The Feminist Pub - come on in, chat, ask a quick question, ramble ... whatever you like!

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Hello and welcome! Pull up a chair!

This thread started when we all decided to imagine what the perfect local for feminists would be like. So far, it has taps with plenty of good real ale, and some decent non-alcoholic alternatives too. There are comfy chairs and there's a feminist film night, as well as lots of nice feminist-friendly books on the shelves and space to curl up and read. The open-mic nights are attracting feminist singers and comedians, and we're just sorting out the feminist creche.

Old thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1875250-The-Feminist-Pub-is-Open-Chat-Rant-or-pull-up-a-chair-here. But don't feel you need to read or catch up - just jump in.

I'm having a nice cup of earl grey but there is wine mulling as requested.

What can I get anyone?

YY DS is in the strict gender roles stage at the moment too. All girls like only pink and purple. Sometimes I let him play The Sims and all the female ones get their clothes changed to some vomit-inducing shade of pink!

I seem to be repeating this all over at the moment so sorry if I've posted on this thread before but I've heard it's because children will instinctively look for signs of the "tribe" they belong to and what sets it apart from others. At preschool they are often addressed as "girls and boys" and told "good boy" "clever girl" etc so this along with the very gendered toys, clothes etc leads them to believe that this must be the most important group they are in and they start trying to work out what makes a boy a boy and what makes a girl a girl. The possibility that girl/boy doesn't matter doesn't compute at this age when they've already got the message that this is the most important difference between them and others.

We are trying to counter it a bit by telling DS he is a "Our surname" so that he assimilates that as an identity rather than "I am a boy/man" but I don't know how well it is working. I take heart from the thought that most children when they get to teenagers start to do the "Oh, I'm an X and that person is a Y but actually we're not so different after all" and I'll do the reiterating that girls are not a separate species, they are as varied as boys, it's definitely not the case that girls think and communicate in one way and boys in another, it's just that different people do and it's up to you to try and understand the person, not some mythical gender.

yes Berstie, my children are very young and I take their outrageous conformity to gender roles as a sign that this adherence will come to seem infantile to them. I do counter it - I pointed out recently to dd1 that nearly every doctor she has ever seen has been a woman, for instance - but I don't get het up about it because yes, they do come to be very scornful about things they associate with their own early childhood; and also because I think active role models are more important. I think part of the glamour of excessive genderisation for dd1 is that she senses it is other, other than how dp and I and the four of us actually think and live, and it is like wanting to eat things that you aren't allowed at home when you go to other people's houses, but actually when you are old enough to set your own day to day food it is far more likely to be based on what you ate at home than what you ate occasionally as a thrilling treat (tenuous analogy there)

Exactly. And you get people who grow up in outrageously sexist/racist/homophobic households but then when they get to the teenage years and some of their friends at school are BME/gay they realise it's just nonsense and it stops being an issue. I think sexism is probably worse if you grow up with it, because it's everywhere and insidious and most people take it for granted, so I think that takes a little longer especially with "lad culture".

Toddlers like things to be black and white and everything in its 'box'.

I'm just back from having DS3's hair cut at the local barbers. He behaved as if he'd had a double espresso for breakfast with a constant stream of consciousness chatter going on that got more and more cheeky (encouraged by the barber who we see regularly, so it was all in good spirits. If a bit embarrassing...). Anyway, the whole teasing ended with an ever escalating 'you're silly' - 'you're more silly' 'you're a Mr poopoohead'- 'you're more of a Mr poopoohead' (you get the picture - meanwhile me on the banch going ) and climaxed with 'Well, and you're a girl!'. I averted by total sense of humour failure by saying 'Well, either one of you should be so lucky', but it brought home again how it is used as an insult: in ascending order silly, Mr poopoohead, girl. Sigh.

Anyway, that's mission 1 of the day accomplished, mission 2 is to take DS1 to his Sporting Activity .

Everybody have a good one!

Impostorism afflicts more women than men. I wonder if it's true. What does everyone think?

Instinctively, yes.

Off to read article now!

"Impostorism"??

AKA Imposter Syndrome - feeling like a fraud/under qualified,

Ah

The first half-sentence explained it - and yes, it does IMO

Ah, that's why I think it's more women than men- "lean in" states that women tend to apply for jobs where they meet 100% of the criteria, whilst men apply at 60%.

Older article says confidence is "correlated with competence at about 0.30", so are people hiring the less competent?

Isn't it sad? The book I'm reading now says that because of all this social conditioning, men simply "look right for the job", in the perception of both men and women, which explains why when both men and women are given identical CVs with obviously men's or women's names on, they would choose the ones with men's names on.

I think this is a similar ill to why many more women worry about their size/shape (right down to the particular shape of their fanny fgs) whereas I have never ever hear any man worrying about the exact shape of their scrotum. Penis size - yes, but particular variation??

It's a confidence thing.

In my profession well over 50% of graduates are now female, but the most senior positions are still overwhelmingly male like in so many fields. And it is not all down to seeking 'family friendly' jobs either...

pacific same with my field. But I find that because I do not seek to climb up the ladder (I like it where I am where I can do exactly what I like rather than lots of bureaucracy - and I do what I like very well indeed but that's not a good enough reason for promotion) it seems that I am representative of women and am the explanation of why senior positions are filled by men.

Can I not live my life without having to prove points or be a role model or letting the side down?

Oh, snap, LordCopper - I had decided well before I was specialising in anything at all that I was not aiming for 'the top' - it seemed fraught with admin, professional and national politics and less 'shop floor' work (which is what I actually like doing. Having been trained for it for 10+ years an'all...)
I have a sense of 'guilt' at having let the sisterhood down sometimes... .

I have a good friend who I trained with how is at the top of her profession with an equally high-flying husband who is crippled by the Working Mother's Guilt. Her DH does not seem to be similarly afflicted...

x-post re guilt

Pacific re: guilt - so not fair. But I need to be able to articulate this so I can tell people what's wrong with them. Otherwise I'm just incoherent with rage and I know it's not my fault....

I get imposterism. It's how I feel all the time! Just last week I had an observation at school and I for weeks beforehand I stressed about how I don't think I'm as good as I should be and that our deputy might finally see through my "good teacher" disguise and see that I'm just pretending. Logically I know that I am a good teacher (actually according to the feedback I was given yesterday I'm outstanding ) but in the pit of my stomach I'm always terrified before an observation that I'm going to be told I'm rubbish.

I don't know where it comes from but all of the women teaching in my department have the same response to observations, we all feel sick and stressed by it all. The men in the department don't feel like that at all, or if they do they don't say it. They seem very confident and just teach a normal lesson (so did I but where it normally takes 15-20 mins to plan a lesson that one took over 2 hours to plan and it wasn't any better than any other lesson I taught that day) and expect to be Good or Outstanding. I realise this isn't a statistically significant survey with 8 women and 5 men, but it's been like that in every school I've been in so far.

I'm not aiming for the top either. I trained to be a teacher not a manager. I have very little interest in becoming a head or even head of department, I like the classroom part of the job. Our head of department is a man and he's been teaching 3 years less than I have, and I know that I could have got that hod job if I'd gone for it, and I was asked repeatedly why I didn't apply (I didn't apply because I'd had a mc 3 weeks earlier and was only just functioning in any sort of "normal" manner - I also just don't want it)

I have thought a lot about this sort of thing. One of the differences I have noticed in my field between men and women (grossly anecdotal) is that men are quite relaxed about ignoring admin type stuff they are not interested in, and admitting to it. I feel sick with fear and guilt in meetings when I feel that something trivial I have forgotten to do, or actively not prioritised, is about to be uncovered, even if it has nothing to do with anything substantive, and I think a lot of women feel the same.

I hypothesise that:

organisations in general have traditionally associated these admin tasks with women and before they all got "streamlined" out, there would be whole teams of people to do admin, and they would be women, and so everyone has internalised this idea that undone admin is some woman's problem and she is very inefficient for not having done it, even though it is no more her job than someone else's;

men are in general more confident and therefore free to be more focused. They read their inboxes in a different way, seeking out messages that apply directly to the thing they are working on which is their explicit objective. Women read their inboxes far more comprehensively, alert to messages which bring them tasks which they may be "told off" for being seen not to have covered off. They are more vulnerable to being reactive, to allowing other people to set their priorities

"Can I not live my life without having to prove points or be a role model or letting the side down?"

Remember trying to explain to a male friend that one of the reasons I don't play multiplayer games online is because if I do then I am instantly stuck being representative of all women. If I play badly then it's seen as proof that all women play badly etc. But if a bloke does the same? It's just evidence that he plays badly.

Some of this is how we as a society define 'success' IMO: to be 'successful' you have to be at the top of your chosen field OR make loadsa money. It's a very male definition of success, that does not value a good work/life balance and does not put value on raising children/running a household etc, but equally I think a lot of men suffer from the sheer expectation.
We don't value a lot of coalface services, be that healthcare or teaching or social work or engineering - it's managers that have the clout and the money which in some cases they earn by having to shoulder more responsibility and by putting in the hours. But at the same time they often lose sight of what those at the frontline do.

The one and only time that I was at the end of my tether what with 4 kids and job and no support and actually ended up sobbing at the poor person at the other end of a helpline was when I had returned from mat leave after having DS4 and my appraisal was looming. I was totally stressed out and convinced I would 'fail' (bearing in mind that this is ment to be a 'supportive' and 'constructive' blah blah process) and would lose my registration and livelihood and DH would leave me in disgust at my uselessness and my children would end up begging on the streets... well, you get the picture.

I am good at my job and I know it, but I don't always feel it, if that makes any sense?

Pacific I am good at my job and I know it, but I don't always feel it, if that makes any sense? - that makes perfect sense to me!! It's how I feel as well. Apparently other people can see how good I am at my job and in my head I know I'm good at my job but every time it comes round to observations and appraisals I think I'm going to 'fail'.