my banana in it was was told ‘no’, ‘take yer sausage out and give it to your husband to eat’!!!
The whole thing had hilarious David Brent vibes. At one stage my husband asked me if I had seen Fitchy around! (Of ‘while you’re down there love’ fame)
OK. So, Aibu to be dissatisfied with the fact that many men simply get away with making very little effort.? And still dominate the world of business? Or is this just a Northern Ireland thing? There loads of ‘women in business forums’ but it’s a pity women aren’t more involved ‘organically’ in all spheres of business at senior levels. A youngish woman came in after 9am (missing the baps!). She probably did the school run first.

You’re not going to let this lie are u? I’m away to bed. I’m not in the habit of making sexist stereotypes. I make observations. The post was reasonably light hearted. If you reply to me again I’ll not respond. Let it lie please

And yet you have made an entire post based on sexist stereotypes.Room smelt of men etc.
No, it's not the Northern Ireland I recognise either.

But that was my point. The whole thing was stereotypical and ‘sexist’. If I annoyed you with my comment about the woman coming in late it was unintentional …that in itself was stereotypical.

Good Lord, what a strange response.

I've been perfectly polite in pointing out that your 'go to' assumption isn't particularly helpful to younger women in the workplace.

You're certainly not the only one who might leap to a 'childcare issues' assumption, rather than a perfectly plausible and all too common 'traffic/public transport' problem.

That in itself is fairly sexist as you don't even know if she has children but you've assumed.

I'm not trying to start an argument, but it should (hopefully) be food for thought.

I certainly don’t want to start an argument either. Oddly that’s often what happens when someone puts up a post.

Well yes, I can't help thinking if you had put this on a feminist forum you might've been pulled up by harsher people than I.

Ok that’s me told off. It was meant to be a humorous post. Please accept my apology

😆 I've lost count of the amount of mediocre men I've encountered, full stop! I really have no patience for men anymore, I just smile, nod my head & walk away. They're all totally useless & over rated..

Worst I've ever seen was a Director of HSE in an engineering firm. Big job. Tall man, looked awesome in a suit, awesome in a hard hat.

He couldn't do that job for shit. Fucking useless. But he looked the part. His back looked the part on the way out the door too

But you've made a stereotypical assumption about the 'youngish woman' who came in at 9am, having probably done the school run.

^

I think, as women, we cn give her the benefit of the doubt.

We're allowed.

I've been to plenty of shit business events organised by women, and met plenty of women who had no business being in, well, business. I don't see it as a men vs women thing, both have their fair share of undeserving bores.

@TeapotTitties making an assumption that a young woman arriving after 9 might have been doing the school run isn't what holds women back in their careers.

What holds them back is the assumption that a woman who has to do the school run doesn't have equal rights to, or capacity for, career progression. Your view that we shouldn't highlight the fact that women often have greater caring roles than men is, unfortunately, part of what holds women back in their careers.

Workplaces should be recognising that equality in domestic caring still has a long way to go, and should be making adjustments to ensure that they are not rewarding men for continuing to do less domestic caring, and penalising women for having to pick up the slack and do more of it.

Breakfast meetings and after work drinks functions are often seen as key networking and career progression activities, but statistically it is far more likely that the men in the office will be able to attend them than the women.

The fact is women do take on the bulk of childcare and are expected to fit their schedules around that. Much better to acknowledge that and highlight the inequalities it creates imo.

I agree. My background is financial services and my occupation is accountant, I am semi retired now but was reasonably senior up until a few years ago.

There is no doubt that it is harder for women to progress and there are fewer women in senior positions. But I find the OPs description a caricature of real life. My breakfast breakfasts have served a variety of healthy and less health options, speakers are prepared, nobody is covered in dandruff.

Yes men have it easier, but the idea that any and every man will succeed just by turning up is not correct.

*business breakfasts

Yep, schmoozing with the boss > skills.

These types hate WFH too where they actually have to do their own work and not get by by being visible in the office and delegating to some sap.

Really silly thread, this. Where's the female Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg etc etc?! What, did they all bluff their way to success too?!

@TrishM80 I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make.

But I think it is pretty clear that a person with a brilliant mind, an out-of-the-ordinary professional demeanour, and no interest in pleasing and placating the people around them is far more likely to be tolerated and successful in business if they are male rather than female.

Women almost always need to be 'likeable' to be promoted. History has proven time and again that that criterion does not apply to men.

Women only seem to take issue where they are the minority and never the majority.

Strangely they never complain about why there aren't more women working on garbage collection, or construction or general physical/ manual labour. Why don't they complain there aren't more men working in nursery or primary schools, or as nurses/midwives etc?

I mean the dandruff thing isn't really their fault they can't just stop producing it. The bread thing is bizarre but I've also never seen anyone wrap a banana in bread so they probably thought you were the weird one.

I work in a female dominated sector of a male dominated sector. They've learned to adapt to us pretty well. They've had to.

@thecatsmum12346 ooh, I work in that industry too! But in the Uk. In the most part I love it, but there is still a lot of laddish behaviour that goes on! In fact, I think I can imagine one of the men you talk of…. One of the biggest distributors in Ireland?! I sat next to him at a meal in K&J and couldn’t believe how much the guy could drink and talk 😂

I didn’t like to say, but I also thought asking for bread to put a banana in at a catered business function was a bit weird and I felt embarrassed for OP. If you don’t want what is on offer then decline and eat your banana later.

It's not just business. I have always worked in the public sector, in Health and more recently Education. Women significantly outnumber men in both of these sectors but senior management is dominated by men.

Having spent the last few years working in schools it never ceases to amaze me how many likeable but incompetent men manage to not only keep hold of senior leadership roles, but also continue to climb the ladder. These men turn up to meetings unprepared, they miss deadlines and don't respond to emails, they shy away from making touch decisions or having difficult conversations because they want to be everyone's mate.

Women in SLT are consistently held to a higher standard in Education, and often expected to pick up the slack and repair the damage caused by their under-performing, over-promoted male colleagues. Then when they inevitably burn-out it is seen as a sign of weakness, that they obviously weren't cut out for senior management. Friends and colleagues who work in schools across different areas have noticed the same pattern. I'm sure its present in other sectors too.

In my current school, there are four women on the Senior Leadership Team. Not one of them has dependent children. The men on SLT? They all have dependent children, but also have wives at home who work very PT in highly flexible roles or not at all.

I attend business breakfasts around 3/4x a year. I work in finance and we use these to get various clients together and share upcoming changes or any trends the clients may be seeing in service etc. Always well catered in lovely hotel settings and thankfully the chat is relevant and insightful

Also the male to female split has improved its now more 60/40 than 80/20