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.

So you work in the nursery industry, which I assume encompasses medium sized manufacturing businesses, distribution companies and actual nursery operators, which are often small businesses? In what is probably the most provincial area of the U.K. (in my opinion, before anyone living in NI gets annoyed with me)?

And you know that most of these business breakfast type events are aimed at selling services, disguised as networking?

And that in most areas, this type of event usually attracts the same people every time? The type who can find time to go to multiple business breakfasts?

In which case,m you can see that you’d be at high risk of encountering the type of men you describe, right?

If your question is, would you see the type of men you describe at similar events in other parts of the country, the answer is maybe, where it’s an industry involving small to medium businesses in a relatively trad sector. But, you must see that they are not typical of the men dominating the world of business.

With you, BabyOnBoard90.

I'm the scruffiest female in the room typically, I suppose: quite scruffy.
Since I can't care about who is well-groomed, I will think about bad speakers. Can definitely think of some bad female speakers.

I barely know any vegans, they seem as often male as female, though, or maybe slightly more males (idealists).

I don't want people to be invested in my own child count so I don't have systematic info about who among senior colleagues has kids or not.

As ever, MNers track a lot of info about other people. I sure hope no one is tracking my info.

10-12 years ago I was on a course with a quite senior civil servant from NI. I fully believed her reports of sexism in her office. The men assuming she was in the meeting to take the minutes or make the tea sort of thing.

I work in and around that sort of world and attend those sort of events as part of my job. I'm in the North.

I would say the picture you have painted was probably true 10 years ago but it is changing and has certainly moved since Covid.

There are still those sorts of men about I don't deny, but I see lots and lots of women at events and at a well run event everyone makes an effort. There is also an effort made with catering (if you even get catering these days as everything has become so expensive), the last event I was at had vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options.

There are some groups, where those attitudes do seem to prevail, the ones starting at 6.00 am, which tend to be more akin to a cult in my opinion but they are easy to avoid.

The ones who are very much dying out thank god are the old guard. The ones who were the pompous old farts who had wives at home running everything which allowed them to be still running meetings and puffing up their own importance at 7.00 in the evening. They were often worse.

Well I currently work for two of the worst male managers I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across. No idea how they got there, it certainly wasn’t through hard work. They are rude, belligerent, lazy, unintelligent, they don’t communicate even the simplest information, mostly because they think it’s funny to watch people fuck up due to lack of insight. It’s been horrific. I’m getting out in ten days time!

Your OP is so full of stereotypes that I’ll take it with a shovel of salt

If you're being repeatedly out manoeuvred by mediocre men then you might need to work on your social skills, OP. A lot of women are great at the academic bit but seem to realise that you need to be more than 'a brain'.

These men may seem 'mediocre' but they know how to play the game and they're doing it successfully. I think that's often a difference between the sexes. Women work hard for validation but men often don't give a monkeys as long as they get the fat paycheck. Obviously this is a generalisation.

We had a senior manager who ate like an animal, worse actually, mouth open chomping, slurping, sucking, swapping fork for hands.
Everyone in the room was aghast. It was like watching a hyena tearing the guts out of some animal.
How do you get to manhood thinking this is ok. Oblivious to the stares and tuts.

It is a generalisation, but unfortunately your post also suggests a lifetime under the patriarchy and a lot of (unintentional) internalised misogyny.

Women shouldn't have to play the 'mediocre men games' to get ahead. The workplace shouldn't reward that. But it still does. Women dumb themselves down and have to waste energy trying to be 'likeable' to the mediocre men, so they are allowed in to play the mediocre man games, and have a chance to get ahead. Is that really what you want?

I hear you! I used to work in cybersecurity and was almost always the only woman. I was ignored, talked over, on one occasion handed an empty coffee cup as if I was the waitress. I used to speak at international conferences, almost always the only woman speaker. There were always more questions for me than any other speaker - not because my presentation was more interesting, but because the majority of the audience wanted to ask questions designed to trip me up. PhD students were the worst. And I knew they were PhD students because they always started their question with “I’m a PhD student at x university…”

This is so familiar I almost thought you were my colleague! But none of us are planning to leave; I'll definitely outlast manager.

My profession is dominated by women and there are plenty of mediocre ones.

However, those few men we do have are more likely to be in senior roles. IME this is due to confidence and the fact that their careers aren't compromised by having children. They don't take breaks for maternity leave or take time off when their kids are sick or leave early to collect kids from nursery.

But you see it on mn all the time. Women who are SAHM or work pt because their dh's career is more important or pays more. Or they can't bear to return to work after maternity leave.

Women shouldn't have to play the 'mediocre men games' to get ahead. The workplace shouldn't reward that. But it still does. Women dumb themselves down and have to waste energy trying to be 'likeable' to the mediocre men, so they are allowed in to play the mediocre man games, and have a chance to get ahead. Is that really what you want?

There's no point. Women are held to different standards. If you behave like a mediocre man, they will recognise the mediocrity, even while they ignore it in men.