To think the professional world is full of middle aged men of very average abilities who still seem to have gone far

Yes experienced this, but in a lot of industries unless technical, the ability to talk the talk with absolute confidence is the most necessary skill, men seem to be better at BS!

You’re not wrong!
around the time of taking big steps in professions - women are thinking about pregnancy or going PT because of young kids/ family responsibility.
shit men get chances they never normally would.
ot they cover maternity and get oops there.

I’m torn on this Imposter Syndrome thing. I recognise it and according to definitions have it, but I go back to my previous comments that if I really wanted these roles, I would have made it happen.

The harsh reality for me and my ‘imposter syndrome’ is that I just didn’t really want these soul destroying / life encompassing roles.

It has become more apparent recently because my dcs are older and I’ve always used the excuse that I’ve needed to be ‘there’ (I work ft and am sp) as much as I can, but the reality is, right now, I could feasibly be free to wind myself up the greasy pole. I have no desire to do that at all. Much more, I’m interested in retracting from corporate life and doing something ‘arty’

Corporate life served a purpose in me paying my bills and being able to bring up my children with a decent living standard (private schools even!) but seriously, now my responsibilities are lower, get me the hell out of there! I don’t think I ever had imposter syndrome really, I just don’t think I was all in on it

just my pov and reflections obviously!

Male or female there are a lot of rubbish managers, they used to say that people got promoted to their level of incompetence. Just because your good at your job doesn't mean you'll be good at a more senior role.

Absolutely. The company I work for nearly went under due to a MAM being in charge of sales. He was very condescending towards me as a woman too. Eventually I took over the role and catapulted the company back to viability then stability. 💪🏻

I'm actually amazed that so few of the usual "what about the menzzzz" crowd have jumped on this discussion topic so far.
Excellent, thought-provoking topic for a Saturday morning.
Here are my own examples from working in schools:

I was brought in as an intervention specialist teacher to help students who were struggling. I was asked to assist for a couple of hours as well as my teaching timetable to help with a "nightmare class" "full of vegetables" (the words of the class's regular teacher). He commandeered a computer room for the lesson and told them to "do some research". He spent the whole lesson ignoring the class looking at Facebook on his phone, not managing behaviour or teaching them anything. The regular TA and myself spent the whole lesson fighting fires trying not to undermine the mess he'd made by not bothering to plan a lesson.

At the end of that first lesson, he asked if I would take the class full-time as I "had such a good rapport with them" and he was "too busy". He had just been promoted to assistant head for behaviour and inclusion. By the time I left, he was deputy head.

Every time we had a major incident with that class, he was called in to assist and all he did was stand there blustering with no real idea what to do or how to do it while my TA looked at him like the idiot he was.

Later at a different school, I was given a school IT project that I had specialist knowledge in as it was the area of my degree. I had a budget, and I knew what I needed to do to meet the specific requirements. It should have been really straightforward.

Then Mr Bullshitter arrived. Our new Head of IT. White. Middle Aged. Middle Class. Male. Might have got the job because he used a computer that one time. From day one he spoke to me like dog mess.

My manager was besotted with the idea that we now had a White Middle Aged Middle Class Male here to help us. She made the whole project grind to a halt (all she had to do was sign off on a software decision at this point) because she absolutely had to have phone calls with sales reps on Mr IT's schedule so he could offer his opinion, run everything past Mr IT and generally overcomplicate everything and defer to him so much that I eventually went to the headteacher and told him there was no point in me being employed to run this project because they didn't seem to actually want the job doing. I got moved back into my old department.

Mr. Big IT Guy did a runner abroad 18 months later and took a load of tech with him, leaving the school's entire IT system to unravel because he hadn't kept on top of all the important things like license renewals and updates.

5 years later they are still waiting for someone to do that job that I was employed to do.

I didn't say every woman in every job is always better.

But the reason that there are a higher proportion of men in senior jobs can't purely be attributed to maternity/child-rearing.

There's a massive structural imbalance that favours men over women in many walks of life.

Another “male bashing” post again - flagrant sexism and complete over generalised comments. So sad that posters on here feel it is appropriate to make such comments.

It's mumsnet. This is our standard.

what do you mean by “our standard “ - so basically middle aged men are fair game. No robust intellectual debate - just stupid inaccurate comments fuelled by sexism and discriminatory views.

It is sad that people feel this is acceptable in 2022.

Yup, sadly people appoint what's familiar to them - and that's People Like Them. And they, usually without realising it, find ways to rule out others.

I often remind myself to try to have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man! 😜

But the reason that there are a higher proportion of men in senior jobs can't purely be attributed to maternity/child-rearing

it’s the whole part of that imo. Women prioritise family. Just look around.

Honestly, would you really want these jobs in ‘Senior Management’? Really, do you really want them?

At a population level, it seems women really don’t want them so in some way thank god for the mediocre men who will do these roles willingly!

YNBU. The world is full of fucking mediocre David Brent types. Manboring everyone to death in meetings and doing very little.

Have you considered that maybe you are just mediocre? Hence the reason you are not being promoted to the same level as your me colleague.

just a thought !

And yes let's all sob at poor manbashed men shall we? Erm unless we consider the inequalities in
Pay
Leisure hours
Victimology
Wake up girlies above, stressing about manbashing, to what is STILL happening to your gender. Get angry.

male

I think if a woman had rocked up with such a vague generic presentation she’d have been ripped to shreds for being so I’ll prepared

Ill!! Fucking autocorrect

Quite possibly true. Although I have (had) more female bosses than male. Very high up they are awful. As in actively, deliberately vindictive, backstabbing.

Yet all the evidence suggests that time and again men are preferred over women because of their sex not their capability

I am sure the blind orchestra auditions have already been highlighted- where they showed that the orchestra was NOT recruiting only the best because they were in fact only recruiting the best males

Or The AI cv scanner than rejected women cvs - it was in effect predicting sex from the hobbies and writing style

midgetastic - you haven’t addressed the point I am making.

Incidentally just for the record - one of the best bosses I ever had was a woman - absolutely brilliant. But I have also had great male bosses as well.

we need balance and objectivity.

I see mediocre people all over the place in My organisation, gender doesn’t really come into it in that regard - that being said, the ratio of men to women falling into that bucket gets higher the further up the tree you go.

It’s not their fault though. I’ve they’ve got promoted or bagged a new job over their ability and competence that’s on the business.

It’s a mix of who you know, building relationships at networking events and LinkedIn, rather than actually working and being good at what you do.

Take LinkedIn for instance - spend time posting lots of inspirational and emotion provoking posts, gain thousands of followers and everyone thinks your the bees knees.