Being mistaken for the PA

[BingBoings]

Twice this week I have been in email chains, where I have been asked to supply dates for a meeting.

The reason for this has in both cases, I assume, is that I am the only female name in the thread.

Both situations have seen large numbers of clients and colleagues copied in on emails where… I am asked if I can help give times when my male colleagues are free. I am usually senior to them.

Am I the only person this happens to? I find it half hilarious, and half embarrassing… A few months ago I was asked in a meeting if I could do coffees when I walked in…

i have no issue with managing my own diary nor is there any issue with being a PA… it’s more that I don’t see men having this issue…!

Engaging with Mark is pointless. I've been on a few threads where he pops up with comments that are at best clueless and misogynist, or purposefully inflammatory at worst. Just ignore him. He wants us all frothing.

whimpering on MN about how your lack of status or self esteem is all down to sexism
Just to clarify further, as you really don't seem to "get it", this thread is not about women's lack of status or lack of self esteem.
It is about how (some) men so frequently fail to recognise the actual status of the women in the room. Because these men make sex-based assumptions.

I quite enjoy pointing out all the errors of logic and reasoning in his posts. He appears to try so hard, but his arguments are so weak. I think he genuinely believes what he writes, which is quite sad.

But I take your point. It just clogs up the thread and I am wasting my own time.

It's happened to me quite often. Being asked to take the minutes, find room bookings, make tea etc. I always seem to find myself clearing up empty cups after meetings that my colleagues leave sitting on the table too. And similar to others have said up-thread, I often get assumed to be junior to older male colleagues that I'm actually the manager of!

I hear you. And all the women on the thread are cheering becuase you're right, his arguments are mostly pretty silly. BUT.... he's clearly not listening or taking it on board.

I had an amusing not really interaction with a man on the weekend that was similar. It's like we're talking different languages. Not real conversation but it's something like, "Of course I can go out whenever I like - my partner can look after the children" and completely OBLIVIOUS to the fact that actually, no, his partner ALSO has the right to have some control over her life etc. But there's no point arguing so....

Oh I believe it really happened as it happened to me as well. No matter how many times DP said speak to my wife, it's she who is buying the car the salesman still ignored me. We bought elsewhere and told him why.

It's actually happened again this week! I went into the local flooring shop and chose some new bathroom flooring. It was fitted Friday and I went into pay which I did on my own card. The receipt arrived on Saturday - addressed to DP who has had nothing at all to do with the process. They don't even know his name - it's addressed to Mr (surname).

I'm fuming. They've had a snotty message from me and next time I will buy elsewhere.

It must be really annoying when highly qualified women in senior positions are perceived as being the PA, secretary, receptionist, etc. etc. I believe the same thing happens to black people. I recall an item in a TV programme where a black professor attending an educational establishment to deliver a speech was thought by reception staff to be the taxi driver.

These things are not necessarily maliciously meant (but they need to be challenged). If we generally see women and black people in subordinate positions, then it is to some degree understandable that men and women, black and white, are wired in to these stereotypes. The worst thing is that when girls and black people do not see people like them being in senior positions or holding down jobs requiring significant expertise, they adopt those stereotypes too.

VeronicaFranklin's account of responding to a request to carry out junior-type tasks prior to a meeting, even though she was about to chair that meeting, made me chuckle (in a wry sort of way). Hopefully, that was a while ago, but it does demonstrate how deeply those stereotypes can be embedded in even people who hold senior positions, perhaps being one of the reasons for "imposter syndrome".

SeulementUneFois says she has dealt with this issue because she has "always behaved a bit "superior" manner - not quite rude, but brazen; not quite patronising but as arrogant as the most arrogant man in the room." So she felt it necessary to fit in with the male stereotype of how a senior person should behave. Interesting but depressing.

It’s because these men have stayathome wives or wives who have up work as soon as they could, so the non career or lowly career woman is their default expectation

A relative of ours started out as a PA, and then moved to a bigger company where she was fairly rapidly promoted to senior management. Her old boss came in for a job interview, saw her and casually asked her to fetch him a coffee. She said the expression on his face when he realised she was part of his interviewing panel was priceless. I have, in the past, changed garages because I couldn't stand the owner of one of them treating me like an alien species - a combination of rudeness and horror that a woman had ventured into his sacred precincts. I found one run by a younger man, good at his job, but also polite, friendly - and he treated me exactly as he treated my husband.

@ScotsBluebell - I'm afraid I'm rather nastily hoping that your relative's former boss didn't get the job!

With all due respect it does sound like you need to be more assertive.
Before i would clear cups away I would say X Y Z you've left your cups on the table there.
Job done. It's not hard.

We look after our employees well, but the extremely capable females' in my team never ask for promotions or pay rises and are thrilled when they get them! The men on the other hand ....

I'm astonished to read this. Not because this sort of thing never happened to me (it did), but because I'd assumed that this sort of thing is rare these days. I retired (as a senior scientist) 13 years ago and it's the sort of thing that used to happen in the early part of my career, when I tended to be the only woman in the department, apart from the secretary. People phoning me wanting to speak to Dr * (me) sometimes assumed that I was my secretary, national scientific meetings where I'd often be addressed as Miss* and my male colleagues as Dr -- (whether they were or not)., being patronised in meetings - all familiar, although much less so later in my career.

Yes, I agree. In my earlier career I experienced this then for a few years not, but in these later year it feels like my experience has come full circle. I would say it is getting worse.

I’m a medical consultant. Last week at work I was sorting out a typical NHS IT issue and needed to use a personal PC (not Mac) laptop to do so as the trust issued devices can’t do the tsk due to the security software on them. I’m the “go to” tech person for our dept and this is well known.

so I’d asked in the coffee room if anyone had one with them. This usually works (and in fact did).

Except initially a male medical student with no real knowledge of the task I was trying to complete took it upon himself to explain to me how to do it better.

His solution didn’t solve the problem because he hadn’t understood the task.

I was icily polite. (My registrar later complimented me on it) but I was surprised to realise later that neither of the male consultants present had registered that he had spoken out of turn in a way he wouldn’t have to a senior male colleague sorting out an IT issue.

Oh dear @AdelaideRo. The only place I have experienced a reductive attitude to women is when dealing with the NHS. At outpatients all the men are called Mr John Smith or Mr Fred White. The Women: Jane Doe of Brenda Jones. The courtesy of a title isn't afforded to mere women

The number of NHS doctors who have introduced themselves as Dr Jones, Mr Graham, Dr Dunne whilst assuming they may use my first name is mind-blowing.

If they assume they may use my first name they may introduce themselves with and invite me to use theirs. Anything else is reductive. I always extend my hand and say "Oh, I'm awfully sorry, I didn't catch your first name". Sometimes they blush and say "oh, er Paul". Sometimes they tell me they don't share their first name with patients.

It really is the last bastion of the hierarchy.

For what it's worth, it's either first name/first name or title/title. Recently a partner of my GP practice told me he meant nothing by it but forgot my surname on the way from his consulting room to reception. I asked if he had also forgotten his first name. He got quite arsy. I'm not sure who he thought he was. At least five years younger than me so shoukd know better in the context of equality.

Oh dear @AdelaideRo, you’ve given someone the opportunity to climb on their regular soapbox yet again.

I have met many successful people without the kind of presence you're talking about.

You may never have been disadvantaged by your sex, but you certainly seem to struggle in following the point of an argument.

@SeulementUneFois
You are foreign (white)!!!!
What does the colour of your skin matter? I doubt anybody would have wondered what colour you are.

I don't know why posters are pretending that women are systemically prevented from reaching the top - they aren't. There are about 27 million people in employment in the UK. That's about 14 million men (52%), and 13 million women (48%). Of the 893 directors of FTSE 100 boards in 2021, 393 were women (44%). There's still some room for improvement, but it's really not that far from equal ...

Adjust the ONS labour force survey figures for all those industries where men still predominate (energy, mining, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, oil and gas, waste), and women will actually outnumber men in a great many of the environments in which they work - traditionally health, education, adult social care, but also in managerial and technical professions too. The graphic below is from Mar 2022 parliamentary report on women in the UK economy. Women are employed in professional occupations in almost identical numbers to men.

The only really skewed distributions are skilled trades, care work, and admin/secretarial, which in the context of this thread is highly ironic. If you were looking for an admin person to fetch coffee, then that person is 2.5 times more likely to be female than male. Yes, assuming that the only female in the room is that admin person might constitute bias, but if that assumption is 2.5 times more likely to be correct than incorrect, then the number of occurrences need to exceed that factor of 2.5 to amount to evidence of systemic bias, and based on this thread, they don't.

In much the same way, a male primary school teacher may be mistaken for the janitor by the parents at the school gate. Or a male nurse may get mistaken for the porter or orderly by patients and family members. I'm sure it happens frequently - and it's no big deal, because it's just a mistake. A common one, perhaps, but it is still a mistake. To respond with passive-aggressiveness is utterly unprofessional and is a much clearer pointer why some people don't promote than their sex. And to be quite clear - if someone knows the truth and still behaves in a way that disrespects someone's expertise, that is clearly unacceptable and should be called out. But filter out all the instances on this thread where the behaviour described was a one off, or happened on a first encounter, or it was a long time ago, or those where the aggrieved person quite inexplicably went along with it and said nothing ... and this thread gets quite short indeed. And the voices of the women stating that this has never happened to them become a more significant contribution to the overall testimony, and less easily dismissed by those pedalling their tired old agenda.

And also, stop pretending that men are fast-tracked to the top. There are 13,999,908 men who aren't FTSE 100 CEOs either, as well as the 12,999,992 women this thread concentrates on (based on 92 male and 8 female FTSE CEOs in 2021). Is that the fault of the patriarchy too? All these posters claiming men never experience prejudices in the workplace should take a good look at how most men are actually employed. Clue - they aren't all partners in law firms or IT directors ordering coffee be brought to them. Many men are overlooked for promotions for a whole range of factors, some fair, some not - wrong school, wrong social background, too short, no presence, but most commonly of all ... they are simply not good enough. Which, on the balance of probabilities, is also the most likely explanation for why women get overlooked too.

I don't know why posters are pretending that women are systemically prevented from reaching the top after all 92% of FTSE 100 CEOs are male only because women are simply not good enough

Right-o, thanks for clearing that up, I feel much better now a man had explained I'm just bad at my job

A male primary school teacher isn’t mistaken for the caretaker (janitor), they are mistaken for the head teacher (when it’s usually a woman). A male nurse isn’t mistaken for a porter, people assume they are a Doctor.

The man has spoken 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

they are simply not good enough. Which, on the balance of probabilities, is also the most likely explanation for why women get overlooked too.

I honestly thought this was satire

but read the whole mansplaining post and now thing the poster might mean it?

The poster absolutely means it. I mean in the UK, only 35% of judges are female, clearly women are just not good enough. But the number was 24% a decade ago, and 0 in 1965, so the only explanation is that women are now somehow better and more capable, right?