Feminist Pub 15: The Bluestocking hangs up its, err, stocking and hopes for a chatty Christmas and a Feminist New Year

[YonicSleighdriver]

Festive greetings!

This is the 15th incarnation of the Pub and is meant as a place to drop by with random thoughts and meandering chats, on feminist or other related themes. Anything you want to mull over but not necessarily start a thread about. Alternatively, get some booze and snacks and hang out! Lurkers, newbies and oldbies welcome.

We have a pub goat, a feminist cannon for firing at crazy sexists and we cheer each other up when patriarchy grinds us down...

Last pub drinkie linkie:

Pub 14

Dies some kind person want to start the next pub? I don't think I'll be around much this month..

Hello

Sorry to crash in and be all me-me-me but I wonder if someone could give me some work advice? It is tangentially feminist related.

I have been working for a year without clarity on my role, duties or job title. Over the past months I started pushing harder for this and went to a one-to-one with my boss this morning to which I brought a document outlining the duties of a coordinator, a manager and a director. (my boss does not work in exactly my field and nor does my boss so I spend a lot of time explaining things about my job in an attempt to be managed properly.)

He said he had established that senior management have determined my role is that of a manager.
I actually do a lot of the stuff on the "director" list. There is more stuff on the director list which is not being done by anyone (notionally done in LA but actually not happening and I am more than capable of it).

So here are the questions.

• what do I want? Do I want to be the director and do the director stuff? yes if it is recognised. Carrying on doing everything is killing me. I doubt I am going to get staff though so is there any point in trying to step up when there is a structure set that doesn't acknowledge what I do? or that I am capable of doing things I do every day? And imagines that someone else is doing these things?

• alternatively how can I get the actual directors in LA to either do the director stuff that I am doing or acknowledge that I do it?

• how can I take a positive approach to what I do and use it to my advantage? I feel like the usual perky advice given to be all "can do" is really letting me down here as it doesn't actually advise how to get recognised for what you do. I can do stuff but I somehow can't get formally appointed to the role of doing the stuff, or getting someone else in my team to do the more junoir stuff. The sulky part of me wants to refuse to do things on the "director" list if I can't get recognised and supported to do so. But that is not realistic, obviously any idiot (even me) knows that won't actually help me get anywhere.

I feel like this has gone so far now that I don't even have the option of settling back into the "manager" role and letting others do the "director" stuff, because if I actually cut back on what I am available for, it will look lazy and uncooperative, at this stage I will be visibly refusing to do things people are expecting me to do and going "not my job, mate".

I would really appreciate any advice from you clever lot.

Oh right the feminist angle: I am one of very few at my level who has children and no SAHP; I am constantly battling the register in which my boss and his boss talk to me, which is consistently pitched at a much dumber level than I am, and I am pretty sure sexism has something to do with it. (I cut examples from this already far too long post)

thank you in advance

Ellis I'm spectacularly pants at this jobs/career thing. After 15 years in my job I've only just realised started asking the questions you've asked.

I want to be recognised for what I can do. I think to do this you need the title (I didn't always think so). I certainly want to be paid more. I am beginning to be more assertive about what I will and will not do. And I'm beginning to be more assertive about being fucking credited. And I'm beginning to pull people up on making assumptions about me that are sexist.

Sorry this is even more me-me-me.

not nearly so "me me me" as my post!
Thanks LC. I hope being more assertive works out well for you, I agree you do need the title. The trouble is, how do you get the title? It seems a good idea in theory to pick up more senior duties to demonstrate capability and commitment, and hope that it will be noticed that you are acting up. Actually from experience it is just a way to do shit loads more work that others will get credit for.

On the other hand, you would have no credibility if you went to an appraisal and said "you should promote me. I have shown no interest in doing more demanding work and have never put myself forward for any, but you should promote me anyway"

so.... I don't know where to go from here.

I've been pushing for promotion, not because I care about titles, but because I want recognition for what I do. I've been told I need to get "leading" in most of my objectives, which is fine in query, but my objectives are an on-going argument; on the one hand I get vague and waffly ones which can't be measured and on the other, I get ones about completing general admin by required deadlines - and despite me pointing out this is insulting as it ignores my existing abilities to do this (since I was at school,) they don't understand at all why I am bothered by it, even though I've been asking for and suggesting some decent objectives that are measurable and would stretch me a bit. There may an element of sexism (me being too outspoken, too emotional, should just accept what managers say,) but it's more to do with general favouritism. Performance-related culture my behind! It's going to be very interesting to see what they put in my annual review this year.

That is interesting, EBearhug. Are you able to say, however vaguely as is comfortable for you, what sort of field you are in? Or would you prefer not to?

But less rantily, I think you need to give evidence of all you do, particularly emphasising what is director-level rather than manager level, and indicate what you bring to the business by doing it. If you can put a financial value on it, even better, because in the end, it mostly comes down to money. In some roles that's easy, if it's sales-related and so on, but we're a service department with a lot of costs, rather than being income-generating, and it's hard to prove financial benefits unless it's a year where we've decommissioned a load of hardware. But you can also showed improved efficiencies, and being able to do process X 50% quicker has a financial benefit.

That still leaves the issue of showing your value-add that means you should be a director, and there's a good chance they will not accept you pointing out all you do at that level and then you are a bit stuck, because as you say, it's just going to look like you are having a tantrum if you stop doing it.

I'm in IT, in a department of about 40, and they're all men.

I find that by the time I'm that disappointed in a job and the management above me that I have to just cut my losses and move somewhere new - I'm lucky enough to be able to do that without much fuss though.

Would taking on the title, and so officially the extra work be good for you or work you even harder? Could you try pitching it as just getting the title and not pushing for the raise (I've seen people be happy to give out titles as long as it doesn't cost them money, then the newly titled just waits 6 months, then starts pulling rank to get the money and perks that they had previously waived for the title)

On an entirely different subject, if anyone is looking for young adult fiction (although I'm not that, and still finding it an enjoyable read), which I just realised is very balanced according to the genders (and actually now that I think of it backgrounds, races, family setups, abilities - the works - but without being tortured or odd about it - it's just normal) of the characters and what they do, I can recommend Dominic Green. I came across him on the iTunes book store where there was a load of his stuff for free. It's British Science Fiction - by which I mean that kind of contemporary, UK based, dry wit thing that Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin, Tom Sharpe etc. write, rather than Space Operas or other more hardcore SF. Worth a look if it's your kind of thing.

Thank you EBear and Chunky, interesting points there.

Chunky. I take your point about "cutting your losses" sometimes being best, but this is actually something that keeps happening to me (to do with my line of work and also my personality) and at some point I am actually going to have to stand my ground and face this issue head on because the familiarity of this situation makes me unable to see this as some quirk of where I happen to be working right now.

And thank you for the tip on that author! I will definitely look him up.

I know what you mean - after it happens a few times it starts suggesting that you might be a contributing factor, rather than just the environment around you doesn't it - and the resolution to re-invent yourself in the next job and be forthright and demanding just doesn't seem to happen.

It's tough - you've been yourself for a long time, and change is hard. I know that there's also an element with me of thinking that I like the way I am, and don't want to become someone I don't like just to get ahead at work - yet somehow you also need to not be taken advantage of, and get paid enough to keep you happy.

"It's tough - you've been yourself for a long time, and change is hard. I know that there's also an element with me of thinking that I like the way I am, and don't want to become someone I don't like just to get ahead at work - yet somehow you also need to not be taken advantage of, and get paid enough to keep you happy."

Yes!

The question of changing is interesting. I have got to a stage in life where I actually quite like me now. I'm inclined to say (and have said so in RL) a great big fuck-off to people who want me to change in some intangible way so that they are happier. (I didn't say the now-me is nice.)

And in moments of pessimism I think it's a question of sexism - if people are always going to think I'm less able and less deserving and have less authority and less ambition than some man how am I ever going to get where I want to get? This really makes me angry.

Yep. I am reading about introversion at the moment but finding the book very disappointing so far as it feels more like a polemic about how a business environment underestimates and disadvantages introverts, where its blurb seemed to sell it as a book to help introverts turn their qualities to their (and the world's! ha ha) advantage.

Being female and introvert, as well as working in a field where I report to senior management that have no direct experience of what I do, and often a relatively unsophisticated understanding of it, means I often get underestimated or misunderstood or just forgotten about; and I have to work out how to manage up more effectively, I just have to.

Last week I asked my boss's boss (who has very fixed ideas about some aspects of our relationships with our external partners, which he has basically formulated and designed with specific goals in mind)

"do you have a point of view on how this relationship should work respect to x?" (x being a particular aspect of my job. I have a point of view on this and I am pretty sure I am right; I suspected he didn't have a point of view but needed to make sure)

He started talking just blah and I got a bit flustered because he was very mistaken about some of the basic premises of the matter.

I think I should have done this differently and said "look, this is how it should work, any objections?" It didn't feel easy to correct how wrongly he had understood the basics of the situation, or remind him "I didn't ask you necessarily to have a point of view, just if you had one" and it was a classic example of how he always perceives me as coming at things from a less sophisticated position than I am. I also felt as if I could somehow have been perceived as wrong-footing him (this part is probably paranoia but one of the things that happens to me a lot is that people misunderstand me, patronise me, then feel stupid and shown up, and then resent me for it - always happens subconsciously but it's a dynamic that keeps coming up)

So the reason why I am reading about introversion is because I feel like I need to learn to be the "hey this is how it works!" person more often and the "do you have a point of view?" person less often (introverts ask questions and listen a lot while forming points of view in their head; extroverts think aloud. the introvert can be perceived as a. sometimes like you aren't very bright or don't have a point of view of b. dishonest like you are sneaking up on people, when they do finally find out you know your shit, assuming they ever do).

On the other hand this feels wrong because part of makes me good at what I do is that all these habits and behaviours enable me to have subtle and considered points of view of things and I don't want to become a "speak first think later" person because we have like a hundred of those and I will never be able to compete with them on their own ground and it will make me miserable anyway.

So what I am trying to learn is how to sell what I am rather than change (too much, some change is good, obviously) what I am. So far this book isn't doing it for me,

Sorry about the epic ramble again

It might be one of those books where it spends the first half explaining the problem (as if you'd never noticed it before! However it is sometimes helpful to have it put into words) and then the third quarter exploring strategies about how to be more productive. The seventh 1/8 is then telling you how difficult it's going to be and various people's experiences and the last part is all uplifting and "I know you can do this!"

I keep coming across self help books like that anyway. I feel like the strategies should really be the bulk of the book perhaps with some discussion about how they worked for other people.

ha ha x-posts with Lord Copper on changing oneself!

I feel the anger very strongly at times but at the moment I am trying to push aside the waves of defeatism that roll up against me at other times and really try to work on this. If only so I can say (to myself at least) that I did my best.

One of the things which is (perversely) inspiring me to hack away at this issue, is that I read an interview with one of my ex-bosses who describes in a very self-aggrandising way how she has done well by lying about her skills, and how she got one job by saying she could do things she couldn't and then using other people's skills while in the job. I was the person whose skills she was using in that job and I was utterly miserable, feeling exhausted and exploited and under appreciated. I was far too young to have any idea what to do about it and her political skills were streets ahead of mine and she just took what she needed and it worked for her.

Bizarrely, seeing her account of the situation in print many years later and seeing how it exactly matches my perception of how I was being used, has inspired me to face this current situation as it makes me feel.... less of a nutter prone to conspiracy theories. Instead I am seeing myself as someone who has certain highly developed skills but is too easily exploited. That is very soothing to me

I am an introvert too. This is what I have done in the past couple of years: I don't change myself. I act. I mentally (and sometimes actually) write myself a script and follow that. Once the acting is over I go and hide somewhere to recover.

(In fact much of the script is copied from these threads. You lot are fabulous.)

But does that count as changing yourself? I think I can live with this for a bit longer and see how it works out.

Now I must write my paper, with DS1 floating about the place. He's inclined to talk now that he's not so ill.

Wow thanks for that new thread Buffy.

I wish I had the answer. All I know is that the women I know who have succeeded big time all seem to share a common trait which is resilience: they have the skin of a rhinoceros (some of them paired with warmth and humour, some others not so much).

Personally, after two great years where I did great work thanks to a need to prove myself and a hands-off boss, I had my responsibilities taken away and given to someone else guess their gender right at the time when I was naively thinking I'd be given more. Instead, I was effectively sidelined coincidentally, right after I got married. But of course, according to "them", it's all in my head.

I'm now looking for a new role and surprise surprise, there's nothing for me that is not practically a demotion. But the funny thing is, they don't want me to leave, they really like me, yadda yadda yadda. And yet I'm expected to accept a lesser role with a smile and a thank you.

No wonder women leave at this level. It's the thousand paper cuts.

Will start a new pub, to cheer myself up.

The new pub is here

Now, who wants to finish this thread off?